Yiaga has been named Best New Restaurant at Gourmet Traveller’s 2026 Restaurant Awards, the 46th running of the awards and part of the magazine’s 60th anniversary year. Chef and co-owner Hugh Allen, also known for his work at Vue de Monde, has turned a former Melbourne tea room into something striking: an entryway lined with 13,000 individually handmade tiles designed by architect John Wardle, an open hearth, and a tasting menu built around what the judges called “true Australian food,” from tiny school prawns with torch ginger to retired Blackmore wagyu. Separately, and worth keeping distinct, Zareh in Collingwood took the top honour of Restaurant of the Year, with chef-owner Tom Sarafian’s Lebanese, Armenian and Egyptian menu.
Melbourne’s dominance in the Best New Restaurant category is hard to ignore. It’s taken the title in five of the last six years the award has run, against a single Sydney win in 2024, a pattern that says something about where Australia’s most ambitious new openings are choosing to land.
But the more interesting story this year sits outside the capital cities entirely. Look at the state winners, and four of six are regional. Queensland’s award went to The Woodshed at Kin Kin, a seven-course set menu run out of a 112-year-old pub in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, complete with its own market garden, resident bees and nine guest rooms. Western Australia’s went to De’sendent in Margaret River, New South Wales to Bistro Livi in Murwillumbah, and South Australia to Esmay, tucked inside Adelaide’s heritage-listed Hackney Hotel. Gourmet Traveller’s separately updated regional openings guide adds more of the same, including an off-grid, partly subterranean winery restaurant at Wayfinder in Margaret River and a wine-cave dining room at Meteora, roughly three hours from Brisbane.
None of these towns have scheduled commercial air services, and several venues have deliberately built accommodation alongside the dining room, from Kin Kin’s guest rooms to the private estates around Berry’s Sara Dining. That’s not a coincidence. It’s the same seven-course-in-a-town-with-no-airport pattern showing up again and again, and it turns a single dinner booking into a genuine multi-day itinerary for anyone willing to make the trip.
That’s precisely where a charter flight earns its keep. A booking at a restaurant like this rarely stands alone, it usually means a weekend built around a region, a group of friends chasing a specific table, or a couple stretching a meal into a proper regional escape. Adagold Aviation’s luxury charter and private jet hire services can get you into regional strips near Margaret River, the Sunshine Coast hinterland or the NSW South Coast without the drive that most of these openings otherwise demand. If one of this year’s winners has you planning a trip, our charter specialists can help build the rest of the itinerary around it.
