Click the links below to check out each of the 100 Gourmet Experiences: 

About the 100 Greatest Australian Gourmet Experiences 

What an audacious project. To judge and rank the Greatest Australian Gourmet Experiences has never before been attempted. Restaurants are ranked almost every other day. Producers and providores ditto. But experiences that encompass restaurants, producers and anything remotely connected to food, all ranked together in the one list? Not on your life. Until now.

Why this has never before been attempted is pretty obvious. It’s close to impossible (because Australians can’t agree on daylight savings let alone gourmet experiences), and extremely dangerous (because chefs have very sharp knives). So we called in the big guns – a panel of experts so universally applauded and respected in Australia that their consensus opinion would outweigh the most passionate of singular arguments. Their brief was to help decide how great an experience was on the basis of their own opinion or how strongly they would advise a close friend to seek out the experience.

That was the easy part. To arrive at the 100 we scoured the continent for potential experiences that emphasised food + location + sense of occasion, and after many weeks had gathered more than 900. The panel received a shortlisted version of these, which they then judged, opting out with an N/A if they had no opinion or were personally involved in any way. We averaged out the scores for each of the experiences to arrive at our list.

And what a list. Some movers and shakers bubbled to the surface while other well-known names fell from contention. Whichever way you look at it, finally there’s a guide for Australians that stretches the length and breadth of the country and the spectrum of gourmet experiences.

We’re sure you’re going to immediately think of half a dozen you’d include. And that’s great. Log in and share them with others, as we’ve established a page where the staff picks that didn’t make the list have been posted. We’d love to hear yours.

The Australian Traveller Team

Click HERE to view our Expert Judging Panel.