World’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards 2017

My home town of Melbourne is always a good place if you love food, wine, chefs and restaurants. But April 2017 was an absolute foodie frenzy! The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Awards and the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival were on at the same time, meaning there was a crush of masterclasses, gastronomy talks, parties and restaurant events. I went to everything I could! Check out my highlights reel below.

April 5 was the big one, the World’s 50 Best awards night, a glittering black-tie event attended by top chefs and restaurateurs as well as media. Many of the world’s great chefs were there, listening to the top 50 countdown and, in many cases, hearing their restaurant feted and celebrated. Australia has two restaurants in the top 50. On the list for the first time is Brae at number 44. Attica is at number 32, after being named number 33 last year. The number one restaurant is Eleven Madison Park in New York and number two is Osteria Francescana in the north of Italy. See the full list.

If you’re a Dani Valent Cooking subscriber, you can check out Attica chef Ben Shewry’s recipes on the site. Ben also has a deliciously creative cucumber recipe in my book, In the Mix 2: More Great Thermomix Recipes. Massimo Bottura from number 2 restaurant Osteria Francescana kindly shared his Five Textures of Parmesan recipe in the book too. Speaking of my books, stand by over the coming weeks as I share video interviews and Thermomix recipes with In the Mix contributors and other great chefs that have visited Melbourne for this festive week.

How Melbourne is this! Street artist Heesco painted portraits of chefs Ben Shewry, Joan Roca, Daniel Humm and Heston Blumenthal. Head to Higson Lane (where Chin Chin is) to see it.

ABC Afternoons

I regularly pop into to ABC Radio Melbourne to chat to Clare Bowditch and her lovely audience about food. Listen in below as we preview the crush of foodie events, why it matters and whether lists and awards are important to people when they choose which restaurants to visit.

Melbourne Food Map

I created a Melbourne Food Map (see below) for Visit Melbourne to give to chefs and media landing in town for the World’s 50 Best.

Designed by the talented people at Hello Creative, the map is on feel-good scrunchy paper. The envelope tears open to reveal ‘Melbourne Loves You’ coupons redeemable for food and drink at Higher Ground Melbourne, SPQR Pizzeria, Lee Ho Fook, Magic Mountain Saloon, Choo Choo’s and Kirk’s Wine Bar. Thanks for the Melbourne welcome, you guys.

Thanks also to Ben Shewry, Andrew McConnell, Jerry Mai and Matthew Bax for sharing their Melbourne faves. Onya Visit Melbourne for getting behind this.

Dani Valent Cooking

Dani Valent Cooking is for anyone who wants to make the most of their Thermomix. It’s a place to find inspiring, informative, practical, beautiful Thermomix videos and to get access to great Thermomix chefs who join Dani in the kitchen.

Subscribers have access to the complete recipe library plus a new video and recipe every week. Dani Valent Cooking is like a TV channel for Thermomix videos!

The site follows on from Dani’s award-winning Thermomix cookbooks.

Read what people are saying about Dani Valent Cooking.

Don’t miss out on great recipes and fun videos: subscribe or purchase a gift voucher for that Thermo-lover in your life!

Subscribe to Dani Valent Cooking