Cuisine introduces chef’s hat ranking for NZ restaurants

3 April 2013
Cuisine introduces chef’s hat ranking for New Zealand restaurants

Cuisine magazine is introducing the renowned chef’s hat ranking, used in Australia by The Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Times and The Age Good Food Guides, for this year’s Restaurant of the Year awards.

Top New Zealand restaurants will be reviewed anonymously a number of times and the country’s best restaurants will be revealed at an industry event in June. At the event, those restaurants that have been awarded one, two or three chefs’ hats will also be announced.

Chef’s hats are highly coveted by restaurants in Australia and it is anticipated the industry and consumers alike will welcome the system here.

“It makes sense for Cuisine, which has the country’s only national restaurant awards, to adopt such a well-established, highly regarded system. Using this international benchmark will help to further highlight our country’s finest restaurants and establish an Australasian industry standard,” says Cuisine editor Sarah Nicholson.

In the judging process, restaurants can achieve a maximum of 20 points for aspects of food, service, wine and ambience, with hats awarded to those that score 15 and over. A three-hat restaurant will be the very pinnacle of dining experiences and it’s likely that few will achieve this ultimate accolade.

“We will only be awarding hats to restaurants – which can include both fine-diners and more casual eateries – that achieve very high standards in food quality and service, to maintain the integrity of the system and standards already established,” says Nicholson.

The results of the Cuisine Restaurant of the Year awards 2013, sponsored by Vittoria Coffee, will be published in the July issue of Cusine, on sale 24 June.

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