Last night the 2008 Golden Plate Awards were announced at a glittering dinner attended by more than 300 hospitality professionals, gourmands and special guests from around the state.
A team of professional restaurant critics plus wine, coffee and customer service experts spent over 3 months reviewing more than 100 restaurants, pubs, dining rooms and cafes across the region in one of the most rigorous and independent hospitality awards programs known to the industry.
"In some cases it was hard to identify a standout winner", one of the preliminary judges noted, "so it was necessary to conduct multiple reviews in order to gain a more complete and objective impression from a number of experts".
"In some categories the finalists were separated by just a handful of votes, indicating a very tight competition, and an obvious keenness to score well and take out the accolades" he concluded.
In the 5th year of the Awards, the passion and excitement of the participants was notable, and the quality of entries reflected the continuous improvement strategies put in place by the contestants. Today, some venues are clearly on a par with many of their "superstar" Melbourne counterparts and have achieved this status in no small way from participating in the awards and other local hospitality industry events. All participants receive feedback from the judges, in a supporting and contructively criticising manner. This feedback is often used in staff training as well as menu planning, wine list development and marketing and advertising.
A strong focus on "regionality" is evident, and venues across the board now proudly list the local produce and suppliers they employ in their menus and wine lists. This has led to a huge number of local suppliers producing a wide range of top quality produce to feed the supply chain. This keeps local money local, assisting employment opportunities and heightening the region's reputation as a top quality food and wine tourism destination.
This makes for a lot of winners. Not only those venues that took out top honours. But every venue that participated, and every person who visits a Golden Plate Recommended venue, whether it's an upmarket fine dining establishment, or a shopping strip cafe, knows they are in somewhere that really cares about excellence and delivering a top notch customer dining experience.
That makes us all winners.
