3 Lightspeed Restaurants Win at the Gourmet Traveller Annual Restaurant Awards

The Gourmet Traveller Annual Restaurant Awards are Australia’s longest-running hospitality awards and for 43 years, hospitality heavyweights have gathered to celebrate those at the top of the industry. Its winner’s list includes within the names of many who have shaped the Australian hospitality landscape into what it is today. As such, these accolades hold a certain weight. They are as coveted as they are prestigious. 

This year’s winners were announced in August in a ceremony held at Brasserie 1930 in Sydney in Sydney’s CBD. Amongst these winners were Onzieme, State Winner for ACT, Restaurant Botanic, State Winner for SA and Etta, State Winner for VIC. All three of these restaurants have one thing in common: they’ve chosen Lightspeed as the platform to power their restaurants.

Onzieme

Onzieme is the vision of Chef/Owner Louis Couttoupes.

Named after the 11th Arrondissement of Paris, it was there where Couttoupes took in the local bistros and bars, sampling food and wine at standards which belied their understated settings.

At Onzieme, the menu is in a state of daily change, beholden to the seasons in much the same way as their locally-sourced produce. Dishes are executed with precision and care by a team of chefs at the top of their game. The plates may be small, but they are many, and their ever-changing offerings promise something different on each visit.

The wine list is all about minimal intervention. They like their grapes hand-picked and fermented with native yeasts. They see each imperfection and inconsistency as an opportunity for a new experience. They’ll take the odds and ends from their suppliers, no batch too small, so long as it’s a bottle worthy of their restaurant.

It’s this ethos that permeates the very walls in Onzieme: a celebration in the wonderful unexpectedness that occurs when you let your food and your wine sing.

Restaurant Botanic

There’s no setting quite like that of Restaurant Botanic.

Nestled within the 51 hectares of Adelaide’s Botanical Gardens, it sits as an oasis within an oasis, a place where you can sample some of Australia’s unique native produce whilst surrounded by gardens which feel a world away from the fast-paced, cosmopolitan city streets that border it.

Opened in 2021, US-born chef Justin James can list Melbourne’s Vue De Monde, New York’s Eleven Madison Park, and Copenhagen’s Noma amongst his previous employers. Such establishments are the stuff of every diner’s bucket lists, and here lies a chef who has seen behind the curtain.

The menu at Restaurant Botanic owes much to its surroundings. Where possible, ingredients are sourced from the very gardens in which it sits, leading to a micro-seasonal offering which guides and advises what will be served on any given day.

Indeed, the gardens themselves are as important a member of the kitchen as the chefs.

Restaurant sits within the 51-hectare Adelaide Botanical Gardens which they use as inspiration for their menu. They celebrate Australian native produce and source their ingredients from the surrounding gardens whenever they can. It’s almost as if the gardens themselves are part of the kitchen team, providing and guiding the dishes with its seasonal offerings.

The beverage offering at Restaurant Botanic is, to say the least, comprehensive. A 200-strong wine list features some iconic producers from around the world alongside rarities and wines produced exclusively for the restaurant. There’s a cocktail list inspired by the gardens and, for the sober amongst us, The Temperance Pairing: a non-alcoholic pairing option featuring juices, infusions, ferments and mocktails.

Restaurant Botanic has managed to create an experience which lives up to its setting, a synergy of beauty and perfect execution.

Etta

Etta is focussed on one thing above all: community.

Their goal is to create a cosy dining room which feels like an extension of your living room. When you visit Etta, you’re coming home.

Housed within an old fish & chip shop in Melbourne’s Brunswick East, the kitchen that has fed so many locals over the years is now transformed and helmed by ex-Dinner By Heston Chef de Partie Rosheen Kaul, drawing inspiration from her Peranakan-Chinese, Filipino and Kashmiri heritage as well as her experiences in some of the most well-respected kitchens in Melbourne.

The menu leans on this unique and well-rounded inspiration and combines them with local, seasonal ingredients. Each pairing and combination is a new mouthful, a new flavour you’re not likely to have tasted before, but it feels as though the ingredients are lifelong friends.

The wine list features a section reserved for Victorian producers, proving their commitment to locally-sourced offerings is not merely lip service. But it’s not limited to this: the drinks menu alone is a 22-page world tour upon which you can embark without leaving the suburb.

Lightspeed & the award winners

These restaurants are all worthy winners, each one dedicated to a level and a standard of craftsmanship which justifies their inclusion in such prestigious company. Their actions and choices are the results of careful consideration and the type of knowledge that only years of experience in the industry can teach. It’s an attention to detail which permeates every facet of their business, and this extends to their technology.

Lightspeed is proud to be the choice of POS platform for Onzieme, Restaurant Botanic and Etta, just as we are proud to see our customers being recognised and rewarded for their excellence.