Top 10 Restaurants of Australia

About

Why did we create this website?

We have found websites that rate restaurants based on user reviews to be fragmented and filled with noise. Users who submit personal reviews of restaurants have no incentive to leave accurate ratings and may lack a breadth of dining experience to properly judge the standing of a restaurant relative to others. The unweighted amalgamated average collected by user review based websites are thus, in our view, unreliable. Alternatively, curated reviews tend to have more perspective and be more balanced and thus, in our view, are more reliable. Hence a singular ranking system that combines various credible review sources was behind our motivation to create this website.


How did we rank the restaurants and create the list?

The premise behind the list was the belief that curated, expert based reviews offered more value compared to sources of public reviews in deciding the quality of a restaurant relative to it's peers. Yet there are many different sources of expert reviews and rankings of restaurants in Australia. We first picked which sources we think are the most reliable, credible and objective and then combined these sources in a completely objective and statistically correct manner to score each restaurant and hence create a ranked list. The only subjective input we had was picking the sources to combine into the list, but we believe there is a clear qualitative difference between what constitutes an expert, balanced source and what doesn't. To provide some reference to the sources we picked three of the most recognisable are the ratings produced annually by Gourmet Traveller Magazine, The Good Food Guide (produced by Fairfax Media) and the San Pelligrino World Top 100 Restaurants list (produced by Restaurant Magazine in the UK). These sources make up a portion of the score for each restaurant but we also combine many other sources.

Although we said the whole premise behind the list (and our motivation to create this website) was the lower credence we placed on individual public reviews, these reviews are not without value. Thus a part of the score for each restaurant does take in sources of public reviews but in line with our philosophy curated sources make up the majority of a score. It is worth mentioning that the restaurants are ranked primarily on the quality and creativity of their menu and to a lesser extent on their wine list, service, decor and ambience. This is simply a reflection of the way the curated sources we use to score the restaurants judge based on this criteria.


How current are the rankings?

We will be updating our scores whenever the sources we use update their rankings. Most publications update annually but at different times so we anticipate updating our website 4-5 times a year to stay current.


Who are we?

Just a couple of foodies from Melbourne, Australia :)