Sydney fine-diner moves up in the World's 50 Best Restaurants longlist
Woods, a Bundjalung woman, was the first Indigenous woman to appear on MasterChef Australia. She was named a Champion of Change for using her platform to blend cultures and empower the community, and cultivate a more inclusive food industry that supports minority voices.
Meanwhile, Central Otago destination diner Amisfield became the first New Zealand restaurant to appear on the World's 50 Best list in its 23-year-history, scraping in at 99th.
It is unlikely any other Australian venues will feature on the list, which last year crowned Barcelona's Disfrutar as the 'world's best restaurant'. (A four-hour tasting menu at Disfrutar costs around $500 before drinks and may feature a dish called 'Fear: The Prawn', where guests are asked to hunt through dry-ice vapour with bare hands to retrieve the shellfish.)
The World's 50 Best Restaurants 2025 longlist
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Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Why Melburnians celebrate the failure of Sydney's ‘Vile Kyle'
Sandilands ('Vile Kyle' to his detractors) and Jackie Henderson, his microphone partner, are supposed to be receiving about $10 million a year each over the next 10 years as reward for drawing in advertisers excited by smutty stunts. Their $200 million deal – a sum that would have left even old 'Golden Tonsils' John Laws weak at the knees – was drawn up on the presumption that their peculiar popularity in Sydney (where they get ratings of about 16 per cent) would sweep all before them as they took their breakfast show, modestly titled Hour of Power, to the other state capitals, starting in Melbourne. Oops. The Hour of Power Sydney toilet-jokes format on KIIS caused the pair to take a colossal gutser in Melbourne from the start. A year on, their latest rating is a measly 5.1 per cent, placing the show eighth in Melbourne's breakfast slot. For context, number one is the familiar Ross and Russ show on 3AW, where Melbourne locals Ross Stevenson and Russel Howcroft hold a mighty 20.6 per cent share of the city's breakfast audience, largely by avoiding insulting listeners' intelligence. Loading Radio 3AW is owned by Nine, which also owns The Age. Meanwhile, Australian Radio Network, which owns KIIS, is taking a mighty bath. Advertisers have fled and ARN has 'let go' 200 employees, who must be deliriously happy to have sacrificed their jobs to keep Kyle and Jackie O in their multimillion-dollar Sydney trophy homes. It's an old story. In the late 1980s, the Fairfax media group bought Melbourne HSV7 TV station and tried to meld it into its two other channels, in Sydney and Brisbane. It failed spectacularly because Melbourne audiences saw it, quite correctly, as a Sydney try-on. Soon after, Fairfax, having lost several millions of dollars on its Melbourne bet, sold its TV interests to dodgy Christopher Skase's Qintex Group. Skase later went bankrupt and fled Australia. Sydney shock jocks Stan Zemanek and Alan Jones both tried and failed to transfer their loudmouthed fame to Melbourne. Southern audiences just never warmed to Jones' dreadful braying, and the late Zemanek's flashiness lasted only a year on 3AW. Paul Keating earned scorn when, trying to broaden his appeal while launching his campaign to topple Bob Hawke as PM, he flew himself and several reporters to Melbourne to barrack for Collingwood at the MCG. No one was fooled that he had any serious interest in the Australian game, let alone Collingwood. Keating was also famed for his reported view that, 'If you're not living in Sydney, you're just camping out.' Even he knew it wouldn't fly among southern voters, and strategically disowned the comment during a visit to Melbourne in the lead-up to the 1996 election. Asked about the 'camping out' observation by broadcasters Dean Banks and Ross Stevenson on 3AW in October 1995, Keating declared: 'No, somebody falsely attributed those words to me. I love Melbourne, the garden city of Australia.' Six months later, Keating and his government were booted out and he retired to his beloved Sydney. Even Sydney's criminal milieu could not cut it in Melbourne. My colleague John Silvester relates the amusing story of Sydney crook Stan 'The Man' Smith's abortive attempt to expand his criminal pursuits into Melbourne decades ago. Loading 'When he arrived at Tullamarine airport, waiting police miraculously found a matchbox full of hashish in the top outside jacket pocket – usually only used to display a decorative handkerchief,' Silvester wrote. 'Smith is said to have cried out, 'I'm being fitted up', no doubt a reference to his dapper, tailor-made suit. When he returned home (after serving one year), he vowed to never return to Melbourne because 'the cops run red-hot down there'.' The fact that Melburnians have rarely bought Sydneysiders' pretensions was long attributed to Melbourne wearing a chip on its shoulder because Sydney was the first city established in Australia, and was blessed with greater natural beauty. A friend has a more nuanced view. Melbourne, she proposes, has always had to try harder to build itself a beating heart because it was not blessed with Sydney's astonishing natural loveliness. How could Melbourne and its Yarra and its tame bay compete with Sydney's glorious ocean beaches, the great sweep of its harbour, its cliffs and river gorges and the Blue Mountains hovering away to the west? The answer, of course, was to get serious and accomplished. About food, conversation, architecture, education and sport, for starters. Sydneysiders could afford to play in the sun and the surf and merrily flaunt their wealth. Melburnians hunkered beneath often leaden skies and worked at building a relatively sophisticated, relatively civil society, replete with marvellous restaurants and the nation's oldest and most visited art gallery, named (immodestly) the National Gallery of Victoria. The naked flaunting of wealth, though increasingly common, remains a bit embarrassing in Melbourne, where it is still sport to take the piss out of ourselves. And when vulgarians like Kyle Sandilands try to shoulder their way in, scorning the idea of taking a ride on a tram or choosing a footy team ('we're not gonna march into town and try all this hokey local rubbish', Sandilands spat during a radio interview a couple of months ago), Melburnians turn off, knowing imported coarseness is just not worth their while. And anyway, it's enjoyable – if a bit smug – to make a big-mouthed Sydneysider squirm.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
What's worse than a broken bone? A playground that plays it too safe
James Bond creator Ian Fleming famously named one of his most notorious villains after the modernist architect Erno Goldfinger. For critics disdainful of Brutalist social housing, this was convenient casting. They saw the creators of these pared-back, concrete structures as criminally responsible for the social ills – and shredded elbows – that befell residents in housing projects such as Goldfinger's Balfron Tower in London and Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith's Park Hill Estate in Sheffield. 'Surrounding the Balfron Tower was this series of windswept concrete walkways and this quite weird concrete playground,' says Australian artist Simon Terrill, who had a residency in Balfron Tower. 'If you fall over you lose the skin off your knee or your elbow.' Yet, like many defenders of Brutalist architecture, Terrill recognised 'a distinction between the exterior, which was quite bleak, and the interior, which was completely amazing'. Working with British architecture collective Assemble, Terrill created the Brutalist Playground, an interactive installation series that recast three rough-textured concrete playgrounds in pastel-coloured foam. 'Remaking those objects at one-to-one scale in foam gives an opportunity to revisit those utopian ideas and reflect on our changing relationship with ideas of risk and agency and what play means,' says Terrill. Their foam version of Park Hill Estate's playground features in the latest incarnation of the international touring exhibition The Playground Project. Since 2013, the exhibition has travelled to eight countries, from the US to Russia and Ireland to Switzerland, adding regional examples with each incarnation. Travelling to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, it is showing at Incinerator Gallery in Aberfeldie, which is housed in a disused incinerator designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony in 1929. Curated by Swiss urban planner Gabriela Burkhalter, the exhibition is a fascinating social history incorporating early childhood development, psychology, architecture, urban planning, landscape design and art. The Incinerator's Jade Niklai commissioned local content including BoardGrove Architects for the exhibition design and a new exterior playground called Ringtales. Visitors wend in and out of the various colourful floors and stairwells of the building, which itself feels like a playground writ large. Burkhalter's playground story is essentially a response to industrialisation, urban migration and density pressures. Equally it pulses with an adrenaline rush of risk. The show peels back the layers of protective bubble wrap, revealing 19th-century qualms about potentially contaminated sand gardens – ironic given children worked in dangerous factories – to legitimate safety concerns over the so-called 'junk' or adventure playgrounds pioneered in Europe in the 1940s. Junk playgrounds contained loose elements – building and scrap materials, natural elements and tools – that kids controlled themselves, sharing and negotiating with each other. English landscape architect Marjory Allen, who imported them to Britain, the US and Japan, declared: 'Better a broken bone than a broken spirit.' This plucky ethos suited a postwar generation that grew up scampering over London bomb sites. The Blitz spirit transferred nicely to the relatively safe terrain of the junk/adventure playground. The adventure playground movement spawned regional examples worldwide. Well-loved local versions sprang up in St Kilda, Fitzroy and The Venny in Kensington. As The Venny's honorary principal, David Kutcher, explained in the first of a series of accompanying talks for the exhibition: 'The risk of any loss through physical injury is actually low. Children require exposure to setbacks, failures, shocks and stumbles in order to develop strength and self-reliance and resilience. The road to resilience is paved with risk.' As modernism took hold in the 1950s and '60s, industrialisation infiltrated the playground. Concrete was one response. Steel and plastics were another. For Burkhalter, the Swiss-designed modular play sculpture the Lozziwurm from 1972 is emblematic of the new industrial materials. It also prompts one of the key forms of socialisation – negotiating with others. There is no one way to travel through the worm. The idea is that kids sort it out. Loading Risk aversion reached its apotheosis in the 1970s in the US. 'It made sense at the beginning because playgrounds were so badly maintained that there were a lot of accidents,' says Burkhalter. Today, while all manner of regulations govern community facilities, there is also recognition that safety needn't hamper creative play and risk-taking. Risk is built into artist Mike Hewson's controversial Southbank playground Rocks on Wheels. Its ad hoc charm – part Heath Robinson, part Wile E. Coyote – looks set to detonate at any time. Its teetery quality encourages risk and creativity as the playground itself looks like it's been built by a child. Artists feature prominently in the exhibition. Burkhalter's initial interest in playgrounds was inspired by the heroic dedication of Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. For more than 30 years, from 1933 to 1966, Noguchi planned a range of playgrounds, from landscapes to sculptural equipment. Most went unrealised. He once recalled pitching his Play Mountain to Robert Moses, New York's imperious city planner, who 'just laughed his head off and more or less threw us out'. Among Burkhalter's own urban planning colleagues, the reaction to the playground project was almost as dismissive as Moses. 'Playgrounds were considered small and not very prestigious,' she says. And this despite the outsized influence of Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, who said that 'play is the work of childhood'. Burkhalter remained undaunted: 'I understood that the people who were active in these fields had visions about design, society, childhood. That fascinated me.' Terrill is one of three Australian artists who feature in the Melbourne show. Trawlwoolway multidisciplinary artist Edwina Green won the competition to design a First Nations playable public art sculpture. Her abstracted oyster honours the cultural significance of the Maribyrnong River and 'invites children to play, imagine, and connect with Country', she says. Artist Emily Floyd and designer Mary Featherston literally bring the politics of play and community cooperation to the table. The pair's Round Table includes a child-height table and chairs; each of its elements – day care, infant health, kindergarten – is a seat at the table. Indeed the exhibition highlights that playgrounds aren't just about children. Professor Mel Dodd, dean of art, design and architecture at Monash University, says: 'The health and wellbeing of families in smaller, increasingly denser environments relies on public places that you not only can safely bring your child to play, but also socialise yourself. Amenity of that nature is absolutely critical.' Playgrounds also offer citywide lessons. 'The design of the public realm can be playful for adults as well as children,' says Dodd. 'It's definitely the case that playfulness aids health and wellbeing. We need our public environments to look fantastic, to look exciting.'
The Age
3 hours ago
- The Age
What's worse than a broken bone? A playground that plays it too safe
James Bond creator Ian Fleming famously named one of his most notorious villains after the modernist architect Erno Goldfinger. For critics disdainful of Brutalist social housing, this was convenient casting. They saw the creators of these pared-back, concrete structures as criminally responsible for the social ills – and shredded elbows – that befell residents in housing projects such as Goldfinger's Balfron Tower in London and Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith's Park Hill Estate in Sheffield. 'Surrounding the Balfron Tower was this series of windswept concrete walkways and this quite weird concrete playground,' says Australian artist Simon Terrill, who had a residency in Balfron Tower. 'If you fall over you lose the skin off your knee or your elbow.' Yet, like many defenders of Brutalist architecture, Terrill recognised 'a distinction between the exterior, which was quite bleak, and the interior, which was completely amazing'. Working with British architecture collective Assemble, Terrill created the Brutalist Playground, an interactive installation series that recast three rough-textured concrete playgrounds in pastel-coloured foam. 'Remaking those objects at one-to-one scale in foam gives an opportunity to revisit those utopian ideas and reflect on our changing relationship with ideas of risk and agency and what play means,' says Terrill. Their foam version of Park Hill Estate's playground features in the latest incarnation of the international touring exhibition The Playground Project. Since 2013, the exhibition has travelled to eight countries, from the US to Russia and Ireland to Switzerland, adding regional examples with each incarnation. Travelling to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, it is showing at Incinerator Gallery in Aberfeldie, which is housed in a disused incinerator designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony in 1929. Curated by Swiss urban planner Gabriela Burkhalter, the exhibition is a fascinating social history incorporating early childhood development, psychology, architecture, urban planning, landscape design and art. The Incinerator's Jade Niklai commissioned local content including BoardGrove Architects for the exhibition design and a new exterior playground called Ringtales. Visitors wend in and out of the various colourful floors and stairwells of the building, which itself feels like a playground writ large. Burkhalter's playground story is essentially a response to industrialisation, urban migration and density pressures. Equally it pulses with an adrenaline rush of risk. The show peels back the layers of protective bubble wrap, revealing 19th-century qualms about potentially contaminated sand gardens – ironic given children worked in dangerous factories – to legitimate safety concerns over the so-called 'junk' or adventure playgrounds pioneered in Europe in the 1940s. Junk playgrounds contained loose elements – building and scrap materials, natural elements and tools – that kids controlled themselves, sharing and negotiating with each other. English landscape architect Marjory Allen, who imported them to Britain, the US and Japan, declared: 'Better a broken bone than a broken spirit.' This plucky ethos suited a postwar generation that grew up scampering over London bomb sites. The Blitz spirit transferred nicely to the relatively safe terrain of the junk/adventure playground. The adventure playground movement spawned regional examples worldwide. Well-loved local versions sprang up in St Kilda, Fitzroy and The Venny in Kensington. As The Venny's honorary principal, David Kutcher, explained in the first of a series of accompanying talks for the exhibition: 'The risk of any loss through physical injury is actually low. Children require exposure to setbacks, failures, shocks and stumbles in order to develop strength and self-reliance and resilience. The road to resilience is paved with risk.' As modernism took hold in the 1950s and '60s, industrialisation infiltrated the playground. Concrete was one response. Steel and plastics were another. For Burkhalter, the Swiss-designed modular play sculpture the Lozziwurm from 1972 is emblematic of the new industrial materials. It also prompts one of the key forms of socialisation – negotiating with others. There is no one way to travel through the worm. The idea is that kids sort it out. Loading Risk aversion reached its apotheosis in the 1970s in the US. 'It made sense at the beginning because playgrounds were so badly maintained that there were a lot of accidents,' says Burkhalter. Today, while all manner of regulations govern community facilities, there is also recognition that safety needn't hamper creative play and risk-taking. Risk is built into artist Mike Hewson's controversial Southbank playground Rocks on Wheels. Its ad hoc charm – part Heath Robinson, part Wile E. Coyote – looks set to detonate at any time. Its teetery quality encourages risk and creativity as the playground itself looks like it's been built by a child. Artists feature prominently in the exhibition. Burkhalter's initial interest in playgrounds was inspired by the heroic dedication of Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi. For more than 30 years, from 1933 to 1966, Noguchi planned a range of playgrounds, from landscapes to sculptural equipment. Most went unrealised. He once recalled pitching his Play Mountain to Robert Moses, New York's imperious city planner, who 'just laughed his head off and more or less threw us out'. Among Burkhalter's own urban planning colleagues, the reaction to the playground project was almost as dismissive as Moses. 'Playgrounds were considered small and not very prestigious,' she says. And this despite the outsized influence of Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, who said that 'play is the work of childhood'. Burkhalter remained undaunted: 'I understood that the people who were active in these fields had visions about design, society, childhood. That fascinated me.' Terrill is one of three Australian artists who feature in the Melbourne show. Trawlwoolway multidisciplinary artist Edwina Green won the competition to design a First Nations playable public art sculpture. Her abstracted oyster honours the cultural significance of the Maribyrnong River and 'invites children to play, imagine, and connect with Country', she says. Artist Emily Floyd and designer Mary Featherston literally bring the politics of play and community cooperation to the table. The pair's Round Table includes a child-height table and chairs; each of its elements – day care, infant health, kindergarten – is a seat at the table. Indeed the exhibition highlights that playgrounds aren't just about children. Professor Mel Dodd, dean of art, design and architecture at Monash University, says: 'The health and wellbeing of families in smaller, increasingly denser environments relies on public places that you not only can safely bring your child to play, but also socialise yourself. Amenity of that nature is absolutely critical.' Playgrounds also offer citywide lessons. 'The design of the public realm can be playful for adults as well as children,' says Dodd. 'It's definitely the case that playfulness aids health and wellbeing. We need our public environments to look fantastic, to look exciting.'
