shaddock

NSW restaurants, cafes and caterers took the lion's share of awards at Monday night's Savour Australia Restaurant&Catering Australia Awards for Excellence.

And again it was Sydney's Quay restaurant that received top honours. The Circular Quay-based restaurant was named fine dining restaurant of the year, following similar awards from The Sydney Morning Herald and Gourmet Traveller earlier in the year. Says executive chef Peter Gilmore: "The Restaurant & Catering industry award tops off what has been a phenomenal year for us. We are thrilled and very humbled to have been recognised."

Meanwhile, Oscillate Wildly, in Sydney's Newtown, took the gong for best informal dining. The judging panel voted Pilu at Freshwater, near Sydney's Manly Beach, as the country's best Italian restaurant, while the award for best new restaurant also went to a Sydney establishment: Pendolino in the city centre's Strand Arcade.

Other states did get a look-in: Victoria's Lake House in Daylesford took out the best tourism restaurant award; best Indian went to Adelaide's Jasmin Indian Restaurant and best Chinese was awarded to Me Wah Restaurant in Hobart's Sandy Bay. Perth got a gong for best coffee shop-tea room for milkd, in North Perth.

The awards night also featured the launch of the industry's Green Table Australia initiative, aimed at encouraging the nation's more than 37,000 restaurants and caterers to cut their carbon emissions. www.savouraustralia.com.au; www.greentable.com.au.

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SYDNEY'S Storrier Hotel is no more. In name, anyway. The boutique art hotel in Potts Point, named after Australian artist Tim Storrier and part of a planned series of art hotels being developed by Melbourne's A Hotels Group, is being taken over by Quest Apartments on December 1. It will be renamed Quest Potts Point.

"We're not sure whether we'll be keeping Tim's artworks there," Quest chairman Paul Constantinou tells Food Detective. "But we don't see many other changes to the property." Constantinou says the hotel's restaurant, Red Belly, would continue under chef Martin Widjaja, and Quest hopes to "maintain staff levels" at the David Hicks-designed property.

Detective is told that A Hotels has divested itself of the Sydney property to concentrate on its Melbourne hotel developments. www.thestorrier.com.au.

IT spawned a romance between Australia star Nicole Kidman and country warbler Keith Urban in 2005. So here's hoping the next G'Day USA Australia Week festival will help muster some warm and fuzzy feelings towards Aussie wildlife of a different kind.

A $25,000-a-table benefit dinner hosted by Sydney chef Pete Evans as part of the annual event aims to raise funds to buy the 200,000ha Pungalina estate in the Gulf of Carpentaria, northern Australia, on which to create a private nature reserve.

Barramundi from the Northern Territory, Petuna ocean trout from Tasmania, beef from Queensland's Greg Norman Australian Prime and a selection of Tassie wines will feature on Evans's menu, to be presented to an audience of movers and shakers in the Starlight Roof of New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel on January 21.

The dinner will be held in partnership with the Australian Wildlife Conservancy and the US-based Wildlife Australian Fund Inc, and 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery will be a guest speaker.

Celebrity chef Luke Mangan will also be packing his whites and heading for the US between January 13-24 for the event, which promotes Australian food and wine, travel, film, arts, culture and fashion.

Mangan will host two gala dinners -- in Los Angeles on January 18 and in New York on January 23 -- using all Australian produce. www.australia-week.com.

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HOT on the heels of reports that London bookstores have been swamped with requests for volumes on how to prepare meals on a budget, Detective -- who needs to be fed at hourly intervals or things get ugly -- has taken action to ensure crucial supplies don't run out.

On a recent shopping expedition, she acquired, for the excellent price of $7.50, a copy of the 1935 Schauer Australian Fruit Preserving Recipe Book (Improved Edition) and set about gathering empty jars from the backs of cupboards in which to assemble an array of preserves, jams and chutneys.

Her thrifty plans went awry, however, about the time she had to start assembling ingredients. On the list were "two medium-sized shaddock". What the ... ? Mr Detective, excited by Detective's rare foray into the kitchen and eager to encourage it, got on the computer. Shaddock, it appears, is a NATO codename for a series of Soviet missiles. Full of iron then, which is nice. It's also, apparently, a pomelo.

Detective is still trawling local markets and delicatessens for a half-dozen ripe SPU-35V Redut Shaddocks, but she can report little luck so far.

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FIND of the week: Bungling Italian authorities in the town of Marino, south of Rome, accidentally sent wine surging through the city's plumbing and out of household taps instead of into a town fountain to mark the 2008 wine harvest.

Detective is praying for Sydney City Council to organise a similar water-into-wine miracle in her kitchen some time soon.

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DETECTIVE loves: That somebody, finally, has dared speak the unspeakable: other people's badly behaved children can ruin a perfectly good night out. In Britain, authors of The Good Pub Guide 2009 have been flooded with complaints from readers about children's unruly behaviour in pubs. Joint editor Fiona Stapley has told The Times: "People have finally snapped. Children are driving them mad."

Detective, who was recently treated to an evening at a local restaurant listening to a toddler on a neighbouring table rap the window with her mum's mobile phone (as mum watched and smiled indulgently) can only say "hear, hear".

DETECTIVE loathes: Christmas shopping. Too many people, too little time, never enough parking. So it's comforting to know that she can do all her gift buying from the comfort of her home, glass of pinot noir in hand. An excellent range of designer goodies for all the family which, at the touch of a button (and some credit card shenanigans), can be dispatched to one's home with a minimum of fuss from www.hardtofind.com.au.

Detective has not been able to tear herself away from the site's eat section and has already got her eye on some exquisite Mozi tea towels and mugs, a bamboo chopping board from Dandi and a range of Herbie's Spice Kits. As for what her family and friends are getting for Christmas, she has no idea.