Restaurant & Catering’s Restaurateur of the Year!
Restaurant & Catering’s Restaurateur of the Year for 2007 is – tarantara – Maurice Terzini. Now this is interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that Maurice is, I’d reckon, the first Melbourne restaurateur to be an unqualified success in Sydney since Helen Spry opened the doors of Chez Oz in 1985, a restaurant which was, if you’ll pardon the expression, a bit of a flash in the pan, and epitomised the 80s era motto “nothing succeeds like excess”. Not so Terzini. Otto, his first outing, may have been the place to be seen, but it also offered damn good food and service.
I recently took my wife to Icebergs for a wedding anniversary and she said – not of the food, which was terrific – but of the room: “It’s elegant but it’s also relaxed – and not up itself.” That’s Maurice Terzini. One other Terzini story before listing some other winners. He once told me how he got rid of an obnoxious customer. “I went to the till, took out $200 and said please, go eat somewhere else. I don’t want you here.” That’s the classiest bounce I’ve ever heard.
Picture: Maurice Terzini at Bondi Icebergs
Other winners for 2007 were (and not a complete list by any means) Restaurant of the Year: Tetsuya’s. Asian Restaurant of the Year: Red Lantern: Formal Italian Restaurant of the Year: Icebergs. Local Restaurant of the Year: La Grande Bouffe. Greek Restaurant of the Year: Perama. Japanese Restaurant of the Year: Yoshii. And finally, Thai Restaurant of the Year: Arun Thai, our 1991 Bent Fork winner and still going strong. Congratulations all.
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