Chefs, Restaurateurs

Over three decades as waiter, manager and restaurant owner, Chris Young has become one of Australia’s most respected front-of-house professionals, a mentor to many, an inspiration to a great many more. He has received the top service gongs at both the Good Food Guide awards and the Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Awards, and the style of service he developed over years working with the late Jeremy Strode, with Jacques Reymond, with Ronnie Di Stasio and now with Andrew McConnell has come to inform the flavour of Melbourne hospitality. He can read a table, work a room, solve a problem, dial down a conflagration, dial up the vibe, all without breaking a sweat. Both warm and precise, familiar and discreet, he’s the waiter’s waiter, and a diner’s dream. "If there can ever be one constant in Melbourne hospitality, may it always be Chris Young," says judge Dan Sims. "He doesn’t just make you feel welcome upon arrival, he makes you smile and isn’t that just a bloody wonderful thing?"

“Chef, restaurateur, hospitality professional”: Nagesh Seethiah has worn all three of those hats, sometimes simultaneously, and he did so all before he turned 30, opening Manzé in North Melbourne. No other restaurant in Australia does food like this, putting Mauritius front and centre, but using prime small-farmer produce and interesting artisanal wines to tell the story. But no other restaurant in Australia does hospitality quite like Manzé either. “It’s an unusual proposition in that it is a profound expression of Nagesh’s life, his heritage and his interests,” says MFWF creative director Pat Nourse, “yet somehow he has always made it a platform and a place that has elevated and amplified a remarkable breadth of other voices”. It's also a big vibe, and always, always packed with flavour and good times, and we expect his new bar, Boire, to do it all again in spades.