Mark your calendar: The Age Good Food Guide 2026 Young Chef of the Year finalists – from venues such as Brae and Barragunda – will cook together at a special dinner next month celebrating their different styles.
Each year, The Age Good Food Guide editors and a panel of industry experts convene to uncover a new pool of rising kitchen talent. Now in its third decade, the Young Chef of the Year Award, presented by Smeg, has been awarded to some of the industry’s brightest stars, including Andrew McConnell (Cumulus Inc, Gimlet, Supernormal) and Adam D’Sylva (Decca, ex-Tonka, Coda).
This year’s finalists range from a pastry chef with experience in a Michelin-starred French restaurant to a chef who’s made it through to the final round three years’ running.
“This crop of young chefs is nothing short of extraordinary: an inspired cohort of trailblazers who know exactly why they do what they do, and who do it to a rare standard,” Good Food Guide co-editor Frank Sweet says.
“Humble, hungry, guided by sound ethics, they are the people chefs want in their kitchens, and they’re cooking the food diners will want on their plates.”
The five finalists were selected from a wide group of applicants, all aged under 30, who shared with Good Food what drives them, who inspires them, their career highlights, and the greatest challenges young Australian chefs face in today’s restaurant climate.
The prize – which includes Smeg appliances and professional mentoring – will be given to one standout chef from the five talented finalists at the Good Food Guide 2026 Awards on Monday, October 27, at Melbourne’s Timber Yard.
Get to know the young chefs to watch in 2026.
Asela Uduwara Arachchi, Many Little Bar & Dining
From cutting his teeth back home in Sri Lanka at a leading seafood restaurant to now working under chef Gayan Pieris at hatted Red Hill diner Many Little, Asela Uduwara Arachchi takes pride in knowing that each dish he plates brings his heritage to the fore.
“Working at Many Little gave me real confidence to re-create those memories that I had from my childhood, and make them into plates in a fine-dining context,” he says.
Arachchi’s passion for sharing his cooking with others stems from his mother, whom he remembers preparing dishes such as kiribath, a Sri Lankan milk rice sweet, and various curries, before delivering them to friends and family to try.
‘Humble, hungry, guided by sound ethics, they are the people chefs want in their kitchens, and they’re cooking the food diners will want on their plates.’
Frank Sweet, Good Food Guide co-editor
When it comes to Sri Lankan fine dining in Australia, he reckons we’ve hardly scratched the surface. This is what excites and drives the young chef.
“When you speak about Sri Lankan food … it’s [dishes such as] cheap eats like rice and curry from a small joint,” he says. “But there’s a lot more Sri Lanka can offer in terms of food. [It was] colonised by the Portuguese, the Dutch and the English, so they have left a little bit of influence in the spices. There are still direct descendants of those people living in Sri Lanka, and their way of cooking the same curry could be different in different households.
“It’s really exciting, and there’s a lot more Sri Lankan cuisine that people are yet to discover … I think I’m here to do it.”
Jack Huxtable, Amaru
You’d think working as a senior chef at one of Melbourne’s most prestigious restaurants – three-hatted Amaru – would place a young chef like Jack Huxtable under immense pressure. On the contrary, Huxtable’s mentors thus far have nurtured his passion and helped him build resilience in an industry that can intimidate young kitchen staff. So how can early-career chefs learn to look after themselves in such a high-stress environment?
“I believe there’s no such thing as a bad student; only a bad teacher,” Huxtable says. “If [senior kitchen staff] are pushing them into staying at work when they’re sick, or bollocking them when they’re not ready for service … then young chefs leave the industry. And if they don’t come back, there’s not going to be an industry.”
This is why he lives by the philosophy that a kitchen is a platform for young chefs to make mistakes. “If you can’t make mistakes, you’re not going to learn.”
Working under some of South Australia’s top chefs – including Brendan Wessels at both The d’Arenberg Cube and Adelaide’s Aurora; Fabian Lehmann at Maxwell Wines; and Restaurant Botanic’s Justin James – introduced him to the other skills needed to hone his craft, including how to forage, enhance flavour and appreciate native ingredients.
Huxtable hopes to take these skills and mentor the next generation of chefs.
“I have a beautiful backing already, so it’s now my turn to teach what I know,” he says. “They are my priority.”
Laura Skvor, Barragunda Dining
From high-end restaurants in France and fine dining in the UK to now leading the pastry team at the recently two-hatted Barragunda at Cape Schanck, Laura Skvor’s resume is seriously impressive. But her experiences cooking in Europe went beyond learning valuable culinary skills. They helped form her core values as a young chef – values that now feed into Barragunda’s renowned farm-to-table philosophy.
“Food doesn’t belong to anyone, and when you start privatising food systems, that’s when we get to murky waters,” she says. “One thing I love is that [ingredients] not only hold the stories of the people who grew them for thousands of years, but also hold the flavours of times that we don’t see now.”
Working at a venue with a regenerative philosophy that uses plants and animals in their entirety is something Skvor finds inspiring.
“To work with farmers and influence farmers to be better at what they’re doing … I think those relationships are so important for creating a better future,” she says.
Skvor kicked off her career on the pans at some of Europe’s most sought-after fine diners – including La Marine in France and La Dame de Pic in England – before returning to France in 2023 to study pastry. It’s this breadth of experience that shaped her understanding of the industry as a whole.
“When I did move on [to working with pastry], I already had a really high level of understanding of how kitchens work: that dedication, that ambition and also that perseverance through trying times,” she says. “[Kitchens are] not easy, but you learn so much so fast.”
Viveik Vinoharan, ex-Lilac Wine
He’s worked at restaurants across Sydney, regional Victoria and New South Wales, and even did a pre-pandemic stint in Japan. But working at Cremorne’s Lilac Wine for two years enabled Viveik Vinoharan to truly champion the flavours of his Sri Lankan heritage – and place him as a Young Chef of the Year finalist for three consecutive years.
It’s not hard to replicate the essence of Sri Lankan cooking, though, he says. It’s all in the spices, and you just need to know how best to use them – quality over quantity.
“I use a lot of spices and a lot of coconut,” Vinoharan says. “But not every [dish] needs to have 20 different spices in there. You can make a good blend out of just six, for example.”
Having stepped away from Lilac Wine in March, the ambitious chef is now focusing on personal projects and pop-ups. These new ventures allow him to refine his creative voice and continue to express his ideas by marrying the unique tastes of Sri Lanka with quality Australian ingredients from sustainable farms.
“My cooking style essentially gives Victorian or Australian produce a bit of a twist because it’s something that people haven’t tried or haven’t cooked in the past,” he says.
Angela Prajogo, Brae
The allure of becoming a chef is understandable in 2025 – particularly if you’ve grown accustomed to the glitz and glamour of reality-TV cooking shows, or seeing private chefs film tutorials in million-dollar homes on TikTok. It’s this stereotype of a flashy career that 23-year-old chef Angela Prajogo hopes to change, so that young chefs like herself remain in the industry.
“As much as it’s amazing that we’re getting more people into the industry and having them excited about being a chef, it also results in them leaving the industry sooner … [because] their expectations are not at all what the reality is,” she says.
“Shows like Chef’s Table are a really positive representation of what it means to be a chef because it’s really, really hard work, and it’s not just waking up in the morning and having time to make TikToks.”
It’s that readiness to work hard and a strong dose of perseverance that’s landed Prajogo her dream role as a chef at three-hatted restaurant Brae in western Victoria. Over nearly two years at the fine diner, she’s come into her own while also experimenting with flavours that allow her Indonesian heritage to shine.
“Indonesian food is what I started with because of my mum’s cooking, and I think I lost that a little bit growing up in Australia,” she says. “But I’m reclaiming it, and I’m rediscovering that I can be proud of both cultures. I really like tying the two together and showing the roots of my love for cooking.”
Join Stokehouse executive chef Jason Staudt, a member of the 2026 Young Chef of the Year judging panel, for an evening showcasing the next generation of culinary talent.
The dinner – at Stokehouse Pasta & Bar on Monday, October 20, from 6.30pm – is $150 a head, which includes sparkling wine on arrival, followed by a five-course dinner designed by the five finalists for The Age Good Food Guide Young Chef of the Year, presented by Smeg.
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Emily Holgate – Emily is the Assistant Producer for the Good Food App at The Age. She previously wrote for the likes of Broadsheet and Urban List.Connect via email.
