Food Issue: Four top-shelf Hunter region chefs take five on making this year's delicious magazine top 100 list

"From the inspired farm-to-fork menu and subtly attentive staff to the luxurious, welcoming space, it's a virtuoso performance: fine dining at its best," the review says.

Quite a compliment for Rhoades-Brown and his team, who continue to set the standard for innovative Hunter Valley dining.

"I'm always proud of Muse Restaurant being included in these lists - proud that our guests, peers and reviewers respectively enjoy what we do," Rhoades-Brown says.

"There are a handful of state and national restaurant lists announced annually and, understandably, they carry a strong presence of new venues that are trending. So each time Muse Restaurant hits these lists at nearly 13 years old it makes me really grateful that people are still loving what we do."

Rhoades-Brown says his cooking creativity comes down to "talented local growers and producers, my chefs, our guests, my garden and me being happy in my job and life".

Having a well-oiled machine for a kitchen team also helps.

"We have a great core team - between myself, my head chef Mitchell Beswick and sous chef Jake Paterson we have clocked almost 30 years at Muse. That's a lot of time to set standards, set procedures and evolve and improve."

READ MORE: Muse 10 years on: Troy Rhoades-Brown's recipe for success

Rhoades-Brown's pumpkin patch even got a mention in the review.

"I have always loved my gardening. I managed a bumper heirloom pumpkin harvest this year in January, a couple of hundred kilos, in fact, all the weird and wonderful heirloom varieties," he says.

"The vege patch at the moment is full of brassicas, endive, broad beans, chard, nasturtium. Native raspberries are firing and chokos are finishing.

"This time of year is all about getting the jump on spring, though, so I'm busy getting all my seeds into trays and keeping them out of the cold. Cucumbers, tomatoes, shishitos, zucchinis, pumpkins, warm weather herbs and leaves are all getting potted."

EXP. was 52^nd on the delicious.100 list and described as an "intimate eatery ... small on space but big on heart and flavour ... it's a fun-loving, utterly unpretentious foodie experience that's well worth booking ahead to enjoy".

"It is a great feeling of acknowledgment for the team and I to know that the dining experience we try to create is recognised and thoroughly enjoyed," owner and head chef Fawkner says in response.

"All Emma and I want is a busy little restaurant with happy customers who keep coming back and staff who love and enjoy working with us. Receiving an accolade like this is the icing on the cake."

The restaurant seats 20, with room for up to 10 diners at the chefs bar where they can watch on as their dishes are prepared.

READ MORE: An appetite for dining excellence

"Our offering is currently six courses which is generally comprised of about 12 items," Fawkner says.

"Dinner is normally two to two-and-a-half hours, so there is always something happening between food, wine, unique serving utensils and so forth, making the experience fun and interactive.

"It feels a bit corny saying this, but produce and the seasons help us navigate new ideas and creations for the menu.

"The kitchen team bounce ideas and sometimes dishes will easily come together very harmoniously - other times they require more work and recipe testing and may also evolve week to week.

"Our 'Mandarin' dessert is a prime example. It was meant to showcase mandarin simply, which it does. We serve a whole mandarin hollowed out which was then filled with two components - over the past two weeks that has turned into eight components."

The popular Wickham restaurant placed 79^th on the list and was tagged "the place to be for a weekend lunch" in Newcastle "where diners can happily leave the heavy lifting to the experts and just enjoy being along for the ride".

"Things are going well. We've got a very good team; most have been there about a year now, which is monumental in hospitality," head chef Mansfield says.

READ MORE: Flotilla redefines urban dining in Newcastle

"We still do crazy hours each week but we decided this year to have a four-day working week. I'm still working on that one [laughs], but I feel good that the boys have three days off a week regardless of how busy we are. We did that mainly for staff retention, and to change the industry up a bit.

"Even though we're only doing four-day weeks, we're still doing 15 hours in those days.

"It's a very well-oiled machine and everyone knows their place and loves what they're doing, and this delicious.100 placing is recognition of that. This is recognition for the staff. It's why we do things the way we do; why we hold everything to a certain standard."

Creating and sustaining a friendly, nurturing work environment is important to Mansfield, who says he dealt with "kicking and screaming and punching" in overseas kitchens. He is also thankful he and his team are given the freedom to be creative in the kitchen.

READ MORE: Flotilla is re-opening at Wickham and it's the hottest ticket in town

"Right now we are all about how we can better utilise dishes. Figuring out what offcuts of things we can use," he says.

"We've got this beautiful Murray cod in at the moment and we are more excited about the belly than the actual fish itself. We want to do a potato scallop that's cooked in Murray cod fat, for instance. We're playing around with things like that.

"The inspiration comes off the back of not having the fear of restrictive bosses looking over you - they've given us free rein as long as we tick the boxes.

"We're still using things that we had to ferment or preserve from last September when we had to lock down. All of these stone fruit and berries that we bought, we are using a year later."

Humbug wine bar and restaurant opened on Newcastle's Hunter Street in February and for this reason alone is a surprise inclusion on the delicious.100 list. It squeezed in at number 96.

"When it comes to snacks, anchovies-on-toast is as ubiquitous as Kim Kardashian, but Portley elevates it, placing a salty Ortiz anchovy on an ethereally light Danish pastry, sandwiched by a rich parmesan custard," the review says.

It's been a big year for Portley, who won this year's Hunter Culinary Association Food Fight and welcomed his second child with wife Stephanie.

"There's been so much going on. I can't believe we got through it all, to be honest," the Humbug owner and head chef tells Weekender.

"I'm just at home at the moment with our three-month-old, trying to catch up with some bookwork while our other one's at daycare."

READ MORE: Expect a warm welcome at neighbourhood wine bar

Opening the restaurant was a dream for the couple, but one that was carefully considered.

"We've both been in the industry a long time. We knew that our goal was to open something up but it's taken a while to strip that vision down to something more concentrated," Portley says.

"Before we opened we were so nervous. We had poured everything we'd saved forever into an uncertain market in terms of the timing and the area.

"We kept the restaurant fairly bare and minimal because everything was done on a pretty tight budget, and we also wanted the space to be able to change and grow. If we wanted to we could fit more tables in, but that's not what we want right now.

"We always look around the place and see all the projects we would like to be doing - more art on the walls, more plants - there's a never-ending list.

"In terms of the kitchen, we kept it more or less the way it was - it's allowed us to see what is and isn't working, to learn how the space works before we make too many more decisions."

As it turns out, they were "pretty lucky" they opened Humbug when they did, says Portley. Making the delicious.100 list was just the icing on the cake.

"We're really surprised by it - it's not necessarily the company I see myself in," he says, laughing.

"We set out to create a place that we would like to eat at, multiple times a week if we had the time. There's always something new on the menu and it's pretty approachable and comforting as well as being fun and interesting.

"We just want people to come in and have a good time."

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