Top Sydney restaurant Marque is closing

After 17 years of cooking up culinary excellence, Mark best of Sydney’s fine dining precinct in Surry Hills, Marque, will close his restaurant's doors.

The boundary-breaking chef confirmed the news in a first person feature on Gourmet Traveller, filling foodies in on the reason why he’s decided to call last orders.

“Seventeen years is enough, I think… When you've spent most of that time pushing against current trends, it's tiring. I've come to the point where I'm happy to move on,” the 2010 Chef of the Year said.

June 30 marks the sad and final day of service at the three-hatted restaurant, with Best plating up his last suppers to 50 very lucky diners.

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The avant-garde venue has done Australia’s food scene proud, sitting on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list numerous times and winning Restaurant of the Year in 2011.

Reflecting on his body of contemporary French dishes, Best said, “I'm proud of them. They're mine. They hold up.”

Known for using the latest techniques and playing tricks on the eye that only the palate can reveal, you’d never know that Best only had six chefs doing everything behind Marque's kitchen curtains.

As a mentor to many, Best pushed his chefs to the edge, grasping any opportunity to release their hidden skills. “I saw that young chefs were coming through and saying, 'I don't do pastry', and I'd say, 'guess what - you're the new pastry chef'. And off they went. I wanted to push them to achieve their potential,” he said.

Believe it or not, Best never intended to be a chef at all, “Cooking professionally was a happy accident,” he admits.

At 25 he was still an electrician and still is an impressive portrait photographer to this day, with his photos proudly on show on his Instagram account.

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Despite closing Marque, this isn’t the end for Best, claiming he will still continue his more casual Sydney and Melbourne restaurant, Pei Modern, with hopes of opening more restaurants alike.

“Restaurants are still where I want to be. I have the Pei Moderns, successful vibrant restaurants in themselves that are very different to Marque, and I want to do other restaurants as well,” he says.

Whether he thinks the closure of Marque marks the end of the fine dining era, Best says definitely not.

“The idea that me closing Marque is somehow evidence of the death of fine dining is something I reject completely… I feel optimistic about the state of dining in Australia,” he said.

“I found something that I happened to be good at that people wanted to pay me money for, and for that I am tremendously grateful.”

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