Premium Content It wasn t easy for chefs and restaurants in 2020. The COVID-19 had a massive impact on the industry, with many eateries forced to close their doors or invent new ways to reach their customers. The judges of the Australian Good Food Guide s 2021 Chef Hat Awards recognised these challenges in naming the winners this week. Tumultuous, tenuous, terrifying are unsurprisingly some of the impassioned words used by this year s Chef Hat award-winners to describe the 12 months just gone, they said. The devastation caused by catastrophic fires and restrictions required to curb the spread of COVID-19 have left no restaurant unaffected, but the consequences have certainly been far more ruinous for some.