Crimson-red Sichuan soups, dried and fried catfish, brittle like the best potato chips, and noodle soups with as much depth of flavour as they have history.

This is the food of Australia's neighbourhood restaurants, where you can find almost any cuisine in the world and just as many different people cooking it.

But flip through the pages of a high-end restaurant guide or book into one of Australia's award-winning restaurants and you're likely to see a very different image.

Our top kitchens and fine diners may rely on a backbone of chefs and kitchen hands from diverse backgrounds, but the decision makers, the owners and the big-name chefs are most often white. And the food they're making is contemporary Australian and European, not Asian.

Why are award-winning chefs nearly all white?

Every year the Gourmet Traveller and The Good Food Guide, two of Australia's most influential food publications, announce a chef of the year. The awards recognise creativity, technique and those individuals pushing the boundaries of their industry.

Since 2013, every winner has been white. It's a similar story in Australia's restaurant awards. Most restaurants awarded a hat by the Good Food Guide or a star by Gourmet Traveller have white head chefs and white owners.

Even among the Asian restaurants that received hats in the Good Food Guide released this month, 48 per cent had white head chefs and 60 per cent had white owners.

If you take out Japanese restaurants — by far the most accepted Asian cuisine in the fine-dining circuit — it's 71 per cent white owners and 56 per cent white chefs.

Bacon Poomvorapon at work in Sydney fusion cafe Brainwave. ( ABC News: Matthew Abbott )

All of Asia no match for Italy

All 13 Asian cuisines in the GT and GFG barely outnumber the listings from one country — Italy. And when it comes to awards, Italy wins with more awards than the entire continent of Asia (the best represented cuisine in both guides is Contemporary or Modern Australian).

Even among Asian cuisines there's a hierarchy. Of the 150 Asian restaurants listed in both guides, only 11 are subcontinental cuisines, whereas almost a third are Japanese.

But when you change the criteria from best eats to cheap eats, Asian cuisines dominate. Time Out Sydney's 50 Best Cheap Eats and the GFG's Cheap Eats pages are a smorgasbord of dumplings, curries, Vietnamese rolls and noodles. Out of all 100 restaurants in both guides, there's only five venues that serve European food — only two serve pasta.

White leadership, diverse labour

Walk into any expensive restaurant in metropolitan Australia and you're likely to see a team of junior chefs and kitchen hands with a diverse range of cultural backgrounds and languages.

"Whether it's an Asian kitchen, a European kitchen or whatever, I would say at least 50 per cent of brigades in Sydney are Asian-Australian or Asian [migrants]," says Dan Hong, executive chef of Mr Wong and Ms.G's.

Dan Hong is executive chef of Mr Wong and Ms.G's. ( Supplied: Merivale )

"It's a little bit of a stereotype but you get a lot of, for example, East Asians working in the kitchen, you get sub-continental Asians doing pots and pans and cleaning stuff," says Jonathan Bayad, the owner of Rey's Place, a modern Filipino restaurant in inner Sydney.

"These people get the lower end of the job [although] a couple make it up to higher levels within the kitchen."

Our kitchens are a vibrant mix of ethnicities, so why is there a lack of diversity in ownership, in leadership and in the kinds of restaurants winning accolades?

Like any discussion about race and representation, the answer is complicated.

Asia is still exotic

University of Sydney academic Dr Jane Chi Hyun Park says non-western culinary traditions are often seen as exotic in white colonial nations like Australia.

Dr Jane Chi Hyun Park. ( Supplied )

She says there's a double standard between what's viewed as "art" and what's viewed as just "culture". Women making food in a village in Sri Lanka is "culture", while Marco Pierre White's creations are "art".

"In this binary, 'art' is usually seen as the province of educated white men (and sometimes women) and 'culture' that of non-white, non-western people," says Dr Park.

"This is a false binary, but the food media perpetuates it."

So where does that leave Asian-Australians? If they want critical acclaim they have to make their food palatable and marketable to a Western audience — they need to make it cool.

"Asian diasporic chefs like Kylie Kwong or David Chang need first to be trained in Western, usually French cuisines, then have to demonstrate their artistry in doing something different, fusion, with their heritage, culture.

"They have to make their heritage cool for Western consumers. This is different of course, for Asian chefs in Asia.

"The coolness element is linked to class capital. You can't just serve hipsters kimchi in its raw form — you need to put it in dude food," says Dr Park.

Kylie Kwong blends Asian flavours with Australian ingredients.

Why is French the fine dining standard?

French is the cuisine of cooking schools and, regardless of the cultural background of the chef, it usually ends up being the technical basis of most high-end restaurant food.

Dr Nancy Lee, a writer and food researcher, says it's a Eurocentric way of understanding food that finds its way into food criticism.

"It follows on that the people who write about [food] also relate to that [Eurocentric] school of thinking a lot more; it is more than likely a more accessible framework for understanding professional 'cooking', and that's why we value that perspective."

This cultural hierarchy doesn't just affect how we think about ingredients and taste, but the entire eating experience — whether things are served in courses, degustations or through banquet-style eating and share plates. It could be something as simple as how food is presented on the plate. A good food experience is subjective, and a European understanding of dining is only one perspective.

Wok cooking requires a level of craft sometimes overlooked by food media. ( ABC News: Matthew Abbott )

Myffy Rigby, editor of the Good Food Guide, says she doesn't believe the guide's criteria reflects a European understanding of dining.

"The Good Food Guide's only criteria is on the label: Good Food," she wrote in a statement.

French technique isn't the only marker of a good chef of course — any accomplished wok chef will tell you about the technical demands of their craft.

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Frank Shek, the head chef at Sydney's China Doll, is one of them.

"We buy the highest quality produce, we use many different ingredients, there's a lot of craft and cultural history behind what we do. More so than a lot of Western food. That [cultural hierarchy] is a real sticking point, and affects food," he says.

Is food writing too white?

The Australian food media continues to be dominated by white people. Out of the 111 listed GFG and GT reviewers, an estimated 80 per cent or more are white.

All the senior positions — head reviewers at the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Australian, New York Times Australia and Delicious Magazine — are held by white people.

"My criteria for writers is the ability to write, taste and reflect on their experience in a restaurant — the colour of their skin or their cultural background doesn't come into it," Rigby says.

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In the US, there's more criticism around the whiteness of food media.

Writing in the LA Weekly, Besha Rodell (currently the New York Times Australia reviewer) explains why food media is dominated by white people and argues that a diverse team makes for more diverse stories and ideas.

American writer Clarissa Wei argues that those with ethnic backgrounds are being denied a chance to tell their own stories, which is essential for preventing cultural stereotyping.

One price for pad Thai, another for pasta

The other issue in all of this, is us, the dining public. What prices are we willing to pay for pad Thai, ramen or a plate of dumplings? All the chefs interviewed acknowledged a cultural hierarchy that makes noodles cheap and pasta expensive.

"Why would people pay $30 for cacio e pepe, which is really just pasta, black pepper and cheese, but they won't pay more than $10 for three amazingly made har gau or xiao long bao, which probably require a whole lot more skill than making pasta?" asks Dan Hong.

Narada Kudinar, co-owner of Sydney's Yan, sees this play out in his Chinese-style smokehouse.

"We get people who walk into the restaurant, after Googling we are the top-rated Asian restaurant in the area and walking out after seeing the menu prices."

Mr Bayad feels the same frustration running his inner-Sydney Filipino restaurant.

"Customers frequently come in claiming they ate the same food for 43 cents at a street market in the Philippines.

"I deal with that fairly often here and it's an old conversation — I'm just sick of it. The production [of food] here is completely different."

It's an expectation rooted in mainstream experiences of Asian food — from chicken chow mein in suburban Chinese takeaway restaurants with the lucky cat figurines to $1 pad Thai on Bangkok streets.

Even those with Asian heritage can hold the same prejudices. "The easy stereotypes are very ingrained — the idea of yum cha being a 'hangover food' and Chinese being a 'quick, cheap option' — that is ingrained in me as well," says Dr Lee.

Bacon Poomvorapon has worked in top Asian kitchens and now cooks fusion food at Brainwave Cafe. ( ABC News: Matthew Abbott )

Is change inevitable?

"Everyone in Australia is growing up with an Asian-Australian tongue," says Bacon Poomvorapon, a chef at Brainwave Cafe who formerly worked under David Thompson at Long Chim.

"When they go out they are eating more Asian food — they are getting used to it, growing up with more spicy flavours, more herbs, and less creamy textures. In the end, the Aussies who are being chefs would want their tongues used to that."

It's not just the flavours that will become more palatable but also our cultural differences.

"That's what's so fascinating about food," says Dr Park.

"Can tasting something different, can looking at the histories of what we eat and being more aware of the power dynamics behind food production and consumption — can all this help us become more culturally competent? It's a huge question."

And maybe it's a question best hashed out over a meal.