Brisbane's Best Chefs and Pizza Makers Are About to Go Head-to-Head — Here's What's at Stake

You won't find tickets to this one — it's a trade show, not a festival. But two live competitions happening inside it are worth knowing about regardless, because they'll quietly decide who Queensland's best chef and best pizza maker are for the year, and the names attached to it are ones Brisbane diners will actually recognise.

Food & Hospitality Queensland (FHQ) takes over the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre on 12–13 October, with more than 6,500 industry professionals — chefs, cafe owners, hospitality operators, suppliers — expected through the doors. It's the state's major trade event for the sector, not a consumer show, but tucked inside two days of industry networking are two genuine, high-stakes cook-offs, plus a speaker line-up drawn straight from Brisbane's own kitchens.

The Queensland Professional Chef of the Year puts the state's top chefs in front of a mystery box of ingredients and a hard time limit, live on the show floor. Whatever they produce under that pressure is what gets judged. The winner takes the title, $8,000 in cash, and a spot representing Queensland at the Australian Professional Chef of the Year in 2027. Judging it is Jamie Gannon, the competition's Culinary Director and Head Judge.

The Queensland Pizza Championships runs the same live, head-to-head format for the state's pizzaiolos, split across Best Classic and Best Creative categories. The overall Queensland Pizza Chef of the Year earns their own trip to the Australian Pizza Championships in 2027.

Alongside the competitions, the show's Chef's Table stage has a genuinely local speaker line-up: Jenna Muhor of Paddock Bakery, Daniel Semrani of Gigi's Pizzeria, and Sarah Baldwin, owner and head chef of Joy Restaurant, are all confirmed to appear — real people running real Brisbane kitchens, talking through the thinking behind their food rather than just competing for a title.

Neither the competitions nor the stages are open to the public to watch in the way a festival might be — FHQ is squarely a trade event, built for people who "serve it, sell it, stock it, or supply it," as the organisers put it. But the result still matters well beyond the show floor: these are the chefs and pizza makers actually running Brisbane's kitchens, and a state title — or a headline speaking slot — is the kind of thing that ends up on a restaurant's window sticker for years afterward.

Winners will be announced across the two-day event, 12–13 October.