General News
20 July, 2023
Gold medal for onions
JUST Relishing is celebrating after winning a gold medal at the 2023 Melbourne Royal Australian Food Awards for their English Pub Pickled Onions.
JUST Relishing is celebrating after winning a gold medal at the 2023 Melbourne Royal Australian Food Awards for their English Pub Pickled Onions.
The Melbourne Royal Australian Food Awards offers Australian producers broad opportunities to leverage their success locally and internationally with Melbourne Royal’s national brand seal of quality.
Entrants have the opportunity to benchmark against set criteria; receive invaluable independent feedback from industry experts; and be rewarded for excellence.
Business co-owner Janine Kayler-Thomson said she’s seen the award logo on products in shops, and thought she’d look into it.
“We do a lot of markets around the area, and people have been telling us our preserves are so good,” she said.
“Everybody loves them, and it’s skyrocketed for pickled onions at the moment.
“We saw the awards and we saw there was a Sydney one, so we looked into that one. Then we found the Melbourne one, so we just followed through.
“We did the Warrnambool Show last year, and we wanted to enter them for the Warrnambool Show, but we didn’t get there in time and we missed out.”
Business co-owner Andrew Kayler-Thomson said they found out about their win last Thursday.
“I had a look online at the results and found out before they sent us the email to tell us,” he said.
“I knew about half an hour before they officially told us.
“We were fifth out of 52 in our section, and we got 96.5 out of 100.
“We got into the business about 18 months ago; it’s always been a dream of Janine’s to do relishing and pickling.”
Judges gave high praise to the pickled onions, which were posted on the Just Relishing Facebook page last Thursday.
The pair sell their pickles and preserves, including their prize-winning English Pub Pickled Onions, at monthly markets held in the area.
Some stalls in the Corangamite area also serve as retail outlets.
Andrew and Janine wanted to thank their customers for their support.
“We feel like we’ve got validation that we do have a good product, and we’re proud of the product,” they said.
