Mr Soroka said he received an email completely out of the blue recently to inform him that he was one of the nominees for the prestigious national awards.

“We got an email saying, ‘Congratulations, you’ve been nominated for the ABC Delicious awards’. I didn’t know anything about it but we looked a bit further and thought, wow!” he said.

Wow is about right with Australia’s top chefs and food critics sampling Eden Smokehouse Atlantic Salmon and Ocean Trout in two of three rounds before deciding they should go straight through to the finals in the From the Sea, Artisan category.

“If I had sardines I would have submitted those, but I’m still pinching myself,” Mr Soroka said. “The kudos to be critiqued by these chefs means that a lot of doors will hopefully open for us.”

Mr Soroka will travel to Brisbane next month for the presentation ceremony where he’ll find out whether he has won.

The MC for the ceremony is television celebrity chef Matt Preston, with fellow Australian culinary royalty in Maggie Beer, Cheong Liew, Philip Johnson, Alla Wolf-Tasker and Matt Moran the judges who will blind taste the products and decide the winner.

“I see we’re up against Brilliant Seafood who is also putting up Ocean Trout,” Mr Soroka said after the other finalists were revealed on Wednesday. “We call her the Trout Lady because she has very good products, but we’ve done all right against her in other awards so it’ll be interesting.”

The other awards were the swag of medals he received at the Sydney Royal Fine Food Show earlier this year, and they’re on top of several other state and regional awards.

“The Royal Agricultural Society awards we got are good state recognition, but the Delicious Awards gives us national exposure,” Mr Soroka said.