Food News

If you’re looking for an Australian-made cured sausage with the taste sensation that only lactic fermentation can provide, you’re in luck, writes Richard Cornish.

Market share
Farmers’ markets are flourishing and ripe for the picking, writes the chair of the Australian Farmers’ Markets Association, Jane Adams.

Innards and extremities, says Fergus Henderson, even more than other ingredients, need love and care and understanding – and the same could be said of producing a cookbook.

As Stephanie Alexander travels around the country, she learns of new ways to cook with okra, citrus peel, broad bean tops and even monkfish.

New brews
Cold-drip, pour-over, single-estate: Maya Kerthyasa decodes coffee in Australia circa 2012.

The first book from Attica chef Ben Shewry is part memoir, part manual and part manifesto, writes Michael Harden.

Fergus Henderson’s kitchens have been a mixed bunch, from the mad and bad to the lovely and loved.

Design smarts
What’s cooking in kitchen design? Tanya Buchanan explores 10 trends shaping our kitchens today, from dark, dramatic features to breezy outdoor entertaining.

Spring clean
Cerentha Harris, author of The Penguin Book of Keeping House, offers sound advice on kitchen tidiness.

Killer apps
Tanya Buchanan reveals the latest in major appliances, from pot-detecting cooktops to denim-clad fridges.

Magnus Nilsson, chef at cult restaurant Fäviken, has written a big-hearted book about his tiny eatery in the Swedish wilderness. Pat Nourse takes a first look.

The kitchen benchmark
As Brigitte Hafner eagerly anticipates her own home kitchen renovation, she considers the key elements that make up a cook’s ultimate workspace – including the kitchen sink.

Every day brings changes in Stephanie Alexander’s springtime garden – peach and nectarine blossom, and roses the colour of raspberries.

We’ve made our decisions and folded our napkins. Please raise your glass to the winners of the 2013 Australian Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Awards.

This list has been compiled using our star ratings, moderated by our state and national editors. Every restaurant listed in the guide should offer a winning dining experience; any that achieve a placement in the Top 100 represent another order of excellence again. [To check out all of our 2013 Restaurant Awards coverage, click here. […]

We award stars to restaurants which we have found to be genuinely and consistently exceptional in their food, wine and hospitality.

Kylie Kwong has become a champion of native foods, serving up dishes such as stir-fried yabbies with samphire at her Sydney diner Billy Kwong. It doesn’t get any more Australian-Chinese than this.

A restaurant’s choice in music sets a distinctive tone, and at Momofuku, the music is a particular feature. Chef and playlist-dictator David Chang explains why.

Peter Gilmore, Tetsuya Wakuda, Neil Perry and other top chefs discuss the challenges facing our restaurants today.

Taste makers
Neuromechanics aside, how do our five taste receptors transmit the phenomenal richness we experience as a meal? Neuroscientist and psychologist Jason Gallate explains.

Moveable feast
Foraged foods are enlivening plates at restaurants abroad and at home, but, as Richard Cornish writes, they’re a resource that must be handled with respect.

Your churn
Will Studd mourns the demise of cultured butter made from naturally soured cream and vows to gets churning.

Bold brassicas and bright rainbow silverbeet in generous amounts have been the stars of Stephanie Alexander’s winter garden.

No other meal is more important, so get up and at ’em: 26 of the most exciting breakfast experiences in the country, in no particular order. Candied bacon, anyone?

Stephanie Alexander anticipates a farewell to winter as the bulbs in her garden begin to flourish.

Oh, shucks
Oysterman Steve Feletti says France has much to teach us on the oyster front. Get slurping.

GT chats with the chef’s chef, Thomas Keller, on why France is and always will be a culinary touchstone for him – even when he roasts a chicken.

The onset of winter has slowed growth in Stephanie Alexander’s garden, but the lemon tree is laden, the garlic has started growing and the kale is plentiful.

He likes game shooting. He makes Scotch eggs. He is one of the most respected chefs in London, and the only Australian currently to hold three Michelin stars. He is Brett Graham, chef-patron of Notting Hill two-star The Ledbury and The Harwood Arms in Fulham. We drop by his pub for a pint.

They became known as the Brit-pack, a group of young, confident, classically trained British chefs who bought complex technique, fun and black pudding to Melbourne’s dining rooms in the ’90s. We reunite them.

Screen giant
Leo Schofield meets the bon viveur who brought the cravat into every lounge room in the country, MasterChef judge Matt Preston.

Sausage today can mean chorizo, sai grog, cevapcici or merguez, but not so long ago it meant only one thing: the British banger. Nichola Fletcher reports.

Stephanie Alexander admires the rows of chicory, avenues of olive groves and trees heavy with pomegranates at Rose Creek Estate in suburban Melbourne.

We go behind the scenes (and into the garden) of Chiswick, Matt Moran's latest restaurant in Sydney.

Fergus Henderson says food fads such as foraged ingredients and 63-degree eggs leave him cold.

Stephanie Alexander’s espaliered Jonathan apple tree produced only two apples this season, but her capsicum and eggplant bushes fruited magnificently.

Stephanie Alexander uncovers a rogue jumbo zucchini, and autumn brings a second crop of some of her favourites, including bush beans and Chantenay carrots.

It’s virtually impossible to think of Italian food without the tomato – no Neapolitan sauce? – but it’s a relatively recent addition to the cuisine, writes Nicholas Doumanis.

Political journalist Annabel Crabb takes pollies out of the House and into the dining room in Kitchen Cabinet.

There’s a bounty of garlic and tomatoes, but it’s the peach and nectarine trees that are yielding the most beautiful rewards in Stephanie Alexander’s garden.

Malt whisky, lobster, mackerel and baps on the beach are the ingredients for a dream holiday when Fergus Henderson heads to the Hebrides.

The snails are a pest but still the garden’s looking good with bumper crops of quince and tiny heirloom zucchini, writes Stephanie Alexander.

The team behind Sydney’s Icebergs and North Bondi Italian Food bring their magic to a bold new venture with a grill-focused Mediterranean menu. Here’s a taste of what’s cooking at Neild Avenue, the restaurant for summer.

Peter Doyle is making raspberry trifle, Matt Stone’s doing a quinoa and asparagus salad and Paul Wilson is whipping up homemade mustard. We asked 42 chefs what they’d bring to the GT barbie.

South Australia’s Spencer Gulf king prawns are the first Asia-Pacific prawns certified for sustainability by the Marine Stewardship Council, writes David Sly.

The whole hog
Ed Mitchell is a pitmaster in the Southern tradition, a connoisseur of meat, wood, smoke and fire.

Sydney’s new breed of boutique butchers may look flashy but they’re delivering old-fashioned service and quality products in spades (and sometimes, a porchetta panino for lunch).

Profiles of new-wave butcheries around the country.

In Stephanie Alexander’s summer garden the squash are prolific, the almonds are wearing their green coats and the peach trees are laden with fruit.

Gourmet Traveller's regional editors check in with their favourite bites of 2011.

Looking for the perfect present for the food-lover in your life? From binchotan charcoal to caviar, here’s what our top chefs and food identities are hoping to find under the tree.

Present a chef’s knife to your nearest and dearest and be at the cutting edge of gift-giving, writes Pat Nourse.

Seasons’ eatings
A hot lunch may be illogical for Christmas but going cold turkey poses its own risks, writes Jane Kennedy.

The kids are hyped up, Dad is into the spirit, and Roger Moore is on the telly. It’s Christmas at Fergus Henderson’s house.

Give the gift of a cookbook this Christmas – not just any cookbook, but one of our favourites from 2011. To Santa from the GT editorial team: please note.

Her tomatoes, basil and eggplant are in and she’s waiting on the garlic, but some of the best produce Stephanie Alexander finds this month is in school gardens, from Mount Gambier to Currumbin.

We caught up with chef and author Gabrielle Hamilton while she was in town to take part in the Sydney International Food Festival. Watch the clip to find out what she had to say about the future of food and much more.

The party has officially started with David Chang opening Momofuku Seiobo at The Star in Sydney – his first restaurant outside New York. Enjoy.

Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, the rock-star chefs of Animal and Son of a Gun in Los Angeles, have the red-carpet crowd lining up for marrow bones and pigs’ ears.

Technologies once limited to the professional kitchen are now filtering down to the domestic cook. Max Veenhuyzen investigates the latest developments.

Five of the country’s most popular chefs invite Ardyn Bernoth into their home kitchens to share their insights into the must-haves (and the mistakes) of this most fundamental domain.

In his new book, Mark Best gives a clear picture of what life is like at a restaurant on the cutting edge, writes Pat Nourse.

Kitchen mate
Some call them a gimmick, others give them nicknames. Thermomix convert Dani Valent tells how she fell for the chefs’ favourite gadget.

Urban planting
Even inner city folk can have a vegie patch to fuel their kitchen, writes Michael Harden. Sorrel omelette, anyone?

Gadgets a-go-go
Which 10 utensils will change the way you cook? Kerryn Burgess digs around in GT’s second drawer.

Batterie power
Bright copper kettles might well be among your favourite things, but which pots and pans do you really need? GT food director Emma Knowles examines the essentials.

The capsicum plants are in the ground and the tomato seedlings are doing well but it’s the celery – and a new trick with newspaper – that Stephanie Alexander is most excited about this month.

At home again after trips to England and Jamaica, Stephanie Alexander plants fruit trees and roses in anticipation of the warmer weather.

Australia’s restaurant stars took a well-deserved night off to toast their peers and applaud the winners of GT’s 2012 Restaurant Awards, held this year at Sydney’s Opera House.

Introducing the GT Restaurant Guide for the iPhone.

The first leg of the 2011 Great Barrier Feast series saw Quay’s Peter Gilmore take his award-winning show on the road. The results were mixing-bowl-lickin’ good, says Frances Hibbard.

Restaurants need room for magic: in a sense of place, in chaos, even in a napkin, writes Fergus Henderson.

Name-dropping? Forgery? The key to securing a table at Australia’s top restaurants is patience. Join the queue.

Stephanie Alexander loses her carrots to an unexpected pest, and tells of her visit to a spectacular cookery-school garden in Ireland.

Stephanie Alexander returns from the UK, where she admired all manner of gardens including a vertical planting of tomatoes, calendula and nasturtiums.

Anthony Bourdain, the straight-shooting American chef-at-large and writer, tells Pat Nourse how French food got its groove back and why David Chang is still “the guy”.

Britain’s original bad boy of restaurants has always loved the cooking traditions of France. Leo Schofield talks to Marco Pierre White.

Many hands make light work: Stephanie Alexander gets olive-preserving tips from Pietro Demaio and rose-pruning assistance from Maggie and Colin Beer.

One Ultimate Dinner, six superstar chefs. We caught up with them over lunch to talk kitchen technology, the universe and everything.

Stephanie Alexander travels to the UK, but not before mulching the strawberries, planting the broccoli and deciding which rose bushes to buy on her return.

Our favourite critic-at-large, AA Gill, launches a new book at the Sydney Writers’ Festival this month. He talks with Pat Nourse about travel, writing, and his urge to get to Timbuktu.

Stephanie Alexander prepares for the “straggly months” in her late-autumn garden, and there’s still plenty of work to be done in the hothouse.

Stephanie Alexander takes comfort in homemade pickled cucumbers and pesto while mourning the loss of her dear Manchurian pear tree.

Stephanie Alexander finds putting up with possums and eradicating black spot from the roses less difficult than predicting nature’s twists and turns.

Almost 10 years since its close, the reverberations from this Melbourne restaurant are still felt in kitchens across the country. With chef Donovan Cooke opening The Atlantic, we renuite the alumni of Est Est Est to tell the story of when rock ’n’ roll met fine dining.

Someone’s got to do it: a taste-test of the nation’s top ice-cream brands. The masters of all things sweet, Adriano Zumbo and Peter Gilmore, dish up their (sometimes chilly) verdict.

When nature asserts itself, Stephanie Alexander finds comfort in a handful of blueberries and some marvellous black Krim tomatoes.

Here at GT, our thoughts go out to everyone affected by the flooding in Queensland. Here are the fundraising efforts we've rounded up so far.

We asked 65 of Australia’s leading chefs what they were throwing on the barbie this summer. Forget corn cobs and charred sausages – here’s what they had to say.

Right royal feast: What’s on the menu at the wedding of the century? Pat Nourse pops the question to chefs of the realm.

Two protégés of chef Thomas Keller, two very different solo ventures. Shane Mitchell reports from the USA.

Having staked the tomatoes, hand-pollinated the zucchini and mulched the whole garden, Stephanie Alexander is ready for a beach holiday.

Gourmet Traveller's state editors give you the lowdown on their favourite dishes of 2010.

Native ingredients are a mainstay of René Redzepi’s food. Here in Australia, he foraged for our indigenous produce.

On the cusp of summer, Stephanie Alexander is searching out new homes for her pimientos de Padrón plant, pumpkin vine and lettuces.

Leo Schofield reports from the set of TV’s Iron Chef as three of Australia’s culinary superstars go to battle.

Perhaps the most basic food known to humans, milk is now among the most processed, writes Will Studd.

What better reason to leap out of bed this weekend than some more of the nation’s best breakfasts? Just add coffee.

What better reason to leap out of bed this weekend than 43 (in no particular order) of the nation’s best breakfasts? Just add coffee.

It’s time to prune the grapevine and find space for tomatoes, eggplant and cucumbers in Stephanie Alexander’s garden.