Out of the pool, food is my love, writes Olympic champ and Celebrity MasterChef winner Eamon Sullivan.

The mornings have turned crisp, and Stephanie Alexander’s garden is looking a little bare, but Tuscan kale, artichokes and broad beans battle on.

Stephanie Alexander joins Gourmet Traveller with a new monthly column on growing your own kitchen garden. This month, we’re planting leeks, peas and spinach.

Whether it’s a rustic dish that reminds them of their mammas’ cooking, or a fresh take on a classic, Australia’s best Italian chefs nominate their favourite Italian dishes.

The humble grissino, pride of Turin, has saved a prince from death, captivated Napoleon and inspired the Futurists, writes John Irving. And you thought it was just a breadstick.

Evolution, not revolution, is the way for modern Italian food, says its champion, chef Massimo Bottura.

It’s a Melbourne phenomenon: the rise and rise of modern Middle Eastern cuisine. Michael Harden rides the second wave of the city’s sumac-spiced love affair.

Josh Emett returns to Melbourne this year to head the kitchens of Gordon Ramsay's Maze and Maze Grill.

New York’s Momofuku is a modern-day restaurant phenomenon, but what’s it all about? With chef David Chang visiting Australia in March, Pat Nourse offers this primer.

It’s time to take our annual foodism test. Your obsession could win you one of four fabulous KitchenAid stand mixers, designed for those who really love to cook.

Gourmet Traveller's state editors give you the lowdown on their favourite dishes of 2009.

We had a ball when fine Italian food and sparkling good company all came together for a good cause at the annual Exposure Gala. PHOTOGRAPHY DANIEL MAHON

Doomsayers be damned - 2009 has been a hell of a good year for eats, with plenty of great new stuff bursting onto the scene at both the spangled fine-diners and the food-court level.

Christmas catch
We’ve gone hunting and gathering across the country to bring you the best for your Christmas table.

In another busy year for food publishing, there were some shining stars you’ll want under your tree – to give or receive. Here are the brightest, hand-picked by the GT editorial team.

Pat Nourse caught up with the star pastry chef at his Sydney café to talk chocolate (he eats about eight handfuls a day), the future of desserts (smoke and bubblegum?) and his stance on the Violet Crumble/Crunchie divide.

On the eve of publication of Thai Street Food, his exploration of the cuisine of the noodle stalls, soup vendors and papaya-pounders of Bangkok and surrounds, London-based Australian Thai authority David Thompson sits down at Sailors Thai on a sunny Sydney morning to talk to Pat Nourse about kanom jin fermented rice noodles, the complexity and dynamic nature of Asian hawker foodways, opening a Thai restaurant in Thailand and why you shouldn't put your photographer in the back seat.

Julia Child introduced French cuisine to ’60s America, and now – thanks to Hollywood’s Nora Ephron – her home-cooking ethos is as influential as ever, writes Cerentha Harris.

The 2010 Restaurant Awards were celebrated in style at Rockpool Bar & Grill in Sydney. Here are the winners after the event.

Pat Nourse and Kerryn Burgess track down some of the best in the business and, amid the rattle of pans, find out what it really takes to rise to the top.

We’ve downed forks, the votes are in, and we are proud to present the Australian Gourmet Traveller 2010 Restaurant Awards.

Oh, lordy. If you were asked to dream up the best wine list in the world, no expense spared, all indulgences indulged, all bases covered, all classic estates and legendary vintages included, you probably still couldn’t come close to matching the very real wine list at Sydney’s Rockpool Bar & Grill. This list is winning […]

It’s a big ask in terms of time, distance and money to eat at Dunkeld’s Royal Mail Hotel, but this is a restaurant that answers all the questions with a resounding yes. It’s a place that truly embraces the philosophies of regionality and seasonality, presenting them in a way that’s unmistakeably modern and complex but […]

Tom Sykes’ first Sydney restaurant job, back in 1996, was at a little place called Rockpool. Fast-forward almost 15 years and Sykes has not only climbed the ranks from waiter to headwaiter to assistant manager to general manager in time for the Sydney Olympics in 2000 in the crucible of the city’s most talked-about restaurant, […]

Gerald Diffey has worked at and with some of Victoria’s great names – Karen Martini, Rita Macali, Tansy Good and Stefano de Pieri among them – and has spread his affable charm wherever he’s appeared. But it’s at his small bar in Rathdowne Street, Carlton, propped next door to the pizza cacophony that is La […]

Jackson’s has always been the kind of restaurant where minor miracles of the edible kind occurred, but the wine list sometimes felt like a bit of an also-ran in the presence of chef/owner Neal Jackson’s perennially quirky fare. Enter Kjell Ove Almeland, a flamboyant Norwegian with a patois so chunky you could carve it. (His […]

There’ll never be a need to carbon date the quantum leap in Australia’s food fashion. Or to ponder its greatest influence. In 1975, Leo Schofield penned the first guide to eating out in Sydney and went on to become the senior restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald. Today, as editor-at-large for Australian Gourmet Traveller, […]

In retrospect, the 12 months since the last GT awards might not seem like the most felicitous period in which to open an ambitious new restaurant. And yet here we are with an embarrassment of restaurant riches. It’s hard to remember a year in which the new restaurant gong was anywhere near this hotly contested. […]

When Cam Birt and Stephanie Canfell, partners in Brisbane’s standard-setting Bowery bar, decided to open a dégustation-only restaurant in an old bank building one storey above street level in the still-edgy Fortitude Valley, Ryan Squires topped their chef shopping list. Queensland-bred Squires had made a splash a few years earlier, returning from stints at The […]

Yes, lightning really can strike in the same place twice. If anything, the Quay that is Restaurant of the Year today is, dare we say it, a better place than it was 12 months ago when it first won the award. All the things that made it great then – the unmatched commitment to sourcing […]

Here are the restaurants our reviewers rated best in each state and region at a glance, from those awarded stars to those next most highly ranked.

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.

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

We’ve downed forks, the votes are in, and we are proud to present the Australian Gourmet Traveller 2010 Restaurant Awards.

The envelope, please
It’s been an exhaustive process but we’re proud to reveal our short-listed nominees for the 2010 Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Awards.

Backstage at his Sanctuary Cove show, the Kitchen Nightmare speaks to Pat Nourse about the Grimshaw affair and his new Australian project.

Grab a drink, sit down and relax: the talented team behind Sydney restaurant Buzo are doing all the hard work, serving up rustic wintry fare that’s perfect for a weekend away.

Gordon Ramsay worked for some of Europe’s greatest chefs on his way to the top of the cooking game. Not coincidentally, perhaps, he also worked for some individuals who were as well known back-of-house for their tempers as they were known out front for their culinary grace. It’s no secret that Ramsay gives it today as good as he got it as a young chef, and he’s unflinching in his assessment of the top terrors he’s encountered in his time in the kitchen.

With duck confit and steak frites thick on the ground these days, a good bistro meal isn’t hard to find. But what about a great one? We track down the country’s best, dish by dish.

The Pat Nourse Polaroid files: "These pictures were taken at the winners' lunch at St John restaurant the day after the World's 50 Best Restaurants ceremony. I've had the pleasure of chairing the Australian and Pacific votes. It's not a paid gig, but an invite to join the critics who head the other voting panels and the award-winning chefs at a lunch hosted by Fergus Henderson is incentive enough. This year's menu kicked off with an ox heart salad (the hearts of oxen, not a type of tomato), followed by pig's head and potato pie (with plenty of mustard) and ice-cream flavoured with the Dr Henderson, Fergus's favourite cocktail of Fernet Branca and crème de menthe."

From the Ultimate Dinner to the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival (and spinning discs with Shane Osborn), The Fat Duck’s Heston Blumenthal shares his Australian diary.

Just as the French sommelier's reputation is built on the depth of his list, the Vietnamese chef stakes his pride on the quality of his fish sauce, writes Paul Daley.

Eugenio Maiale’s hand-wrought Italian cuisine has called many to the table at Sydney’s A Tavola. Here, he serves up dishes inspired by his childhood and his family’s rich Abruzzese heritage. Dig in.

We quizzed the best kitchen talents on their secrets to the perfect spaghetti Bolognese. The responses varied but were never ambivalent: this dish is unanimously loved, however it’s made.

From the tastiest new cut of steak to the most anticipated “debut”, here’s what’s exciting us about the Australian food scene in 2009.

Quick recipes to make the most of your secondary cut.

Gourmet Traveller salutes Australia’s chefs and restaurants who are showing their support of the Victorian bushfire victims by hosting fundraising events.

Gourmet Traveller food editor Rodney Dunn swapped the horns of city traffic for the honk of geese to set up his farm-based cooking school, The Agrarian Kitchen. Take a tour.

You don’t have to pretend any more. If you’re obsessed with food, here’s your chance to declare it.

I have just opened a restaurant. The food is under control, but we are having a hard time with waiters. How can I find a good batch of waiters? By nabila viriot – owner new resto Madeline Nieuwenhuizen, a manager at Sydney restaurant Aria, writes: The unfortunate reality is that there are just not enough good, […]

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and whether you're looking for a bottle of bubbly that won't break the bank, a last minute trip idea, luxe brekkie-in-bed, small bites, meals to share, or sexy desserts, you'll find it here.

What does Australia’s finest cooking talent whip up come time to clock off? Here are 72 great quick dishes and not a soufflé or tian in sight.

Australia’s top chefs dish the dirt on what they’re resolving to do better in 2009.

Australia’s top chefs dish the dirt on what they’re resolving to do better in 2009.

Restaurant critic Pat Nourse delves deep into his duck fat-stained personal files to bring you the best of 2008’s eating in 10 easy dishes.

It's that time of year again when we turn to our tried and true Christmas favourites. From roast turkey and glazed ham to rum-soaked pud, we have the standards covered (and variations to boot). There's a reason why these dishes have endured the test of time.

For French-born Brisbane chef Bruno Loubet, Christmas is about tradition – pulling out all stops for the ultimate in grandeur and elegance.

Our handy nationwide guide, recommending what to buy and where, will help minimise your time in the kitchen during the busy run-up to Christmas.

“One of the things I love most about Asian food is that it’s often designed for the shared table.” So says Neil Perry in our exclusive extract from his new book, Balance & Harmony: Asian Food. Create your own Asian banquet with these fab recipes.