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Part One: Food in Australia

The new "cuisine of the southern sun"

by Tony Baker

Australia's contemporary cuisine has, over the past fifteen years or so, joined the ranks of the world's best, thanks to the dazzling range of local ingredients, a truly multicultural society and a new generation of boldly creative chefs. It is a perfect drawing together of flavors and styles; of French traditional and nouvelle cuisine, regional Italian and pan-Asian styles laced with cool Californian chic.

The evolution of the new cuisine seems to have taken place with startling swiftness. To write about Australian food a couple of decades ago would have been to invite disbelief, if not downright laughter, together with derisive remarks about kangaroo and emu steaks. While it is true that within a month of Captain Cook sighting his first kangaroo in 1770, a member of his party had eaten one, for most of the next two centuries, Australians aped the cooking styles of England, a country many still thought of as home, and one not particularly renowned for fine cuisine. It is also true that until the past decade, the wild fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds used for some 40,000 years by the Aborigines were totally ignored by the more recent Australian arrivals.

With the huge influx of immigrants in the years following World War II, a largely Anglo-Celtic society was enriched, first by Europeans, then by Asians, as well as immigrants from countries as diverse as Chile and Iran. Today, Australian tastes are as cosmopolitan and multicultural as its population.

Australians, perhaps the best-traveled nation in the world, have experienced firsthand the cuisines of Europe, Asia and America. So, too, have Australian chefs who, inspired by their experiences, have created a cuisine that benefits from the superb produce of this continental country, which produces everything from tropical fruits and herbs to cheese, wines and stunning seafood from the far south.

Australian cuisine emphasizes freshness and shows great creativity in successfully blending cuisines from as far apart as Paris and Tokyo. This new "cuisine of the southern sun" complements the relaxed friendliness of modern Australia, and is as likely to be enjoyed on a verandah or in a courtyard as in a formal dining room.

Wine is integral to Australian dining, since this happiest of revolutions has gone hand in hand with the discovery, both at home and abroad, that the fresh, clean, flavor-packed wines of Australia are comparable with—if not better than—those of the old wine world.

As if all this were not enough, by the standards of other gourmet cuisines Australian food is remarkably cheap, as increasing numbers of tourists are discovering to their delight.

All the elements for a fine picnic on the beach; seafood, cheese, salad and wine.