Tasting Australia’s star chefs reveal the places that inspire them
SA’s fabulous food festival Tasting Australia kicks off Friday, with a program of experiences spread across memorable SA locations. The SourceSA asked some of the festival’s stars from near and afar to reveal a special place that inspires them in their food lives.
delicious SA
Don't miss out on the headlines from delicious SA. Followed categories will be added to My News.
SA’s fabulous food festival Tasting Australia kicks off on Friday, with a program of eating and drinking experiences spread across some of the most memorable locations around the state. The SourceSA asked some of the festival’s stars from near and afar to reveal a special place that inspires them in their food lives.
Local chefs
ADAM LISTON
Shobosho, Adelaide
I have two special places … the first time I went to Japan it completely changed my opinion on what I wanted to cook, what sort of restaurant I wanted to own. I go to Japan religiously each year now to stay in tune with its food and culture.
It’s such a special place for me that every time I visit, I walk away inspired. The second is my outdoor kitchen at home. I have a wood oven and charcoal grill built into a converted shed. The set-up is very nice and a place for me to mainly cook for my family but also test things for Shobosho.
DAVID SWAIN
Fino at Seppeltsfield
I love the Coorong, I spent a lot of my youth sailing in the Lower Lakes and camping.
The Coorong is such a unique environment and the junction of river and ocean makes for an incredibly productive ecosystem.
Sail past beacon 19 and the rest of the world pretty much slips away. It was there that I first learned about coorong mullet, mulloway and cockles. It was the best and freshest eating and I use those same ingredients to this day.
JESSIE SPIBY
My Grandma Ben, Bowden
The Adelaide Central Market has always been a central part of my food experience. As a child we would go weekly to do food shopping and often grab a laksa.
Still to this day I continue the ritual, sometimes two or three times a week. The markets are my happy place and direct much of my cooking. I don’t shop to a list but buy instead what looks enticing
and delicious.
GRETA WOHLSTADT
Restaurant manager Orana, Adelaide
My special place (and for most of my team) is a place where we are always welcomed like family, Etica in Gilles St. Melissa and Federico have created a place where we can go that feels like home when we spend so much time out of our own.
It’s not uncommon for us to frequent Etica at least once a week and there is always something new on the menu that makes your heart sing. Aside from Etica serving the best pizza in town, they source their produce only from farmers and producers that meet their ethical code.
BETHANY FINN
Mayfair Hotel, Adelaide
An orchard at the bottom of our family garden; it was a slice of heaven for a child.
Trees laden with fruit, beehives used for pollination and picking freshly grown fruit and vegetables – I felt attached to the land.
Inspired by our love for these pleasures, Spencer and I chose to be married at the Uraidla Aristologist, a beautiful restaurant of the 1980s that was run by Jennifer Hillier and Michael Symons in the Adelaide Hills. We were surrounded by the fresh produce that had been grown, watered and hand-picked and prepared for the restaurant.
QUANG NGUYEN
Shibui, Adelaide
Vincenzo’s Cucina Vera in Unley back in the day is definitely on top of the list for me. It blew my mind on what food, and food service, could be. Everything on the menu was so new, yet so familiar. Every time I dined there I had a different experience. Their attention to detail, love and passion for the food was honestly inspirational. It gave me a different perception on how to eat and how to cook food. I wish they were still around today.
DAN MOSS
Terroir, Auburn
I was born in beautiful Port Lincoln, and although I don’t get to go back there much these days, I always treasured going squiding with my brother at our special spot “the ink pit”.
Although Rohie would always bring in a bigger bounty than I did, it always gave me a sense of being in the moment, and how extremely lucky we are as South Australians to have access to such pristine waters that provide us with world-class seafood. We only plate SA seafood in the restaurant and at home. Support the local fishing industry and be proud to cook SA seafood from our stunning coastlines.
QUENTIN WHITTLE
Herringbone, Adelaide
Chambers Gully (near Waterfall Gully) is a special place for me. I love to exercise there, hash out menu ideas or just recharge with some quiet. It’s also abundant with food, such as blackberries, watercress, native gums, figs, fennel, purslane, garlic flowers, just to name a few of my favourites – all of which feature on the menu throughout the year. Currently, we are using the wild fennel seeds (which are in absolute abundance right now) in our toasted fennel seed ice cream.
JACK INGRAM
Sunset Food and Wine, Kangaroo Island
I would have to say my food “special place” is most probably back home in Dorset, England.
I was lucky enough to grow up by the ocean and the south of England has some of the best seafood.
You can visit the bay and buy lobsters, crabs, whelks and fish almost directly off the boats. It’s something I really miss doing now I live in Australia but it’s always on the top of my list when I visit home.
SASKIA BEER
Saskia Beer Farm Produce
My food and beverage special place is our farm in the Barossa. I am truly blessed to be able to access produce that would sit among the best in the world, and to experience the change of seasons and create according to what is abundant at any given time.
KANE POLLARD
Topiary, Tea Tree Gully
Mount Crawford Forest, especially during mushroom season, but for multiple reasons. The idea of a micro climate that feeds itself successfully and survives the entire year excites me. Exploring the forest always reveals the layers of complexity involved to pump out an array of edible fungus, herbs and berries.
The smell of damp pine needles in the winter and dry in the summer both evoke different forms of inspiration. But cooking over coals, surrounded by the boulders and pines, represents true freedom, and when true freedom is felt, the ideas flow.
PETER CLARKE
Vintners, Angaston
Elliston, SA, (and Flinders Island — off the coast) is a place I return to every year for the best seafood in the world. I was brought up right on the beach in NZ, appreciating the freshness only the ocean can provide.
I look to the sea as a “hunter/gatherer”, and will happily spend days endlessly fishing, only returning to shore to cook the day’s catch over an open fire.
Visiting chefs
CHIHO KANZAKI
Virtus, Paris
One of the places that really has a special place in my cuisine is Menton, a town in the south of France, near Italy, where I worked with Mauro Colagreco (the Argentine chef at Mirazur, No. 3 in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants).
The quality of the products, with the fresh herbs and vegetables from the garden’s restaurant, made me realise the importance of respecting them. I really try to magnify them, and not denature them; to find the balance between my cooking and the products.
O TAMA CAREY
Lankan Filling Station, Sydney
I grew up in Adelaide, moving around a lot, but the weekly constant was going to the Central Market every Saturday. I would go with my mum, we’d do the weekly shop and then she would meet her friends for coffee at Lucia’s and I would either sit around or, as I got older, meet friends and run around the markets. It was where I had my first real job, working at Providore on Friday nights and Saturday mornings. It was part of my daily life: I ate there, I shopped there, I worked there and, undoubtably, it informed my knowledge of food and produce. It’s still the first place I want to go to when I come back to Adelaide to visit and it’s also one of the places where I still feel most comfortable in SA.
FEDERICA ANDRISANI
Fico, Hobart
We work with two local growers here in Hobart called Suzi and Liz who both practise organic backyard permaculture. Once every three months or so we visit them to see the change in the seasons and have a chat about what will be available in the coming months. It’s always an incredibly inspiring trip, and one of the moments we get to try things before they arrive in the restaurant. It’s also very powerful to see what can be achieved in a small backyard in the way of food production. I really believe if more people practised this type of farming on a domestic scale, it would go a long way to solving some of the serious food issues we face.
AMY HAMILTON
Liberte, Albany, WA
Definitely the coastline and surrounds of the Great Southern region of WA. The diversity of the region is incredible and many memories and food experiences have been made with my children and loved ones collecting produce from this region. Any seafood plucked out of the waters here is exceptional, but Albany rock oysters will always hold a special place in my heart.
They grow wild in the brackish waters running at the bottom of my block and I’ve had some great times with friends and family plying a few off with a screwdriver and eating them on the rocks. For me, the Albany rock oyster is perfection. They have the perfect balance of sweetness, saltiness, creaminess and minerality, and they are perfect just as they are, freshly shucked, no gimmick garnishes. If you need extra help washing them down, a glass of Great Southern riesling or chenin wouldn’t go astray.
EMMA FARRELLY
State Buildings, Perth
Anywhere I am with my family. Coming from an Italian background our conversations and events are generally based about food. I really enjoy spending time in the kitchen with my two boys, who, thankfully, have inherited my love of food!
They are really into cooking at the moment, which is awesome. Especially when they make their own breakfast on school days … Winning!
ALEX MUNOZ LABART
Labart, Burleigh Heads, Queensland
Growing up in Sydney, my family used to holiday in Nelson Bay once a year. I distinctly remember the first year my older brothers and cousins allowed me to go out with them to hunt for abalone and sea urchin. They showed me how to dive for them and how to eat them. I have such fond memories of these years and how we’d sit on the shore afterwards eating sea urchin straight out of the ocean. We also took any other seafood we’d caught back to the family and would make traditional Chilean stew with prawns, fish heads, abalone and chorizo for dinner.
DARREN ROBERTSON
Three Blue Ducks, Bronte, NSW
My special place is Byron Bay. I have many dear memories and experiences cooking and eating all around this country. Travelling around regional Australia has had the biggest impact in my cooking. Cooking outdoors, afternoon picnics by the river, impromptu beach barbecues, early mornings at farmers’ markets, hinterland honesty food boxes, picking mulberries with the kids, to me the special place is outdoors.
ANTONIA KLUGMANN
L’Argine a Vencò, Italy
My special place is “Vencò” the village where I decided to open my restaurant “L’Argine a Vencò” (“The river bank of Vencò”). We are in the countryside surrounded by vineyards, very close to the Slovenian border. The bank of the river Judrio is not an end for me, it’s the start of something else. The border is the same. It’s more a political limit than a real one. Slovenians and Italians have continued to interact during the history despite to political disputes. I chose to locate my restaurant there because this area has many historical similarities with my birth city, Trieste. A real multiethnic and border town.
Moreover, I wanted to work in the countryside and to have a healthy terrain with my own vegetable garden and orchard. I wanted to be surrounded by the beauty of nature and to be close to where ingredients were produced. My creativity is deeply linked to an honest respect for ingredients. I’m not vegetarian at all, but it is not possible for me to be creative destroying the environment or causing useless sufferings. The observation of nature allows us to connect with raw materials, questioning ourselves about their origin, learning how purveyors work, how to avoid wastes and how to be sustainable lets us become more sensitive and, furthermore, it allows us to find original and tastier ingredients.
Black, White and Reds: $150k lawsuit over top wine
A vineyard has accused a winemaker of blending lower-quality grapes into its top-shelf product, costing it $150,000 – but the winemaker says the entire harvest had “fundamental problems”.
Revamped Adelaide food court gets second tenant
A previously unused food court in a key CBD precinct now has a second tenant following a multimillion-dollar facelift, but COVID-19 has made hard work of filling the remaining spots.