‘The most exciting thing about Australian cuisine right now’
The eternal quest to define “modern Australian” cuisine, and how the answer was right next to our chopsticks. From the upcoming July issue out on June 28.
In 1982, Tetsuya Wakuda arrived in Sydney from Japan and was hired by chef and restaurateur Tony Bilson to make sushi. Nobody could have guessed that the diminutive chef with very little English would rise to be one of the most famous chefs in the world.
He opened Tetsuya’s in 1989 and, at three different incarnations, developed a uniquely French-Japanese cooking style that was variously described as East-meets-West, fusion and modern Japanese. We simply didn’t have a name for it. Perhaps we should have called it “Tetsuyan”.
