Ardyn Bernoth has a go-to order at Di Stasio in Carlton, where she’s sitting in the leafy courtyard in one of her signature brightly coloured, smartly cut long cotton dresses. “All the snacks,” she says, “bird of the day, a salad, and the olive oil soft serve.” And, as befits a late spring afternoon, an Aperol spritz to start.

Bernoth is in the midst of a victory lap of sorts, her final week as Good Food editor after 26 years with Fairfax/Nine and 14 years heading up Good Food and The Age food section, Epicure. It is as bittersweet as the Aperol in her drink – mostly fun and frothy, but one wonders what she will do with all that buoyant energy, and all that passion.

What has kept her passionate all these years? It’s the food, of course – as an avid cook and gardener, the years of recipes and restaurants have fed her soul. But also? “It’s the hospitality,” she says. “It’s that feeling when you walk into a place, and it’s exciting and you can feel that someone has thought of every detail.”

She points to the cornucopia of concrete vases that decorate the Di Stasio courtyard, spilling foliage and flowers. “Mallory [Wall, the restaurant’s co-owner] stayed up until 2am for weeks, scouring Facebook Marketplace, finding these vases and urns from the gardens of Melbourne nonnas,” Bernoth says, wide-eyed with respect. “And look at the magic it’s created. It’s that kind of passion that lies at the heart of hospitality.”

Bernoth was born, almost literally, into hospitality. Her father was a chef and restaurateur in the NSW Northern Rivers region, and her mother was a waitress. (Her father also led the water-ski show on the restaurant’s adjacent Tweed River, and her mother was a tutu-wearing feature of that show.)

Ardyn was born at Murwillumbah Hospital and brought home to the restaurant, where her mother began working again almost immediately, eventually bundling the new bub into a walker tied to a chair with a rope.

When the family moved to Melbourne, Bernoth’s father switched careers to insurance sales. But eventually, the siren song of the restaurant trade called to him, and he returned to cheffing – this time aboard the 19th-century tall ship, the Polly Woodside. Ardyn followed in her mother’s footsteps, waitressing in the family business.

But she had known since she was very young that she wanted to be a journalist. “I just woke up one day knowing that’s what I wanted to do,” she says.

She got her break the way most people do – through a combination of luck, personal connections, and pluck. Her mother was working as a hospital nurse, and the hospital’s cook happened to be married to an editor at Melbourne’s now-defunct evening newspaper, The Herald.

Bernoth had just finished uni and was working in PR, dressing up as a blood drop to persuade people to donate their precious bodily fluids. But the cook introduced the blood drop to the editor, and he offered her a job.

It was a powerful lesson in fate, but also in the ways help from established journalists has often been the only path into the profession for younger people. “You’ve got to pay it forward,” Bernoth says.

After years as a property and business journalist, including a stint in London, Bernoth landed on the lifestyle pages, and the food pages in particular. She has reviewed for the Good Food Guide for many years, and as a result has an understanding of dining and cooking garnered over the past two decades.

So what are the most significant changes she’s observed? “I think the era of the celebrity chef is declining,” she says. She’s not sure of the reasons. Perhaps it’s that we’ve learned that deifying a group of influential people – often men – has led to abuses of power that will no longer be tolerated. But she also thinks that the way people cook at home is changing.

“Good Food’s recipe writers used to all be chefs,” she says. “And we still have some amazing chefs writing fantastic recipes. But people want simplicity. Home cooking is far more respected than it used to be – and now some of our best recipe writers are home cooks.”

On the restaurant front, she points to the change in service, particularly at the high end, that has made dining out so much more joyful. “It used to be this solemn march, so self-serious,” she says of fine-dining service. “And now you see real connection, real enthusiasm, and it makes the experience so much better.”

Even that change, she muses, may have something to do with the restaurant as a whole becoming the focus of diners and journalists, rather than just the chef. We have star sommeliers now, star restaurant managers, and the recognition of those folks may have led to them finding a way to shine, to make a real and personal impact on the experience of dining.

Our meal has come and gone – puffy bread with garlic butter, a glorious glazed rolled and stuffed chicken, a big green salad – and dessert has arrived. The soft vanilla ice-cream is drizzled with olive oil, but that’s not what makes this dessert so transcendent.

“It’s the salt,” I say, marvelling at the way the large but pliant flakes crunch ever so slightly and give the cold sweet ice-cream new dimension.

“Oh my god!” Bernoth cries in utter glee. “It’s the salt!” And from the childlike wonder in her eyes for a dessert she’s had countless times before but has found new ways to love, you can tell that no matter what she does for a living, the love of restaurants, of food, and of hospitality, will always be front and centre.