Appetizing Australia – Food and Travel Stories from the World's Most Delicious Country. Black By Ezard, The Star, Sydney, Australia. Copyright © 2022 Terence Carter / Grantourismo. All Rights Reserved.

Appetizing Australia – Food and Travel Stories from the World’s Most Delicious Country

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Appetizing Australia. What’s this all about? Well, over coming months we’ll be sharing loads of food and travel stories with you from one of the most delicious countries in the world, Australia. We’ll be starting with posts on mouthwatering Melbourne and Sydney, the cities that are home to Australia’s best restaurants, followed by tales from Victoria’s wine regions and foodie destinations such as Orange.

So how did we come to be back ‘home’ after all this time? At the end of our 2010 Grand Tour, we flew from Bangkok via our former home of Dubai to take care of some things, and then onto Melbourne. As some of you may know, we left Australia permanently in 1998 but in recent years we’ve tried to return each year for Christmas, however, our ‘grand tour’ kept us on the road for a year and then work in South East Asia held our attention. So a catch-up with family and friends we hadn’t seen in years was long overdue.

We had loads of writing to do, plenty of commissions on Asia to write up, a book to finish, other projects to develop, and we wanted to do some stories on Australia too, so we packed our bags and headed ‘home’. Our family’s house on the outskirts of Bendigo, a country town in Victoria, seemed a good place to settle down for a while. Our plan was to stay a few months, spend quality time with loved ones, get on top of our writing, and move on.

But travel opportunities within Australia kept presenting themselves, as they do in our business, and the next thing we knew it was Christmas, and here we still are. So where have we been?

Appetizing Australia – Food and Travel Stories from the World’s Most Delicious Country

We’ve been fortunate that magazine commissions and collaborations with tourism bodies and travel companies to tell stories on this blog have recently taken us to some of our favourite places (Adelaide, Kangaroo Island, the Barossa Valley), to places we’ve never been (Lord Howe Island, Hamilton Island), to our old hometowns (Sydney and Brisbane), and on an epic train trip aboard the Southern Spirit from Brisbane to Adelaide through spectacular scenery in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia.

We’ll be sharing stories on all of those places overing coming months.

But we’re going to begin at the beginning, with our Melbourne stories. One of our first Australian commissions was a story called ‘Mouthwatering Melbourne’ for Lifestyle+Travel magazine, which took us to Melbourne for 12 days, which was closely followed by a three week trip to Sydney for a similar story, and then back to Melbourne and Sydney yet again for several months.

The food and wine stories enabled us to spend our time doing little else but eating and drinking and talking about food and wine. Bliss! We tried many of Australia’s finest restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney, visited Melbourne’s best markets, attended Melbourne food festivals, tested out gastro-pubs, Sydney’s bars and Melbourne’s cafés, explored Melbourne’s laneways and arcades and Sydney’s harbour and beaches.

Best of all, we got to spend time with many of Australia’s finest chefs, sommeliers and foodies, from chefs Peter Gilmore and Dan Hunter to wine guru Matt Skinner and cheese expert Will Studd, not to mention chefs like Neil Perry who we’ve admired for most of our adult eating life.

A warning is therefore in order: if you’re not a culinary travel and if food isn’t a key way for you to discover a culture, then don’t be surprised if you start salivating and booking your next trip to Australia – and you start booking restaurant tables before your hotels!

For the rest of you, meet mouthwatering Melbourne, starting with this tasty time-lapse.

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AUTHOR BIO

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A travel and food writer who has experienced over 70 countries and written for The Guardian, Australian Gourmet Traveller, Feast, Delicious, National Geographic Traveller, Conde Nast Traveller, Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia, DestinAsian, TIME, CNN, The Independent, The Telegraph, Sunday Times Travel Magazine, AFAR, Wanderlust, International Traveller, Get Lost, Four Seasons Magazine, Fah Thai, Sawasdee, and more, as well as authored more than 40 guidebooks for Lonely Planet, DK, Footprint, Rough Guides, Fodors, Thomas Cook, and AA Guides.

8 thoughts on “Appetizing Australia – Food and Travel Stories from the World’s Most Delicious Country”

  1. We didn’t actually spend much time on Fitzroy Street this trip, though we used to many years ago. There are definitely a few places we want to check out there next time. Thanks for dropping by! Nice to connect – just checked your blog out – love it! We know who to come to for Korean tips now.

  2. Hi Sophie – aside from a writer’s conference we attended there about 5yrs ago at Lonely Planet HQ when we used to write books for them, we hadn’t spent a huge amount of time in Melbourne since we left Australia either, so it was wonderful to return. Definitely going to spend a bit more time there before we leave – hopefully during the upcoming food and wine festival. The restaurants are wonderful – probably even better than you remember them :)

  3. Oh, Melbourne is the gourmand’s dream. I spent quite a bit of time on Fitzroy Street, going through its various eateries. Looking forward to the pictures!

  4. Looking forward to see all your upcoming post, not only of Melbourne, but whole Australia! As always, I love your photography and stories! xx

  5. Thanks for the kind words! Much appreciated. Another week or so of Melbourne posts, then we’ll be taking you everywhere – Brisbane, Southern Spirit train journey from there to Adelaide, Barossa Valley, Kangaroo Island, Lord Howe Island, Hamilton Island, Perth, and Sydney. Hope you enjoy them! Thanks for dropping by! xx

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