It’s October 2025 and I’ve written over 380 separate posts – not one of them has been paid for by the venue, or was at the request of a venue to dine there. This is a key differentiator to many bloggers. If you want independent and experienced views, please support my blog.

I have been heavily into food and wine for more than three decades.

I like to focus on the positives, and these days I mainly write about higher end restaurants, and those that excite me.  I move around, going to new restaurants regularly, and only going back to a handful that I don’t consider convenient.

I grew up in Perth and spent my first 30 years of life there.  For the past 17 years I’ve lived in Melbourne and one of the predominant reasons is my love of food.

In Melbourne there are people who go out almost every night, and you can see that vibrancy spread across the city.  We eat out a fair bit, but also like to cook and keep healthy.  That means a few different meals a week, but often focussing on quality, and the higher quality.

Australian Gourmet Traveller is my bible, but has changed its format several times over the years. These days there are so many ways to find out about the latest and greatest.  Of late we have been spending good amounts of time in Sydney, WA (Perth and Margaret River), and Noosa, with some great food travel to New York (2022) and France / Italy (2024).

Overseas we used to rely on Michelin, Zagats, TripAdvisor and anything else that has put me in the right direction more often than not. These days I find Time Out lists to be helpful, along with some of the booking sites like Resy, and more than anything finding out from locals where they have favourites.

For the same reasons above we try new places when we travel but often in the same rotation of cities. While we’ve had numerous trips to New York, Paris, Rome and London, we are always looking for a new experience, amongst the comfort of returning to some favourites.

I don’t really have favourite foods and there is nothing (including offal) that I don’t like.  The often asked question about “what you would eat for your last meal” is extremely difficult for me to answer but it would be something simple. For Catherine, she is a little more sensible, but has developed borderline coeliac disease (blood tests find everything these days) and has started a largely gluten free diet, so we’ve become adept at certain dietaries too.

We do have favourite restaurants.  It is the ones that live in my memory long after the end of the meal.  Back in the day, Per Se was matched (or slightly bettered!) by Eleven Madison Park, but throwing out a few of my early favourites that are still around would be Attica, Arzak, Le Meurice and Tipo 00. 

In recent times I simply can’t go past two experiences at Le Bernardin. Across the board it thoroughly exceeds even the highest expectations and I’m simply in love with dining there. Closer to home we’ve had our comforts continue to be tested by Attica’s delicious take on native Australian ingredients, the homely Tedesca Osteria, and some brilliant places all near each other on Flinders Lane including (in order) Nomad, and Gimlet. Supernormal and Tipo 00 continue to be regularly visited and ultimately are my favourite regular places.  Lake House in Daylesford continues to shine time after time.

As much as I love a meal over several courses, a great breakfast, burger, dessert, cheese etc can be just as memorable.

Now I’m hungry!…