Foreword

When this book was started, we were in the midst of celebrating our twenty-first year as a restaurant. Little did we realise that it would be our last year of operation at Alfred Place. Mietta's, however, continues at the Queenscliff Hotel, run by my sister Patricia.

We closed the doors of Mietta's at Alfred Place on New Year's Eve '95. As we did so, and thought back to June 1974 - the year in which we opened the first Mietta's at the northern extremity of the then unfashionable Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, in an old butcher's shop, opposite a shoe factory, a row of terraces and next door to a fish and chip shop - it all seemed a very long time ago. So much has changed, and the chefs who feature in this book are the people who have made food and restauration what it is today in Australia.

Our first menus were as incongruous as our surroundings. No oysters! No steak! That was Mietta's in 1974.

At that time, those dishes were the height of Saturday sophistication; not to serve them demonstrated a serious case of attitude. Well, that was OK by us. We were out to change the world, like every other talented young Australian restaurateur before and since.

Now, 21 years later, to serve mainly oysters and steak would represent an equally serious attitude problem, particularly if neither had a Thai influence. So our world has changed, and the purpose of this book is to introduce you to some of those responsible for the changes.

In the Australia of my memory, each generation seems to have added a new dimension to the food we eat. My grandparents, for example, arrived from Milan in 1928. They, their peers and later Italian immigrants taught Australians that spaghetti didn't always come in tins and that coffee wasn't neccessarily an essence blended with chicory. My grandparents' Melbourne restaurant, Mario's, also introduced many Victorians to the pleasures of dining in an elegant establishment.

The Chinese, who have been here since the gold rush of the 1850s, run restaurants in country towns, in the suburbs of Melbourne and in Little Bourke Street's Chinatown. The Chinese market gardener was as much part of the Australian culture as the local Chinese cafe where you took your saucepans to be filled with strange and exotic foods.

Other immigrant groups made, and are still making, significant contributions to our eating habits. Indeed, extravagant claims are made about the "Asianisation" of the Australian palate - claims which rather ignore the contributions of Greeks, Turks, Lebanese and the many others who have made our cooking so marvellously multi-cultural.

By the 70s, Hermann Schneider at Two Faces, Gloria Staley at Fanny's and Gilbert Lau at the Flower Drum had established very sophisticated fine dining establishments in Melbourne. Their food and service reached a level of refinement rarely surpassed today.

There was another important development in the 70s: the first Melbourne Grammar boy to embark on a career as a chef took to the stoves. He was Tony Bilson , and he started a trend that has redefined what is cooked in Australia, and who cooks it.

That was the world we inherited as restaurateurs when Mietta's first opened in June 1974. And the series of dinners this book celebrates were designed to show - through practical example - the contribution members of my generation have made to that world.

I believe that all those invited to participate in this series have made an important contribution to food in Australia. I also feel that it is important to take stock of the state of the culinary art before the dawning of a new millennium. Most of the participants are chefs and restaurateurs; these are the people I know best. But others are educators and teachers. None is young, and all have been at the cutting edge of the explosion of interest in food and dining that has taken place over the past 20 years.

Alphabetically, these are the chefs, teachers and restaurateurs that I have asked to illustrate their view of Australian food in the 1990s:

• Stephanie Alexander (chef patron, Stephanie's, Tooronga, Melbourne) is not just a chef and a restaurateur but Australia's most important writer on food.
• Tony Bilson (Chef-consultant, Intercontinental Hotel, Sydney) whose restaurants in partnership with Gay Bilson and more recently Leon Fink have had more effect on the way Sydney eats than the fashionable are inclined to admit.
• Marieke Brugman (chef partner, Howqua Dale Gourmet Retreat, near Mansfield, Victoria), with her partner Sarah Stegley, has an interest in food and its relationship to the land, and encouraging specialist suppliers. Their cooking school, where many of our most inspiring food innovators teach, provides an important link between chefs and their public.
• Joan Campbell (Director of Food, Vogue Publications) has, through her position at Vogue, arguably had more influence on Australian eating habits than anyone else. Her keen eye, incomparable palate, and ability to pick trends are legendary. Sue Fairlie Cuninghame (Executive Editor, Food and Wine, Vogue Entertaining) shared in the planning of the dinner.
• Elizabeth Chong (educator) is still running Australia's oldest cooking school, the Elizabeth Chong Cooking School. Through it, her tours of Chinatown and her involvement in Melbourne's annual Chinese and Asian food festival, she has taught more Australians about Chinese food and culture than anyone else.
• Donovan Cooke (chef for the series at Mietta's) is young, and he is English. He brought the enviable combination of a youthful sense of adventure, tempered by a wealth of practical experience, to the stoves at Mietta's, and to Melbourne.
• Iain Hewitson (TV chef, and chef partner at Tolarno Bistro, St Kilda, Melbourne) has an uncanny knack of picking and setting trends; his seven restaurants in 20-odd years have all helped to define, and often galvanise, the market.
• Cheong Liew (chef, The Grange Restaurant, Adelaide Hilton) has returned to the stoves, and Adelaide is the richer for this. Cheong is Australia's most important Asian palate, and his culinary skills and food philosophy are vital elements of the new Australian food.
• Stefano Manfredi (chef patron, The Restaurant Manfredi, Ultimo, Sydney) with his mother Franca, and brother Frank, have been cooking the best Italian-Australian food in Sydney for years. Their seamless blending of two cultures is what great Australian cooking is about.
• Damien Pignolet (chef partner, Bistro Moncur, Woolhara, Sydney) cooked fine food at Claude's, and has now adapted his uncanny skills to this large, bustling business. His carefully executed food, created with a focus on fine ingredients and simplicity of preparation, are perfectly attuned to the needs of today.
• Hermann Schneider (ex-Two Faces, now operator of Arthur's Restaurant, Arthur's Seat, Victoria) was a leader among those who set standards for fine Australian food. Those he has trained and inspired now dominate our restaurant industry, while the ingredients he sought out and demanded 30 years ago are today's currency.
• Philip Searle (ex-Oasis Seros in Sydney, now operator of Vulcans at Blackheath) describes himself as "very cautious". This caution, however, has not prevented him from performing many of the most daring culinary feats yet seen in Australia.
• James Tan (chef patron, Mandarin Duck, Carlton, Melbourne) is producing some of Melbourne's most distinguished food - a fascinating blend of Chinese tastes and textures with European decoration. His consultancies in Singapore and elsewhere make him better known outside Australia than at home.
• David Thompson (chef patron, Darley Street Thai and Sailors Thai, Sydney) fell in love with Thailand, learnt the language, and mastered the cooking. He now produces a sophisticated Sydney version of this exotic cuisine converting its tantalising blend of powerful flavours into refined dishes.

There were three other chefs I had invited to take part in the series who, for personal reasons, were unable to do so. They were Gay Bilson, now of the Bennelong Restaurant at the Sydney Opera House; Tetsuya of Tetsuya's, also in Sydney; and the best and most professional restaurateur I know, Gilbert Lau of the Flower Drum, Melbourne.

My old chef, Jacques Reymond, is someone who certainly deserves a place in this list. In 1994 we persuaded Jacques to take time off from his own restaurant for our 20th celebration series (The Great Chefs of North Fitzroy) and I felt that I could not impose on him a second time. Although Jacques is not in this series, I would like to thank him for showing us what French food in a restaurant should be.

I have not included the young Turks who are firing up their woks in the cafés of our major cities. That would require another book. Nor, interestingly, have I included many of those chefs most highly rated by the Melbourne and Sydney food guides. It should be said that my criteria are not those of the food critics. Those chosen to take part in this demonstration of Australian cooking are, from my perception as a restaurateur, the ones who have contributed most to the changes that have taken place in Australian food over the last two decades.

Just as important as the changes in cooking styles is the revolution that has taken place in the variety and availability of ingredients, and a special mention should be made of some key figures in this change. Hermann Schneider has been visiting the Victoria Market in Melbourne for 30 years now and it was he who, 20 years ago, introduced the Melbourne public to snow peas and other Chinese vegetables, to Murray Cod, King Island Crabs and a vast range of products then ignored by dinkum Aussie cooks. Serge Dansereau at the Regent, Sydney, has been a great supporter of specialist producers and, using the Regent's buying power, has influenced their development. Stephanie Alexander 's writing has done much to make ordinary Australians aware of the wealth of fine foods that surround them. The list could go on, as many of the contributors to this series have been important in the process, as indeed have some of those who regulate primary production and its marketing. But most of all it is the producers themselves who have risked their livelihood to extend the range, and improve the quality, of poultry, meat, fish, vegetables, cheeses and other foods. They have made our cooks proud to be Australian.

Ultimately, this book reflects a personal choice, and we are happy for it to be judged on that basis. The recipes have not been standardised, they are, as given to us by the chefs. They vary greatly in their style, quantities, degree of difficulty in preparation and terminology (I have put some explanations in brackets) and their range of ingredients. I think this serves to explain some things about their creators, where they physically work, the staff they have with them, the public they cook for and their own personal tastes and habits. To highlight just a few - Phillip Searle's salmon shows where he is now, cooking at home with minimal fuss and maximum flavour; Elizabeth Chong 's descriptions and dishes show a family at table whilst Tony Bilson 's sumptuous restaurant food is of a finesse which demands a lavish store and brigade.

Bringing this book together would not have been possible without the inspiration and guidance of Bob Hart (then Promotions Manager) of the Herald-Sun. He organised readers' competitions and ran stories and pictures of the chefs for each of the dinners. Jeremy Holmes of Negociants Wines matched wines from their extensive list with our menus and gave marketing assistance, as did Barbera Harper of Harper Public Relations.

Interstate chefs stayed at the Rydges Hotel (Exhibition Street, Melbourne) and flew with Ansett Airlines. Staff at Ansett helped all sorts of baggage board their flights and we thank them for their understanding. Our suppliers dealt with many and varied requests and came at all sorts of times with deliveries. Jonathan Gianfreda (Jonathan's Meats, Collingwood) was one those and he also supported the series by attending most of the dinners.

But the greatest support came from the stars of this book. My partner and the book's photographer, Tony Knox, and I cannot thank all of them enough for their willingness to give their time and creative energies to celebrate Mietta's Culinary Coming of Age. They accepted working in a strange kitchen, without all their normal resources, being photographed at moments of stress and fun, and taking valuable time off from their own businesses. We had a cheek to ask you, but thank you all. We enjoyed the planning, the dinners and the resulting photographs.

We hope you enjoy seeing their work in the kitchen of Mietta's, reading about their food, and their ideas, as much as we have.