In April of this year, along the idyllic Malibu pier on Southern California’s Pacific Coast, a long table was set for a meal showcasing Australian chefs and cuisine to a Los Angeles audience. The event, called the Great Australian Bite, attracted 300 guests, among them chefs, journalists and influencers, to eat the food of Josh Niland, Jo Barrett, and Aussie transplant and LA chef Monty Koludrovic.

The meal was underwritten by Tourism Australia, but it was presented by the Los Angeles Times, a newspaper that takes its food events extremely seriously. “For the LA Times, we always want to put our mark on it,” says Kamilla Rifkin, the culinary events programming manager for the company. “We’re not an events agency, so every event has to make sense for us and our audience. And this was a great fit.”

The Great Australian Bite came right before this year’s James Beard Awards, in which two of the three cookbooks nominated for Best Cookbook (restaurant or professional) were penned by Australian Chefs – Saint Peter’s Josh Niland and Ester’s Mat Lindsay (Niland won the award). In June, legendary Australian chef Neil Perry was fêted with the Icon award at the World’s 50 Best Restaurants ceremony in Las Vegas. Later this year, one of New York’s most celebrated restaurant groups will open ACRU, an Australian tasting menu restaurant in Greenwich Village. It was named one of the most anticipated restaurant openings of the season by the New Yorker. There’s chatter about the Michelin guide entering the Australian market, an occurrence that will only take place if there’s money in it for Michelin, but would also signal to the world that the company believes our restaurants are important enough to be considered.

After decades of under-appreciation and misunderstanding, is Australian food finally having its moment?

“We believe that the Australian standard of hospitality and its significance in recent years have been profound to the culinary and hospitality world at large,” says Ambrose Chiang, ACRU’s general manager. Chiang points to the history of excellence that Australians have long celebrated, with operators such as Quay’s Peter Gilmore, Attica’s Ben Shewry and Brae’s Dan Hunter gaining huge respect internationally among chefs (if not among the wider dining public). But post-pandemic, Chiang gives much of the credit for this moment to Niland: “Josh’s impact to revive the presence of Australian chefs internationally has been profound, with appearances in Madrid Fusion, 50 Best Talks, MAD and his own book and demonstration tours.”

It’s not uncommon for one chef or a small group of chefs to help define or redefine a country’s cuisine in the eyes of the world. Just over 20 years ago, Rene Redzepi opened Noma in Copenhagen, and “New Nordic” quickly became a term that was understood and revered. New Nordic cooking didn’t rely on an identifiable set of dishes or even ingredients – rather, it was known for its nature-based experimentalism (rather than science-based), its aesthetic adherence to the pared-back beauty of Scandinavian seasonality, and its attention to minute detail.

Similarly, Australian food is becoming known for foods and cooking techniques that a handful of chefs have fixated on, here and internationally. Niland has made a name for himself by promoting the amazing seafood Australia has to offer, as well as revolutionising the way people think about butchering, storing and serving seafood in general. A number of chefs have capitalised on our country’s longstanding relationship with cooking over fire, including Dave Pynt at Burnt Ends in Singapore, Lennox Hastie at Firedoor in Sydney, and Curtis Stone who is known in the U.S. much more for his restaurant and butcher shop Gwen in L.A. than his presence as the smiling face for a certain supermarket chain. (He also is a great advocate for Aussie pie culture; on the weekends Gwen serves a menu of pies out of a classic warmer. The beef version is particularly mind-blowing.) And our chefs’ connections and access to the country’s unbelievable edible bounty has gained wider understanding thanks to chefs like David Chang and Rene Redzepi singing the praises of our raw ingredients. 

I’d be practicing false modesty if I failed to mention that I wrote a longstanding column for the New York Times specifically about Australian food, which undoubtedly helped to introduce the exciting things happening here to an international audience. But the fact that the Times thought such an assignment worthwhile probably says more about our country’s growing culinary clout than anything contained within that column.

Of course, the sunny Australian cafe has had an international presence for years now. And most people I spoke to for this article emphasised the Australian version of hospitality in particular, a kind of laidback professionalism that perhaps originated in our cafe culture but then seeped into our bars and restaurants.

When I spoke to Josh Niland a few years ago, the thing that shone through most impressively was how he spoke about handling and cooking fish. In a recent conversation, his most excited moments came when he spoke about two things: Australian produce, and Australian hospitality. 

“People are blown away when they come here,” he says, speaking about the vast number of international guests that he has served in the past and is serving now at his newly reopened Saint Peter in the Grand National Hotel. “The sheer diversity of species, the quality of the meat and fish, the wine regions, the truffles that European chefs are using and often say are better than their own. And then, that we can tell them exactly where the product is from, what the method of catch was, and do it in that professional, friendly manner that defines the best of Australian hospitality. It amazes people.”

 So, what’s changed? And what has historically stopped people from giving us that international respect and excitement?

It would be foolish to ignore the massive, largely self-inflicted hurdles Australian food has had to overcome to be taken seriously on the international stage. In the course of researching this story, I came across the menu for Koala Blue, a cafe in Los Angeles that in the 1980s was attached to a store of the same name owned by Olivia Newton John. Koala Blue served objectionable delicacies such as Nah-Na Goon, a dish of “curried banana and shrimp surprise” that the menu passed off as an Aboriginal specialty. Outback Steakhouse is entirely the fault of America, but we’ve not done nearly enough to challenge its authenticity as a bearer of Australian culture.

Aside from the cringe-factor of that Koala Blue menu (it has a truly disturbing ode to itself printed inside, penned by the late Dame Edna), the one thing I can appreciate is its unabashed Australian-ness. But that brand of gimmicky Australian-ness – furthered by tourism campaigns, certain beer commercials, and, of course, Crocodile Dundee – caused understandable discomfort among chefs and restaurateurs who longed to be taken seriously on the world stage. Partly for that reason, many of the ambitious restaurants that have come since have leaned away from Australiana as any kind of identifying characteristic, instead opening venues that mimic trends from Europe and America. This tendency led to a food scene that might have been wonderful but lacked definition as recognisably Australian.

“In the past, I think we wanted to be seen, we wanted to be part of the new. But that kind of thinking rarely leads to something that’s identifiable,” Niland says.

That began to change in the last two decades, most notably with Shewry at Attica, and also when Redzepi created a menu around native ingredients at his Noma Sydney pop-up. And it’s the change that is likely creating this moment for Australian food internationally – that our most successful and internationally recognised chefs are pointing to the things only Australia has, and the things Australians do best, as the underpinning of their work.

With the unique ingredients we’re using, the focus on certain cooking techniques, and with a brand of service that is recognisably Australian, we now, finally, have a cohesive story to tell.

“I never want to open a version of a European restaurant that I’ve eaten at once,” says Niland. “What does modern Australian luxury look and feel like? What does it taste like? Those are the questions we’ve been asking ourselves as we go into this opening.”

It’s those kinds of questions, and the pleasurable and delicious answers to them, that will work towards continuing Australia’s ascent as the internationally recognised culinary powerhouse that we’re destined to be.