Imagine this scenario. You are somewhere in southern Tasmania and about to make a choice between two restaurants for a meal.  The menus are not dissimilar, except the seafood in one has been imported from Vietnam. Some of the fruit was picked 'somewhere in China' a few months ago, and other ‘fresh’ ingredients purchased from a nearby supermarket have actually been in cold, nitrogen storage for almost a year. You enquire about the meat that is being offered, and not even the chef knows its history.  The other menu includes gorgeous salmon that has recently come out of the pristine clear waters only a few kilometres away. Stunning cheeses produced by a local award-winning cheese maker, and organic lamb that melts in your mouth is grown in the rolling pasture land that you drove through earlier in the day. It is all topped off with a fine bottle of wine from the local vineyards.

Which restaurant would you choose?

This site puts you in touch with Australia’s abundant regional produce. Food that is grown and produced with passion and commitment. There are chefs and restaurants out there who are showcasing the freshest and finest Australian fare. Then there are the providores, gourmet pantries, specialist food stores and producer stores who are selling it. There are enterprising tour operators who will guide you down the highways and by-ways to meet the remarkable people who are the backbone of regional produce, and of course, sample their wares first-hand.

From snow-capped mountains to rolling plains, rain forests to the outback, this remarkable country 'girt by sea' has given from its soil and waters the treasure of finest food. The Australian national anthem is 'Advance Australia Fair'. Our variation is obvious - 'Advance Australia Fare."

Features:

• All the major players in regional food throughout Australia are listed, state by state and region by region.

• Discover the growers, stores, providores, producers, markets, events, museums and restaurants who showcase Australian regional food.

• The latest in food news and events Australia-wide - you will love our punchy, newsy, snippets pages.

• More information on Regional Food than any other source in Australia

• New listings for Australian Regional Food Guide being added the whole time - photographs where available

• Links to the websites of foodies Australia wide

• A one-stop site design which allows you to easily navigate the whole site

• Great images of so many of people and places listed in the book.

Regional food in Australia suddenly comes excitingly alive.

WHAT IS THIS SITE ABOUT?

GK Chesterton: 'The whole object is not to set foot on a foreign land. It is to set foot on one's own country, as a foreign land'

You would never go to Paris without scheduling a trip to the Eiffel Tower. Yet how often we visit parts of our own country and miss the experience of tasting the local produce. That’s like ignoring the Sydney Harbour Bridge, or going to the Great Barrier Reef and staying indoors all day. A chance of a lifetime, wasted.

Today people can travel almost anywhere and be assured of a diet identical to whatever they are used to at home. We can eat steaks and chips, ice cream and burgers (and most assuredly spaghetti and pizza) in almost any country in the world. Yet what intangible souvenirs we collect by sampling chevre from provincial France in a sparkling whitewashed dairy, the goaty tang still clinging to every pore of the place; or if we pause for a gelato at the Spanish Steps in Rome, grab a baguette sandwich in Paris, or sesame-studded bagels in the markets of old Jerusalem, or sample juicy sweetcorn from a roadside stall in Minneapolis. Just try deleting the smells and tastes of Asia from your travel experience and you will have wiped half of your sensory memory. ‘The tourist sees; the traveller experiences’ goes the saying.

Stuart Moon, Chairman of the Northern Rivers Regional Development Board (NSW), was once quoted as saying: "If only, when travelling from region to region in Australia, the very best produce of the area was presented at every restaurant and cafe as imaginative and flavourful food. Every meal could be a 'celebration' of why the region is a great place to live in and visit.

Many Australians routinely travel the country, connecting dot-to-dot the roadside service stations or stereotyped fast food outlets. A chicken burger is a chicken burger, and you can bet the ingredients have flown thousands of miles to an outlet near you. How satisfying to renew acquaintance with the real taste of a tomato grown just metres away, or bread baked the 'old' way without artificial boosters, from freshly ground flour. If we venture to taste organic meats, local game, free-range eggs, sheep's yoghurt or pick a bucket of berries for dessert, we are doubling our delight. (read more)

WHAT IS MODERN AUSTRALIAN?

Australia has often been accused of having no national cuisine, and in a sense that is true. Yet over the past couple of decades our tastes in food have changed dramatically. Partly due to increased migration to Australia, partly to our own overseas travel, and also to the discovery that this country can grow and produce almost anything, Australians now enjoy food from many ethnic backgrounds: Asian, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and European.

These cuisines fuse and blend in the kitchens of our better, more inventive chefs, to take advantage of our wonderful fresh produce and have evolved into an altogether different cuisine. And while it is fresh, clean, healthy and unique, nobody until recently has thought of a better name to call it than: Modern Australian. Now it is sometimes simply – and more accurately –called Contemporary.