Knowledge is power and keeping up-to-date with new trends, new competition and new recipes is as essential as it has ever been. Online is a treasure trove of resources for chefs and food lovers with websites dedicated to new openings, recipe development, job offers and even devoted to making and storing cheese. We went out and asked chefs and foodies from around Australia their favourite online resources to stay connected to life outside the kitchen across Australia and around the world.
Want to know what is new, hot and happening in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane? Broadsheet covers restaurant and café openings, as well as the arts and other events. It’s great for industry professionals who are really interested in the level of detail the team of experienced writers delves into. This includes the names of the architects, the front-of-house team, the business brains behind the new venture. Subscribe to get the latest news drops into your inbox.
The French are as obsessed with cheese as we are with sport, and this website covers all the French cheese industry gossip. It also gives a lot of technical information, tips on making cheese and how to store and age it. If you are a cheese nerd, or have a big cheese selection, this website will broaden your knowledge of French cheese.
From the UK comes this website for chefs by chefs. Top chefs from across the British Isles upload their images and recipes, as well as share their views on hot topics such as ingredient substitution. “I have seen a chef run out of scallops so they got monkfish loin, cut it with a round cutter and then cooked them as scallops,” declares one chef. Gold.
Melbourne food writer Sophia Levin is a force to be reckoned with. She is constantly on the road finding new small, hole in-the-wall and culturally diverse eateries while pumping out content on trends. The site currently has a recipe for dan dan noodles and Victor Liong’s ma po tofu, the best of Darwin markets, food trends for 2022, and a myriad of articles on small restaurants offering food from Cameroon, Sulawesi and Mauritius.
Want to know how Campbell’s tomato soup lead to a new variety of tomatoes? Interested in US food banks? Worried about how US agriculture will cope with a lack of water. Do you ever consider how different varieties of rye affect the quality of bourbon? Then thecounter. org is your ethically-aware place to see what changes are taking place in modern America.
From the US media giant Vox Media, the publisher of New York Magazine and Grub Street Magazine, comes this pan-American food website that looks at trends, restaurant gossip and articles that cover the history of a dish and the best 25 glasses for different drinks. With recipes from across the 50 states, this website is the eyes, ears, nose and tongue of modern American gastronomy.
Nagi Maehashi is the researcher, writer, photographer and filmmaker of this incredibly useful cooking and recipe site. Her recipes are aimed at the home cook, but her method and techniques offer professional chefs some well-tested shortcuts such as toasting breadcrumbs before breading fish or chicken to deepen the final colour.
The food scene across The Ditch is so similar yet vastly different to ours. Currently, there’s a story about a Wellington restaurant cutting back to two nights a week due to staff shortages and another about a ban on kava. Some great Kiwi baking recipes, news on NZ trends, and insights into just how clever farmers are over there.
Not a website but an app from Germany that connects you, the chef, with jobs across the globe and around Australia. List your food skill interests, and it offers you hundreds of videos of how to improve your techniques in anything from tempering chocolate to slicing fish.
Some great stories about Spanish food culture, including articles on different wine varieties and different types of jamón with recipes from famous Spanish chefs. The wonderful part of this website is the access it gives to the entire library of back copies of the now-defunct but still highly regarded Spain Gourmetour magazine.
