Destination NSW (New South Wales) hopes Rick Stein’s Australia, a six-part television series that aired in January, will tempt visitors in search of the many culinary delights on offer in the state.
The series, which documents the chef’s road trip to Sydney and across New South Wales, saw the chef and TV travel presenter return to a country that he first visited as a 19-year-old.
For the series, he travelled nearly 5,000 kilometres across the state, revisiting places that left an early impression and exploring how Australia’s food culture continues to evolve today.
Described as a “revisiting of roots”, the 60-minute episodes shows Stein meet the characters and farmers behind some of Australia’s most loved foods.
Filmed across coast, country and outback, Rick Stein’s Australia explores how place, migration and history shape the way people cook and eat. Along the way, Rick meets cooks, producers, artists and First Nations custodians, learning from those whose connection to land and sea runs deep.
The journey takes in bustling cities, regional towns, vast inland plains and coastal waters, with a particular focus on seafood, simple cooking, and food rooted in everyday life rather than restaurant trends.
Showing off New South Wales’ diversity, the series highlighted its impressive geographical range, from the northern laidback surf culture of Byron Bay to the scenic beaches and coastal towns of the Sapphire Coast on the South (close to Stein’s restaurant in Mollymook), and extending into the vast Outback.
The series put an emphasis on the evolving cuisine and the multicultural influences on Australian food, and celebrated the talented chefs bringing their individual flavours, the unique local ingredients and the rich traditions of First Nations cuisine.
Stein’s personal connections were also central, and reinforced that Australia, and particularly NSW, is his “home away from home.”
“Most people know me as a British chef, but I have been coming to Australia for over 60 years. After my 5,000-kilometre journey through New South Wales, I realised how much my love, appreciation and knowledge of food have changed over these years and I think it all kicked off with my early visit to New South Wales,” he said.
“One of the places we filmed at was run by a friend of mine, Neil Perry. He’s got a restaurant in Sydney called Margaret’s, which he named after his mother.
“Over the years we have been egging each other on and today he runs a fabulous seafood restaurant. You can ask him where each piece of fish was caught -rock cod, whiting, whatever – and he will probably be able to give you the name of the fisherman who caught it.
“I just love the taste of really fresh fish that’s very simply done – maybe just a lick of olive oil and a piece of lemon. And to me, that’s just, lovely”.
