Chef

Hiroyuki Sakai is known as ‘The Delacroix of French Cuisine’ and he is a chef who specializes in French cuisine.

Hiroyuki Sakai was born on April 2, 1942 in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. In 1959, at the age of 17, he started working in Osaka at a restaurant in the Shin Osaka Hotel.

When he was 19, he travelled alone to Perth in Australia, to build his skills at the Hotel Oriental. After a year and a half in Australia he returned to Japan, spending three years studying at Ginza Shiki with the late Fujio Shito. Shito was his predecessor as the leader of French cooking in Japan. He later worked as a chef at the restaurants Coco Palms in Aoyama and John Kanaya in Roppongi.

Chef Sakai is known for his winning record in the popular Japanese television program Iron Chef, where he started in 1994 as "Iron Chef Hiroyuki Sakai". His stature as the top chef on the show was formalized when he was named the ‘King of Iron Chefs’ after emerging victorious from the show's grand finale, a tournament involving all the active Iron Chefs.

Outside of Iron Chef, Sakai is the owner and head chef of the restaurant La Rochelle, originally in Aoyama but now in Shibuya. The restaurant was named after La Rochelle, a city in France where Sakai had spent some time as an apprentice.

La Rochelle website

Philippa Sibley’s Albert St Food & Wine establishment is inspired by the integrity and abundance of local food from Victorian regions. She describes her menu as “romantically seasonal” and offers highly innovative Mediterranean cuisine that focuses on organic and local produce.

This extraordinary chef previously brought her magic touch to Melbourne’s il Fornaio at the Prince in St Kilda, Bistro Guillaume and before that was renowned for her desserts at Circa The Prince. She commenced around the same time that Andrew McConnell of Dining Room 211 and later, 312, started as Executive Chef. In 2005 the restaurant received its third hat in The Age Good Food Guide.

Circa was Philippa’s stage to secure her title as one of Australia’s best and well known dessert chefs. Monikers such as ‘Queen of the Desserts’ (Gourmet Traveller March 2006); ‘Stellar pastry chef’ (Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Guide 2006) and ‘Enchantress’ (Age Good Food Guide 2005) are examples of her renown.

Philippa has also consulted on the dessert menus of both The Stokehouse and Comme but is mostly well known for her creation of three iconic Melbourne restaurants: est est est, Luxe and Ondine. All three earned three hats in The Age Good Food Guide, and est est est and Ondine the coveted Best New Restaurant award. In 1999 she published Marriages the est est est cookbook which was awarded Best Cookbook Design, Versailles, France.

As well as her past MasterChef appearances, Philippa also featured in an episode of A Cook’s Tour by Anthony Bourdain in 2004.

Il Fornaio website

Chef

Rick Stein is somewhat misleadingly labelled a ‘Celebrity Chef'. In fact, with his ex-wife Jill, he has four restaurants, a delicatessen, a patisserie, a seafood cookery school and forty hotel bedrooms in the small fishing port of Padstow on the north coast of Cornwall in England, which have developed over the past 34 years.

Rick attributes the success of all this to a simple observation; "Nothing is more exhilarating than fresh fish simply cooked". It was this enthusiasm for seafood that led him to make his first TV cookery series Taste of the Sea in 1995. Since then he has made eight more, travelling to France, Italy, Morocco, Thailand and Bangladesh celebrating the attraction of local food.

All Rick’s shows exhibit his philosophy on food, eating and restaurants, which is that cooking and eating together are generous activities, which should be taken seriously but should also resound with joy. All the books and films show a commitment to the quality of food, too and a concern for sustainability in fishing and good husbandry in farming.

In a long career as a chef, Rick has cooked for eminent people such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street, French President Jacques Chirac and The Queen. He was awarded an OBE in 2003 for services to West Country Tourism.

Rick still lives part of the year in Padstow, but also has a house in Sydney with his fiancée Sarah Burns and regards Australia as his second home.

Rick Stein's website

Chef

Will Studd has been working with specialist cheese for more than three decades and has travelled extensively in his vocation. After establishing delicatessens in central London during the 1970s, he migrated to Melbourne, Australia, in 1981, where he has done much to promote a greater understanding of what good cheese is all about, as well as championing the cause for cheese made from raw milk.
 
Will’s first book, Chalk and Cheese, was published in 1999 and won a number of major international awards. It has since become highly sought after by collectors. His latest book Cheese Slices is recognised by cheese specialists around the world as a valuable guide to understanding cheese, and was published in October 2007.
 
Will was awarded the prestigious L’Odre du Merite Agricole by the French government for his defense of traditional raw milk cheese in 2002, and was recently promoted to the decorated rank of Officier of the L’Odre du Merite Agricole in recognition for his services and support of traditional ‘lait cru’ cheese. He is also recognised by France’s prestigious Guilde des Fromagers as a Maitre Fromager (Master of Cheese) and is the guild’s sole ‘ambassadeur’.
 
Since 2004, Will has been executive producer and presenter of Cheese Slices, the world’s only television series focused on international artisan and traditional handmade cheeses.
 
Will is the founding director of Fromagent Australia and the Calendar Cheese Company.

Cheese Slices website