Every so often you meet someone whose enthusiasm is the driving force of an establishment. So strong, in fact, that it’s like a magnetic field, drawing you into its energy. At Mockingbird Café, Kingscliff, that force is Jo Jackson. We’d first met Jo at her very successful restaurant, Signature Dish in Varsity, where she not...

As we reach the shortest day of the year, winter chills creep in as the sun sinks behind the hills. We linger in tracky dacks, loathe to venture out, content to reach for comfort food in the shelter of warm homes. The winter solstice or ‘Yuletide’ marks a turning point from which days get longer,...

It was to be a ‘wild food’ garden feast – five courses made from local and hyper-local produce held in the gardens of the magnificent Mavis’s Kitchen, Uki. As the sun descended on the afternoon, seventy people gathered to have a dinner with friends and strangers at two long linen-clad tables strewn with magnolia branches,...

It’s taken many journeys to get to Potager: the 15-minute drive up the hill from Coolangatta, the journeys of owners Peter Burr and Gareth Leslie from Sydney and Ireland and, most of all, our journey away from manufactured culture to a more harmonious, grounded lifestyle and cuisine. You could live a lifetime on the Gold...

Do you know where your food is grown? When you tuck into that pitaya bowl surrounded by fruit, do you know which ‘rock star’ farmer harvested it for you? The Tweed Coast is part of the food bowl surrounding the Gold Coast, with the area’s food production, café and restaurant industries increasing in interest to...

Eat Local – Food, Farming and Conversation in the Scenic Rim By Brenda Fawdon & Christine Sharp We’re mad about real food. The sort that is grown by local farmers or in home and community gardens, the produce arriving in our kitchen after travelling minimum food miles. There’s something grounded about scrubbing soil off vegies...

You never know what you’ll come across when you get away from the big smoke. Everyone is pretty familiar with the talent showing up on the coastal strip, particularly on the south end, but head out into the ‘burbs towards the highway, and even beyond, and there’s some damned great eating to be had. We’d...

NOTE: The Richards family sold Social Brew early in 2017. “Everything the Richards family touches works really well,” a friend once confided. From what we’ve seen it’s certainly true. We’ve followed the Richards family (a family team of parents and three adult children) in awe as they opened and operated a string of successful ventures:...

Touted as a ‘destination’ farm, a ‘community of growers, producers, eateries, educators and more’, The Farm at Byron Bay is an 86 acre property owned by Tony and Emma Lane, heirs to the Oroton empire. Turn off the Pacific Highway to Byron Bay, and The Farm’s most visible signpost is a full carpark. With a...

It’s rare for me to be completely ecstatic about a dining experience. Despite extensive research about where we’ll dine, more often I’m quietly enthralled with some parts of the experience or people we’ve met, pleased with the overall meal, sometimes hopeful and occasionally disappointed. But our trip to Mavis’s Kitchen is stellar. It’s a rare...