Christmas in Australia: my secret recipe

It's one of those once-in-a-lifetime trips celebrate the festive season on the other side of the world. Top Australian chef Bill Granger tells Andy Lynes how to make the very best of a seasonal visit

Sunday, 23 December 2007

Tim Wimborne/Reuters

Tourists enjoying Christmas on Bondi Beach, Sydney

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Christmas is a great time of year to visit Australia. December and January are the height of the beach season, which is where Australians love to go and relax. But I get a bit bored after a day or two of lying in the sun and I think, "OK what now?" The thing about Sydney and Melbourne is that you can have a beach holiday and enjoy the excitement of the big city at the same time.

Christmas is a good time to be in Sydney; a lot of people go away so it becomes a little bitquieter. Bondi is a beautiful beach but it's crazily busy, even at Christmas. It's fun to see, but I'd avoid it during the day. Go early for a walk we're out before 7am to walk the 5km from Bondi to Bronte beach via Tamarama beach or at night for dinner. Icebergs restaurant is perennially popular, but I prefer North Bondi Italian Food; it's a bit funkier.

Bondi is fine if you've got the perfect body, but as we're a bit older we go to Bronte instead. There's a whole row of really cheap, simple cafs that overlook the beach there. The harbour beaches, like Neilson's Park and Watson's Bay, are great for a picnic. They're more low key and incredibly beautiful. People will tell you to go to Darling Harbour, but avoid it like the plague.

Sydney should be experienced from its harbour. You could charter a boat and stop into one of the tiny beaches for fresh seafood, but the cheap version is to take the ferry to Manly. Sit on the top deck with the wind in your hair and look at one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Sydney's arts festival starts in early January and has an eclectic mix of art shows, dance and big concerts in the park. There's always something on at the Sydney Opera House, which offers an opportunity to experience it as venue rather than just looking at it. The Moonlight cinema in the Botanical Gardens is one of my favourite festival events. The screen rises out of the water, so you can sit in the open air, with the sea as a backdrop, watching movies. Take a picnic or buy Thai beef or Asian noodle salads while you're there.

The Sydney restaurant scene really suits the city. The food is totally appropriate for our casual lifestyle. It has been a bit stagnant for the past couple of years, but just lately interesting things have been happening. Chef Christine Manfield has opened Universal in the ultra-modern Republic apartment building in Darlinghurst. It's beautiful and she's doing really nice food inspired by her global travels, such as five spice pork with squid and cashew salad. Also in Darlinghurst is Fish Face, a sushi bar run by a very fiery chef who throws people out but he really can cook. There's a new place in Glebe called the Glebe Point Diner, which has been opened by a chef from the acclaimed Bondi restaurant Sean's Panorama, which serves wonderfully comforting food like roast chicken with bread sauce.

I run a restaurant called bills in Woollahra where we serve all-day breakfasts and light lunch dishes like sauted prawns with green papaya, mint and fennel. It's a beautiful suburb halfway between the city and Bondi Beach. Go there for a day of upmarket fashion and homewares shopping. There are a lot of art galleries and antique shops around the area it's like an Australian Notting Hill.

Crown Street in Surry Hills is what Sydneysiders call an "eat street" and I could recommend 95 per cent of the restaurants there. Marque is next door to my restaurant. It's very high end, one of Sydney's best and a real experience. Pizza e Birra is a funky Italian pizza and beer place, and I like the modern Australian cooking at Bird Cow Fish.

If you go further down Crown Street you'll hit Cleveland Street where you can eat very cheaply and very well on Indian, Japanese and other ethnic foods. And there are queues around the corner at the nearby Bourke Street Bakery for its fresh bread, croissants and pastries.

A lot of friends from the UK hire houses in the Northern Beaches, about an hour's drive from Sydney. That way they can enjoy Christmas in a house, have a summer lying-on-the-beach holiday and explore Sydney and its environs. Hire a car. Driving is safe and easy because it's the same side of the road as the UK and it's really cheap.

Palm Beach in the Northern Beaches is where my first TV series was filmed and where I used to live. It's a holiday town, a bit like the Hamptons. Apart from Jonah's luxury retreat, there are not many hotels, so you really do need to get a house. There's a lot for rent by the week.

Palm Beach is on what's jokingly known as the "insular peninsula" it's bordered on one side by the ocean and the Pittwater on the other. If you love sailing, it's a great place. There are beachside cafs with the doors flung open and people sitting in their board shorts drinking coffee. There are lots of beautiful holiday restaurants such as Beach Road in Palm Beach, which has been taken over recently by a very good chef who's serving modern Australian food like tuna sashimi with wakame seaweed salad.

Just down the coast is Avalon shopping village where you can get all your supplies. The Palm Beach Wine Company sells beautiful wines and has a gourmet deli, and there's an excellent German bakery in nearby Newport called Blue Moon.

Melbourne is a good city to explore; you're pretty well guaranteed to find some good things. Start in Melbourne city, wandering around its laneways (the service streets to the back entrances to the Victorian buildings), where you'll find 20 to 30-seat cafes and funky little bars such as MoVida in Hosier Lane.

Melbourne's coffee culture started in Pellegrini's in Bourke Street, which has a beautifully preserved 1950s interior. I used to go there as a child, so it has an emotional connection for me. I also have childhood memories of Leo's spaghetti bar on Fitzroy Street, which has been there for 40 or 50 years. Grossi Florentino opened in 1900 and has beautiful hand-painted ceilings and murals and a really casual bistro atmosphere.

My Melbourne pick at the moment is Lau's Family Kitchen, a Chinese caf run by one of Melbourne's most famous restaurateurs. It's very good, simple Cantonese cooking done in a Western way.

The food and wine coming out of Mornington Peninsula are brilliant, too. The restaurants are on some of the most exclusive beaches in Melbourne. It's very calm, quite flat and windswept; a very different landscape to Sydney, which is tropical and hilly.

As a chef, food is a big part of any holiday I take. Fifteen years ago, I would have had trouble suggesting places where you could find good food and good produce in Australia. But now people who have worked in the food industry are moving from the cities as they get more expensive to live in and are creating beautiful produce in the regions. Stop at the big cities, but make sure you see beyond them, too.

I will be spending Christmas with the family in Byron Bay on the north coast of New South Wales. I have a very soft spot in my heart for it because it's where Natalie and I got married. It's the easternmost point of Australia and has always had a reputation for being a bit feral. The hippies went there and these days you'll find scruffy dreadlocked students and trustafarians as well as glamorous Sydney families.

Rae's at Watego's Beach is the place to stay or you can hire one of the bay's 1970s houses. You can see whales from your balcony, ride horses on Tallow Beach and swim naked on Kings Beach. The land is incredibly green and fertile. They grow macadamia and coffee and the local Bangalow pork is famous. Steven Snow, who cooked the food for our wedding, does beautiful Portuguese and North African-style seafood at his restaurant Fins at Salt Village, a few miles north of Byron Bay.

Noosa is a three-hour drive from Byron Bay and is a big foodie destination. It's more established than Byron with lots more hotels and apartments. It's very glamorous; they call it "the place with gold shoes". The most beautiful produce is being grown in the New South greater region. A lot of people who have dropped out of the Sydney and Melbourne food scene have moved to Noosa or Byron Bay and opened farms and are growing things because the weather is so good.

I think there's great luxury in isolation and quietness and in that sense, Tasmania is the most luxurious place in the world. It's being discovered by a certain type of Australian who is sick of the crowds of the coast and wants to go somewhere different and quiet. I visited the Tamar valley in Tasmania for the first time four years ago and couldn't believe what I saw; there are beautiful Georgian houses everywhere that are untouched and well preserved.

The restaurant scene is still in its infancy, so there's not a lot on offer, but you can buy beautiful ingredients for a romantic dinner at home. They're growing wasabi; there are truffles, the best dairy products in Australia, and the cool climate makes for some extraordinary wines.

Christmas in Australia may mean missing out on turkey with all the trimmings as it's so hot, we'll share cold roast meats and a huge assortment of salads but it has so much more to offer you'll hardly even notice.

Compact Facts

Icebergs
Bondi Beach, Sydney, (00 61 2 9365 9000; idrb.com)

North Bondi Italian Food
Bondi Beach, Sydney (00 61 2 9300 4400; idrb.com/northbondi)

Universal
Darlinghurst, Sydney, (00 61 2 9331 0709; universalrestaurant.com)

Fish Face
Darlinghurst, Sydney, (00 61 2 9332 4803; fishface.com.au)

Glebe Point Diner
Glebe, Sydney, (00 61 2 9660 2646)

Bills Restaurants
at Darlinghurst, Surry Hills and Woollahra, Sydney (bills.com.au)

Marque
Surry Hills, Sydney (00 61 2 9332 2225; marquerestaurant.com.au)

Pizza e Birra
Surry Hills, Sydney, (00 61 2 9332 2510)

Bird Cow Fish
Surry Hills, Sydney, (00 61 2 9380 4090; birdcowfish.com.au)

Bourke Street Bakery
Surry Hills, Sydney, (00 61 2 9699 1011)

Jonah's
Palm Beach, (00 61 2 9974 5599; jonahs.com.au)