Australian Celebrity Chefs 1950-1980: A Preliminary Study

"Recognition can be so temporary—the carefully maintained ego can be so fragile, just when you think you have made the big time, something comes along to kick you right back to the chorus line" (Bernard King, quoted in Allerton, 1980, p. 33).It is now accepted that, during the second half of the twentieth century, Australians displayed a new approach to the food they ate - moving away from largely Anglo-Saxon influenced (although locally inflected) foods and meals that were prepared and eaten in the home - to consume a wider range of more international foods and meals that are, increasingly, prepared and eaten away from home. In 'The Oxford Companion to Australian Folklore', Davey stresses that the term "foodways" is "widely used in international folklore studies to describe not only 'what' is eaten by a particular group of people but also the variety of customs, beliefs and practices surrounding the production, preparation and presentation of food within that group" (1993, p. 182).