Anyone who’s attended a Tony Tan cooking class will know the multiple skills he brings. Tan’s encyclopaedic knowledge of multiple cuisines is a given – gained from growing up in a food-centric, restaurant-owning Hainanese family in Malaysia, studying and cooking food in the UK, France and Australia and the impressively rigorous research he undertook for his two highly regarded cookbooks. But with a Tan cooking class there are lessons beyond ingredients and cooking techniques.
For starters, he’s a master of hospitality, a genius at making people feel comfortable cooking outside their comfort zone. He does this with wit, intelligence and kindness but also with a particular skill for smoothly contextualising the dishes he is teaching: their origins and influences, how history and immigration, borrowing, improvising and adapting have shaped them and how food is a great example of how diversity links rather than divides us.
Tan came to Australia aged 17 to study history but soon succumbed to the siren song of the restaurant, running first Tatler’s Café in Sydney and then the ground-breaking vegetarian restaurant Shakahari in Melbourne. He returned to university to complete his education but was also invited to be a host on the SBS series The Food Lovers’ Guide to Australia. This was the first public inkling that here was a guy who not only knew his stuff but was a brilliant communicator.
The first Tony Tan cooking school opened in 2000 and was run out of his Melbourne home with wine served alongside lessons, demonstrating his sharp hospo instincts for putting students at ease. The second version of the school opened in 2021, but this one in his Trentham home in regional Victoria allowed him to add a produce garden and chooks to the mix. His classes rightfully remain on the bucket list of any self-respecting food lover, but it’s with his two acclaimed cookbooks, Hong Kong Food City and Tony Tan’s Asian Cooking Class, where his legacy is apparent.
With their accounts of personal and general food history, explanatory lists of ingredients and precise, beautifully written recipes that are never dumbed down but carefully and methodically detailed in a way that works for professional and savvy home cooks alike, Tan has produced two cooking classics that firmly belong on bookshelves with all the other dog-eared, food-splattered masters. Outstanding contribution may be underselling Tony Tan’s influence on the way we eat.
See the full list of winners in this year’s Gourmet Traveller Annual Restaurant Awards.
Past winners of the Outstanding Contribution to Hospitality Award
- 2024: The Ayubi family, Parwana Afghan Kitchen, SA
- 2023: Sean Moran, Sean’s, NSW
- 2022: Dani Valent, VIC
- 2021: Amy Chanta, NSW
- 2020: Due to COVID-19, a Hospitality Honours List was introduced in lieu of Restaurant Awards
- 2019: Kylie Kwong, NSW
- 2018: Rootstock, NSW
- 2017: Ronni Kahn, OzHarvest, NSW
- 2016: Bruce Pascoe, VIC
- 2015: Joost Bakker, VIC
- 2014: Alla Wolf-Tasker, Lake House, VIC
- 2013: George Biron, Sunnybrae, VIC
- 2012: Janni Kyritsis, NSW
- 2011: The Hemmes family, Merivale, NSW
- 2010: Cheong Liew, SA
- 2009: Leo Schofield, NSW
- 2008: Donlevy Fitzpatrick, VIC
- 2007: Phillip Searle, NSW
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