Table Talk: Analiese Gregory

Meet Analiese, the trailblazing Tassie-based chef who spends her days in nature foraging, diving, hunting, cooking on beaches, and connecting with the people whose life work it is to grow our food.

Analiese was born in Auckland, New Zealand, to a Welsh father and Chinese-Dutch mother. Raised on a mix of stroopwafels and pork buns, she was schooled long-distance for three years during a caravan trip around Australia.

She has a string of enviable kitchen credits to her name, including The Ledbury, Michel Bras, Mugaritz and Sydney’s Quay. Having flirted with returning to France, she instead packed her bags on a whim in 2017 and moved to Tasmania where she headed up the state's most acclaimed restaurant, Franklin in Hobart.

When Analiese is not busy with one of her many projects, she is renovating her 110-year-old farmhouse in the Huon Valley, where she lives with a cornucopia of farm friends and a wardrobe filled with charcuterie (a new hobby; she insists it was the best place for it!) and plans to open a bespoke intimate restaurant.

She also has her own TV series ‘A Girl’s Guide to Hunting, Fishing and Wild Cooking’ that follows her cooking and outdoor adventures in Tasmania.

photo credit: Adam Gibson

Tell us about the recipe featured in your Food For Everyone poster - Crayfish Cocktail. What's the story behind it?

This is a dish that came to be when I got home to Tasmania from Sydney one day and found a friend sitting on my lawn, holding a crayfish, with the intention of staying for dinner. All I had in the house were potatoes, lovage growing in the garden and eggs from the chicken. Thus the crayfish potato salad was born.

What do you like to cook for the people you love?

Food that's slow and takes a long time, including ingredients I've grown or foraged or raised. Such as a paella made with saffron I grew, a chargrilled rooster that I raised and killed, or sea urchin I dived for on blinis with sour cream.

How do you like to shop for food?

I like to shop in a market setting, or walking through a farm and picking vegetables out of the ground as I go.

If we were to peer into your fridge and pantry, what would we find?

Soy sauce, three types of butter, Elgaar sour cream, about 25 different vinegars, and rain-fed brown rice

What is one of your happiest food memories?

Sitting in a stream in Lusigny-sur-Ouche in France in the summer with a Pét Nat chilling in the stream, a hunk of day old bread, a home grown tomato and goat’s cheese.