Writer – Page 9 – Dani Valent

I’m a journalist, restaurant critic, cookbook author, travel writer and screenwriter. I love telling stories!

My professional writing career started with travel publisher Lonely Planet. I was what they called a ‘parachutist’, which meant I’d go anywhere. That’s how I ended up writing about Bulgaria, Bonaire, Corsica, New York and Hong Kong.

One day my Lonely Planet boss said, “We need someone to go to Turkey to eat.” “That sounds like me,” I said. World Food Turkey was the result, a social, cultural and culinary investigation of Turkey which really turned me on to the rich possibilities of telling stories through food. Food is culture, history, family, life!

I’ve continued to thread food and travel through a writing career that’s included interviews with actors, politicians and even an astronaut. These days, I’m focusing on chefs, restaurants and cooking. My passion is connecting home cooks and eaters with great dishes and cuisines: if it’s tasty, I want to know about it, and I want you to know too.

Lonely Planet

The news about Lonely Planet cutting its editorial operations in Melbourne hit me hard. Not because I work there, not even because I know people there, not anymore. But I worked at the Melbourne-based travel publisher from 1994 and more or less built a life around the company till my last travel writing job for them in 2003. Lonely Planet was fun and exciting. It trusted me with amazing travel and work opportunities, and it was while working for the company that I could first say the words I’d always wanted to: ‘I’m a writer.’

Jacques Reymond

It’s Friday night in Jacques Reymond’s kitchen and I’ve just saved a junior chef from a bollocking. The Birkenstocked underling has just burned some wafers, and it hasn’t escaped the notice of the eagle-eyed maestro. But nor has my presence – even as I’m backed against the door with notepad and pen – and that’s enough, apparently, to make Reymond dish out a glare rather than the expected yell. “He sees everything,” says my wafer-burning friend. “I would have copped a spray if you weren’t here.”

Dylan Roberts. I cook

There are a few reasons that Claremont Tonic chef Dylan Roberts is glad to be feeding his friends by the Yarra today. He grew up in Wales and, even after 10 years in Australia, the shine hasn’t palled on eating outdoors. He’s serving food he loves to eat. “I like salads, raw vegetables and skewered stuff to grill,” he says. Roberts is also happy to cross-fertilise cuisines, which explains the lively tomato salad that swoops to Italy via Thailand. Above all, there’s the gratification of serving food to people who tell you how delicious it all is. “It’s a good feeling,” he says. “My friends are my number one fan club.”

Pierre Khodja

It’s not unusual for chefs to wax lyrical about meals shared with their children. Most nights they tiptoe to bed hours after the kids are tucked in, so family dinners “ when they happen “ are special. But Pierre Khodja, chef at Hawthorn’s Canvas restaurant, becomes particularly emotional when he talks about enjoying meals with his wife, Debbie, and their daughters Jamila, Anisa and Haniya. He has good reason: five years ago, it looked like the Khodjas may have eaten together for the last time.

Andrew Blake

Andrew Blake has a few hundred thousand regrets, one for every dollar he owed when his Southgate restaurant was shut down seven years ago. But he more keenly rues all the meals he missed with his two ex-wives and four children over the years. While he worked as a restaurant chef “between 1977 and 2002” Blake, 50, never cooked for his family. “I was always working, he says. “And, if I did get home, I couldn’t be fagged cooking, it was always takeaway. Perhaps that’s why he’s such a solicitous host this bright autumn morning, serving oyster shooters and buttermilk pancakes to his girlfriend, Jodie, his daughter Neredah and old friends.

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© Dani Valent 2024