Melissa Leong

It takes a lot of guts to pull up stumps from a successful career, surrounded by the people you love.

Laos is considered by many as the dark horse of Southeast Asian cuisine, a culmination of the rich food heritage of neighbouring countries China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.

I have spent a lot of time in L.A. It's sort of like my third home - Sydney, rural Tasmania and then L.A.

First and foremost, if you want to be a good writer, you need to be a good eater. You need to be fearless when it comes to eating, you can't show predilections or bias.

I'd like to see a return to old-school values, classic service and the old-world glamour of what dining - going out - is supposed to be.

Fast casual is a wonderful way to eat. The casualisation of fine dining has allowed everyone to feel comfortable, but at the same time you do sacrifice a sense of occasion.

Elevating baked eggs to exotic, spice-laden heights, Australians have come a long way since the days of only knowing Middle Eastern cuisine to be dried-out pucks of falafel, or the occasional late-night kebab.

It's hard to comprehend a hot brunch menu without a shakshuka.

Given that southern Italian pasta-making doesn't incorporate the richness of egg yolks like they do in the north, even the basic hero of Italian cuisine - pasta - is vegan.

India's obsession with food and its cultural importance in nourishing not just the body, but community and spirituality too, goes some way to explaining why Indian home cooking is hard to beat.

A reasonably new theme in the western world, Indian culture has known how to heal the body through food for thousands of years.

One of the best things about 'The Chefs' Line' has been seeing how these generations-honed recipes fare when they go up against professional ones.

Almost everyone who loves to cook has at least one recipe handed down to them from a member of their family or community, and those kinds of recipes represent generations of cooking, testing, adjusting and evolving, so you know they're killer.

Have you ever booked multiple restaurants so you could decide on the night where to go? Complained about the price of a dish that you loved? Ordered a coffee to use a cafe's wi-fi for half a day? If you said 'yes' to any of those, chances are there's a restaurateur out there who's hurting a little because of it.

The idea of eating one kind of food day in and day out, for some, is sometimes the only option.

For those of us who are lucky enough to not worry about where our next meal is coming from, it can be difficult to consider a life where the choice and supply of what you eat is extremely limited.

As Australian palates continue to be curious and enquiring, so does the variety and regional specificity of cuisine options.

It seems like our first food memories, no matter how unpleasant, often end up making their way into our hearts anyway.

Asking people about their first food memories can be illuminating.

When you think about a post-swim snack at the local pool, you'd be forgiven for thinking ham and cheese toasties, finger buns and red frogs before cassava fries, arepas and Latin tunes.

The great thing about discovering all the food treasures that Box Hill has to offer is that most of them are packed into an area small enough to wrap your arms around.

It's hard enough for most restaurants to create and present a single menu that makes sense to the diner, let alone two.

A key feature of Macedonia's protein dishes is the mix of meat, so you'll often find a stew of pork and chicken, for example, rather than a singular beast.

Country town to the city heart, in every corner of the globe you'll find a Chinatown, a Chinese restaurant or an Asian grocer. From this vast and ancient culture, we credit noodles, dumplings, rice, countless spices and cooking techniques to have enriched every culture that they've landed in.

In Australia, Chinese food culture has imparted flavour, dimension and excitement to the way we eat.

For the most part, Australian diners are familiar with kimchi, Korean fried chicken and even bimbimbap - those deliciously nourishing bowls of rice topped with a rainbow of veggies and grilled meat - but that's where some folks' awareness stops.

For the young, and those newly introduced to Australia, milkbars represented an opportunity to dip a toe in the water when it came to discovering Australian food culture at a grass roots level.

Milkbars were not only a crucial part of Australian food culture for nearly half a century, but also influenced the way many of us connected with neighbours.

For many of us, milkbars gave us our first taste of the concept of saving and spending, treats and indulgence.

Whether your childhood roots lie in the city, the country or possibly more crucially in the neighbourhood suburbs of this wide brown land, a trip to the milkbar with your friends has long been a beloved rite of passage when it comes to growing up in Australia.

Freshly grated nutmeg over fresh pasta with truffle oil is simple perfection. It's also integral in any good bechamel or chai mix.

Think of the phrase 'dining institution' as a badge of honour. One that is earned after many years, and many more hearts won.

A restaurant open for less than a month is many things, but an institution it most definitely isn't.

Bangkok's street food culture may have recently been forced to clean up its act but personally, we think there's nothing better than a steaming bowl of noodles eaten within tripping distance of traffic, washed down with a cold beer, of course.

If it's a competition for which country has the best street food culture, you could do worse than back Thailand.

Australians do love a good food festival. From regional gems like The Taste of Tasmania to Margaret River Gourmet Escape, diehard eaters have a litany of opportunities to revel in Australia's great produce and chow down on food made by some of the brightest culinary talent from here and abroad.

Chinese dumpling and noodle trainspotters know that the best versions usually come from obscure hole-in-the-wall joints where personal space and flattering lighting isn't a consideration and splatter-proof menus are customary.

Not all of us were lucky enough to be born into a huge Lebanese family, where visiting relatives and being stuffed with copious amounts of pickles, hummus, felafel and kibbeh is not just a way of life but a birth right.

No matter where you live in the world, the contribution that Chinese migration has had on food culture is undeniable.

From hearty beet-red borscht and soft, pliable pierogi dumplings to dill-scented pickles and hearty braises, the food of Eastern Europe - that is The Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Poland, Georgia and their close neighbours - is tasty stuff, but it's never really taken off in Australia in any significant way.

If there's somewhere that in no way resembles Eastern Europe, it's Australia.

Every so often, the hospitality industry gives us a champion - a bright spark that lights up a room and makes everyone feel that little bit extra special just by being around them. Simon Lay - aka. Charles Bronson from the East - was such a man.

For the most part, we've moved past the awkward-for-everyone period of food bloggers toting giant DSLR cameras and flash kits in restaurants, but that's been replaced by almost everyone armed with a phone stopping to immortalise their breakfast.

To be fair, restaurant culture has always been about bragging rights - such is the elitist nature of food. It's just that social media makes it that much easier for everyone to play the game.

My job involves sharing food and the stories behind the plate, in part, via social media.

I have a confession to make: my name is Melissa Leong and I am a former food blogger.

In the cultural Thermomix that is Australia, it's natural that we pick up a taste for flavours, techniques and ingredients that are integral to a place or a people not from our own background.

Our favourite restaurants, cafes and eateries put a lot of thought into what they do, mostly for our pleasure. Perhaps we should consider a little more often, what we bring to this edible equation.

Perceived value is paramount for most diners; a feeling of satisfaction that what you've paid for is commensurate with what you've received. That is, provided your expectations are rational.

Our favourite restaurant, cafe, noodle joint or eating house is always there for us when we need them, from morning coffee to major milestone, hump day or Fri-yay.