Local Chefs Discover the Regions Produce

On Thursday 3rd December 25 chefs from Tropical North Queensland’s best restaurants embarked on a tour of the tablelands.  Visiting 13 sites and 5 producers that included fruit, vegetable and herb growers, meat producers, native food producers, cheese maker, nuts, coffee,  a distillery and an ice-creamery, they were astounded at the quality of products available regionally. 

 The tour was organised by Australian Tropical Foods as part of a Food Industry project, initiated by Advance Cairns and funded through Queensland Government Department of Education, Economic Development and Innovation.  It bought together chefs and farmers face-to-face in an effort to source local food for the regions restaurant menus. 

Just-picked ultra fresh zucchini’s with beautiful flowers were like a magnet for chefs who would prefer their produce comes directly to them from the Tablelands instead of the road trip to Brisbane and back.

The meat producers who care with a passion about their animals and the quality of the meat will surely receive some orders, and for many chefs, they were unaware of the beautiful local cheese on offer.

The day was long and action packed and dropping into Mt Uncle Distillery in the late afternoon for a Mojito (or two) made of their new Platinum Rum just hit the right spot.  That was followed by the final visit of the day at Emerald Creek Ice-Creamery where a feeding frenzy of around 15 great tropical flavours was eagerly consumed.

The day was a great success and set the plans for another tour in the early part of 2010 to include the Cassowary Coast .

For more images go to Chefs Tour of the Tablelands

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Chef's Corner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.