Insatiable: My Life in the Kitchen

Tony Bilson

3.71 · Rating details · 7 ratings · 3 reviews

Tony Bilson has been one of Australia’s leading chefs for over forty years, and his restaurants represent milestones in Australian gastronomy. From a childhood in country Victoria, Tony quickly established himself as a true bon vivant, and he recounts wild nights and wild appetites with an extraordinary cast of artists, painters, writers and politicians. A Who’s Who of Aus ...more

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Hardcover, 320 pages

Published October 2nd 2011 by Murdoch Books/Pier 9 (first published October 2011)

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Aug 30, 2013 Dan rated it really liked it

Thoroughly enjoyable romp through the Godfather of Australian cuisine's life. You'd probably have to be both Australian and, of a certain age, to follow all the name dropping, but the story is a delight. ...more

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Jan 23, 2021 Sarah rated it it was amazing

Shelves: memoir

I never met Tony Bilson, being more familiar with Gay Bilson, who was married to my Uncle Jerry Morris for a period in the 60's, so I started reading this memoir having been somewhat remotely acquainted with much of the political, social, and cultural setting that Tony describes in the early part of his book.

I remember Jerry at the end of his life explaining to me how important the Albion was to gatherings of the left in Melbourne (and he was horrified it was now a Country Road store in Lygon St I never met Tony Bilson, being more familiar with Gay Bilson, who was married to my Uncle Jerry Morris for a period in the 60's, so I started reading this memoir having been somewhat remotely acquainted with much of the political, social, and cultural setting that Tony describes in the early part of his book.

I remember Jerry at the end of his life explaining to me how important the Albion was to gatherings of the left in Melbourne (and he was horrified it was now a Country Road store in Lygon Street), and after reading this biography, was interested in the connection between Tony Knox (married to Mietta) and the Eltham mud-brick housing movement. I remember Gay cooking a pig on a spit at Jerry's own mudbrick house near Eltham on a hot Melbourne Christmas day in the 1980s and the values divide that would play out over conversations over lunch between my families 'old industrial left' socialist brand of left politics and the more libertarian 'new left' politics that were the more defining influences for the Morris-Bilson clan.

As I also love France, its revolutionary history, culture, gastronomy, and the intellectual tradition of Simone De Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Satre, I related completely to the chapter on the 'formative years' where Tony describes sneaking away from boarding school and the stultifying atmosphere of Melbourne Grammer to join a more bohemian atmosphere over long lunches at the Balzac restaurant in East Melbourne, owned by Georges and Mirka Mora where 'John and Sunday Reed were stalwarts and Blackman was dishwashing in the kitchen and John Perceval exchanged his ceramics for meals' at and where he was introduced to modern French cooking and where he begins to realize his own passion to become a chef. Tony had strong enduring friendships and was always open to meeting new people and sharing ideas (often in pubs) which led to many new creative ventures through incidental conversations.

In his brilliant career, Tony Bilson seeks to have 'gastronomy accepted naturally as part of artistic life' and remains steadfastly committed to this approach throughout his entire life. His book describes so many upheavals in his life despite the overwhelming success of so many of his restaurants, but as he describes it, when a venture sometimes failed, 'like a fiddler, a chef can take his talent anywhere and we all go through difficulties.' Tony offers so many lessons on how to survive in the restaurant world and advises new chefs to invest the time in perfecting skills and showing 'respect, love and study and exchange of ideas of the rich gastronomic heritage we all share' but also always seek new approaches so that new methods get developed that meet the customs and needs of the current time' to stay ahead of the game.

Tony Bilson made sure he did just that, traveling extensively through France and meeting chefs, food critics, and restauranteurs and in his own restaurants adapted many of the techniques that he had observed along the way, as well as remaining committed to the idea of the importance of gastronomy to a culture where (and he quotes the New York food write Joseph Wechsberg here) 'the table is a place of physics and chemistry, of commerce and trade, of politics and ideas, but above all, a great table is an art - 'the most indispensable art.'

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