After 10 days at the Hilton Nagoya and a very successful Australian Food Festival, Vic Cherikoff and I travelled by bullet train to Osaka to host an Australian Food Festival at the Hilton Osaka The festival was available for guests in the Hilton’s fine dining restaurant, The Seasons and in the Checkers Brasserie from from the 19th – 26th June 2006.

In the fine dining restaurant, Seasons we prepared set menus for lunch and dinners and featured dishes such as ; 

• Wattleseed infused beef fillet with wild rosella jam, kumara mash
• Grilled barramundi fillet with lemon myrtle mash and quandong confit
• Wattleseed pavlova with a wild rosella confit
• Quandong crème brulee with macadamia nut ice cream

In the Hilton Osaka’s Checkers Brassiere we prepared a new menu everyday for lunch and dinner featuring flavours of Australia such as kangaroo, riberries, wattleseed, lemon myrtle, wild limes, paperbark and over several dozen other Australian ingredients flown in especially for the event.

Highlights from the menu in Checkers Brassiere include;

• Red Desert Dusted Tasmanian salmon with yakajirri hollandaise
• Seared kangaroo fillet with mountain pepper sauce
• Lamb rump with Illawarra plum sauce
• Wildfire spiced seared tuna tossed in lemon aspen chilli sauce
• Wattleseed tiramisu

I would like to thank the sponsors of the event which included Australian Airlines, Wolf Blass Wines, Fosters Beer, King Island Dairy Cheeses, Berri Fruit Juices, MLA, Cheetham Salt and Shin Nagatomo from Vacel Inc for the kangaroo and crocodile.

I would like to thank the management team at the Hilton Osaka, especially General Manager Heinz Shwander, Executive Chef, Guenael Le Berre and Executive Sous Chef Gerald Vaux who have all worked to make the Australian event a success.

Click here to see photos of the Australian food and wine festival