An interview with Gay Bilson, formerly with Berowra Waters Inn & Bennelong Restaurant at Sydney Opera House - was at the top of Sydney's food scene for a long time.

Her name is synonymous with the revolution in Australian cooking and restaurant life that began in the 1970s. Berowra Waters Inn, one of Australia's most influential and acclaimed restaurants, was situated thirty kilometres north of Sydney, devoted patrons made the pilgrimage to it until it closed in 1995.

Michal Kluvanek, Gay Bilson, NLA, Australian Food and Wine Writers' Festival, 1997

Gay Bilson's book, Plenty: digressions on food, won the 2005 The Age Book of the Year Award and the 2005 Kibble Award for women writers. Gay Bilson has written much about food and gastronomy, contributing articles and columns to major newspapers such as The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald, and to magazines as diverse as Artlink and Divine.

In recent years she has also collaborated on meals at public venues, incorporating ideas of theatre and performance and community, for the Adelaide Festival of the Arts, the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival and The Performance Space in Sydney.

I interpret the 'revolution in Australian cooking and restaurant life that began in the 1970s' as a turn to European food ---particularly French and Italian. I was never very fond of that style of cooking.I found the shift to regional foods and the new Australian cusine with its more Asian influence far more attractive and suitable to our climate.