DINKUM DINING
Camel on the menu
A distinctive native cuisine style is emerging in Alice Springs that could one day rival the scenic delights of Central Australia.
Story Kevin Boyle Photos John Henshall
Alice Springs is stuck right out in the middle of Australia. Hard bitten locals – and there are a lot of them – says its chief claim to fame is that it has the best choice of beaches of any town in Australia. It’s just that most of them are 2000 kilometres away. However, now there is another. It is the development of a distinctive regional Central Australian cuisine, based on traditional European and Asian cooking techniques, but using the bounteous foods and flavourings that nature has provided locally.
Driven by the town’s leading chefs, the result is dishes in traditional
guise, but wonderfully infused with new flavours drawn from so-called native
ingredients.
But it is certainly not bush tucker. Rather, the food could find a happy
home in the best eating-houses around the world. Chefs Jimmy Shu, Beat
Keller and Sven Hug created an array of foods in distinctive Central Australian
style at the recent Alice Springs Expo that had the crowds applauding and
salivating at the same time. 
Full story OUTBACK Issue 35 June/July 2004
