Rick Stein's top restaurants around the world includes two regional Aussie gems

Explore Travel

Celebrated British chef Rick Stein shares his seven favourite restaurants worldwide including two beloved regional Australian eateries. For the full list and interview, check out Explore Travel.

Transcript

00:00The first one is in Singapore and it's not in any way fine dining. It's in Maxwell Food Centre,

00:12one of the hawker's markets in Singapore. And it's actually a little place that does

00:19chicken rice, which is one of my favourite Asian dishes, which is basically just poached chicken,

00:26done in stock and sliced and served with rice made with a bit of chicken stock. But the great

00:35thing about it is it has a sauce made with fermented black beans, garlic, ginger, a little bit of sugar,

00:43chilli and soy sauce. And it's the black beans at the back of it that give it it's really unique

00:50flavour. Well, the next one is called Riley's Fish Shack in Tynemouth, right up in the north east of

00:59England. The reason I love it is it's very rugged. It's two shipping containers down on the beach

01:08and you have to climb, you have to go down a steep path to get to it. But when you get there,

01:16it's just sensational local seafood. And I particularly remember one of the dishes there

01:21was a crab souffle with Thermador sauce. It's just sensational. It's very visual because you're

01:29right on the beach. It's just got this sort of like, I don't know, funkiness about it, which is

01:36quite special. So the next one's actually in Australia on the New South Wales coast at Yamba.

01:43It's called the Beachwood Cafe. And the reason I really like it is Turkish. It's a Turkish lady

01:48that runs it, but it's sort of Turkish food that the Aussies would really like. I remember they

01:53are having a Turkish sardines and a side order of a broad bean salad. And particularly what I like

02:03was the Turkish beer FS that they had as well. Just, it just seemed to me to be the right sort of food

02:10for a beach side place like Yamba. Really enjoyed that. The next one is La Colondeur in the St. Paul

02:19de Vence. It's a little village, very close to Nice. And I've been going there for years and years

02:24with my wife Sass. The reason I like it is it, it, it's all about classic French cooking. The menu was

02:33hand painted in the sixties by a local artist. And it hasn't changed since simply because the menu is

02:41hand painted. All they do now is just put these classic dishes, put the price in pencil as it, as it

02:49changes over the years. And you get very simple things like, um, melon with parma ham, but it's

02:56charantay melon in season. They do the most fantastic chicken fricassee with morels. It's all the sort of

03:05food that I remember in my sort of youth and, and still want to eat now. The next one was called the

03:11Akiko Sushi Bar in San Francisco. It's tiny, like many good sushi bars, particularly in Japan. It's only

03:20got seats for, I don't know, 15, 20 people. A Japanese couple running it, very small, very, very special

03:29sushi, sashimi particularly, just remembered it for its sort of, um, its lack of pretension, but the

03:38excellence of, of its fish. The, the next one is in the island of Rhodes. It's called Stenja, a fish

03:45restaurant, um, just near the, the town of Lindos on the coast in Rhodes. The reason I like that fish is

03:52very local fish, particularly good there is, is the octopus and the fish stew that they do there. And I

04:01remember when the, the fish stew arrived, the guy that runs a restaurant said to me, what you need in this

04:09fish stew is loads of sea salt and loads of olive oil. So I just piled the fish stew with sea salt and

04:17lots and lots of olive oil. And it was just sensational and really good because the fish was so fresh. The next one is the

04:25Niagara Cafe in Gundagai in New South Wales. I've been doing a series in New South Wales called Rick Stein's

04:33Australia. And we had to go to this, what used to be called a milk bar in Gundagai. It was started in,

04:41I think the forties, thirties by a Greek family. And at the time, milk bars, which served great local

04:51hamburgers and milkshakes. They all had to have American names to make them sound posh and funky

04:59and trendy. So that's why this is called the Niagara after the Niagara Falls. They do original Aussie

05:06burgers. And when I first came to Australia in the sixties, the thing I remember most of all were the

05:12Aussie burgers, quite unlike anything you get in the States. I mean, with a really great beef pate with

05:19cheese, with bacon, often with egg and particularly tomato and beetroot. So really, really big filling,

05:30great chips and lovely milkshakes. I'm particularly fond of a chocolate malted milkshake, which they

05:38still do in the Niagara cafe.

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