Chef Sam Gowing

21/10/2026

An honour to be a part of Entwined - a major photographic exhibition by Rob Palmer Photography – winner of the prestigious National Photographic Portrait Prize in 2020.

The launch of Savour The Tweed tonight, so many wonderful friends, chefs, producers, growers, distillers - we won’t let a little bit of rain dampen our enthusiasm!

18/10/2026

Another epic Everest at Royal Randwick!
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As guests of our wonderful friends ATC Chairman Tim Hale and his gloriously gorgeous wife Catherine Hale, we celebrated the 10th running of the world’s richest turf race. What a finish — Tempted toppled the mighty Ka Ying Rising!
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Normie’s still wondering what all the fuss is about - last year he was mobbed by a stable of young blokes, losing him amongst the crowd!
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Me? Racing is in my blood. I was just six or seven when my dad took me around Victoria’s racetracks, scouting fillies and colts for our Toolern Vale stud farm.
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Back then, the bookies happily accepted my 50-cent bets, knowing full well that I lived and breathed horses, studied form and bloodlines like other kids devoured Harry Potter.
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And so Australian racing ascends to The Everest, a tremendous achievement for the ATC. Add sensational dining in the Royal Randwick Ballroom, fabulous fashion with a touch of blue, wonderful company, old friends and new, and the thrill of race day, even backed a few winners along the way!

With 52,110 race goers singing Sweet Caroline at the top of their lungs — it’s another unforgettable Everest.

15/10/2026

The future of food isn’t just about what’s on our plate. It’s about understanding the person sitting in front of it.

After more than 40 years working across kitchens, nutrition, culinary education and wellness, I’ve seen our relationship with food evolve considerably. We’ve moved from counting calories towards understanding food quality, gut health, metabolic health and the complex relationship between what we eat and how we feel.

Now, another fascinating frontier is emerging: the intersection of nutritional genomics, epigenetics, personalised nutrition and artificial intelligence.

How nutritional science, personalisation and technology are changing the way we think about food — and why the human touch still matters.
SUBSTACK:

How nutritional science, personalisation and technology are changing the way we think about food — and why the human touch still matters.

11/10/2026

Sweet potato recipe testing for our event with Savour The Tweed showcasing local farm produce from Mate N Matt’s Cudgen Farm.

10/10/2026

My first love

This is the dessert that ignited my love of cooking. My first attempt was in my mother’s house in Melbourne when I was about six. It was the 1970s, a time when brown rice, soybeans, apricot chicken were practically de rigueur in every self-respecting, tie-dyed household.

Rather perfect for the era, don't you think? But I was far more interested in the sweet stuff!

Armed with an old gas oven, a mysterious instruction to leave the door ajar (whatever did that mean?), an endless wait and a rather generous dose of cochineal, voilà! A hot pink, flat disc of sweet, crunchy meringue.

Oops indeed!

It may not have looked much like a pavlova, but I’ve never forgotten it. That little pink disaster was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with food, and a reminder that some of our happiest kitchen memories begin with getting it gloriously wrong.

And here I am, fifty-four years later, still in love with the magic of the kitchen. Funny how one little pink disaster can turn into a lifetime of cooking, creating and feeding people.

Tell me, what was your first kitchen disaster? I’d love to hear it!

www.chefsamgowing.com/pavlova

08/10/2026

From Ubud to U-beauty!

Back in May, sitting at a little desk at my cosmic sister ’s during the Ubud Food Festival, I decided it was time to sunset the old paradigm of Food Health Wealth est. 2002 and bring everything under the Chef Sam Gowing banner.
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The website was already live, but for months I’ve been running both websites side by side while working out how to bring it all together properly. And blimey, what a rabbit hole!
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Domain migrations, redirects, staging sites, PHP upgrades, backups, hosting, DNS, email accounts, analytics, SEO and enough website troubleshooting to make your head spin. There have been moments when the whole thing threatened to go pear-shaped, added a few extra wrinkles, yet we kept going.
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Along the way, I ditched the chimp (goodbye Mailchimp, hello MailPoet!), gave NOW & ZEN a fresh home, got crystal clear about my services, polished recipes, alt texted images, rewrote blogs, html and SEO-ed the absolute clackers out of nearly 400 posts and pages. Yes, nearly 400!
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And we did it ourselves. No agencies, no digital marketers, no SEO experts. Just me and a very patient AI digital sidekick, learning, problem-solving and occasionally wondering what the hell we’d got ourselves into.
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It’s been a massive exercise, but it’s about more than technology. It’s about evolving, embracing AI, getting clear on what I do and creating a digital home that reflects where I’m heading after more than four decades in food, nutrition and wellness tourism.
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So here we are. Chef Sam Gowing. A new chapter, a clearer vision and plenty more to come.

www.chefsamgowing.com

And you thought I was just a cook who told jokes.
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Now, where’s that margarita? 🍸

Happy Friday, sports fans!

PS if you still have an email address that ends in .com - it will get you nowhere!

Take that, Spammers!

07/10/2026

Find yourself a husband who laughs at all your jokes.
He can cook too! 💕

05/10/2026

Long weekend comfort food for a brokenhearted friend 💝

05/10/2026

Red emperor is one of those beautifully simple Australian fish that needs very little fuss.

In this red emperor recipe, crisp-skinned fillets are paired with earthy roasted beetroot, silky beetroot purée and a bright citrus dressing.

Capers and fresh dill bring everything into balance. It is colourful, fresh and full of flavour.

02/10/2026

𝗜𝗙 𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗗𝗢𝗡’𝗧 𝗟𝗔𝗨𝗚𝗛…
𝗦𝗠𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗕𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗦. 𝗛𝗢𝗪 𝗔𝗥𝗘 𝗪𝗘 𝗦𝗨𝗣𝗣𝗢𝗦𝗘𝗗 𝗧𝗢 𝗦𝗨𝗥𝗩𝗜𝗩𝗘?

I’m going to say what a lot of small business owners are probably thinking but are too exhausted to say.

The ATO’s decision to stop accepting direct credit card payments from 30 November 2026 has really got me thinking (ranting) about the reality of being a very small business owner.

I’m a one-woman business. Five years ago, I wound up our former restaurant company — because, let's face it, who in their right mind would go into the restaurant business these days? I was left with around $58,000 in historical tax debt, accumulated over many years. I’ve spent the past five years steadily chipping away at it and had a payment plan in place to have it paid off by the end of this year - I use an AMEX charge card for points - I’m now down to $4,452.60.

I’m not complaining about paying tax. I’m proud that I’ve kept paying and worked my way through that debt during some pretty excruciating years for a tourism-based business. A big part of my income came from corporate events — then came COVID, the floods and the broader downturn. The big-ticket work disappeared, but the costs and obligations didn’t.

And that’s the reality for so many small businesses. We’re dealing with rising costs, wages, insurance, compliance and increasingly narrow margins, while trying to keep cash flowing.

Now, with changes to card payments and the removal of card surcharges, those costs don’t simply disappear. Businesses have to absorb them or build them into their prices — and ultimately, that can mean higher prices for customers too.

That’s a small-business issue and a cost-of-living issue.

We’re constantly encouraged to be entrepreneurial, to have a go, create jobs and contribute to the economy. But there is a very real cost to taking that risk.

So I’m asking, on behalf of myself and the thousands of other small businesses trying to keep going:

HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO SURVIVE?

If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.

If you’re a small business owner, I’d genuinely love to hear how you’re managing the pressure right now. Are you feeling the same squeeze? What are you seeing in your business?

Let’s talk about it.