My Favourite Holiday John Torode

Top celebrity chef John Torode reflects on his favourite breaks as he prepares to search his home nation of Australia in a new TV series.

John Torode is one of Britain’s top celebrity chefs. He’s a highly successful restaurateur but is best known as the face of the BBC’s MasterChef series. He presents the original series and the hugely popular Celebrity version with pal Gregg Wallace. He also hosts Junior MasterChef.

Aussie John has had a chance to his spend a prolonged period in his native land for a major new series, John Torode’s Australia. It sees him take a personal culinary road trip across the country, revisiting childhood haunts and meeting some of those creating today’s best dishes.

He told the Sunday Post: “In Australia you don’t go away on holiday, you go to the beach. I grew up on a beach in Melbourne our back gate opened on to the sand.

We had a catamaran in the garden that you’d lift over the fence and launch into the water.

In the back hallway there was a large piece of driftwood with a key on a string. You’d take that and open the boat shed about 10 minutes down the beach to take out the rowing boat to go fishing.

The beach was our life. Everyone came to hang out at our place.

The first big trip abroad was when my dad took us to America. I celebrated my ninth birthday at the Grand Canyon.

I remember we arrived in the US to see this thing called colour TV it was still black and white in Australia and they had more than two channels, which was exciting.

They had machines that dispensed soft drink. I’d never had a fizzy drink in my life until I went to America.

Funnily enough, the things I recall most are punctuated with food. I remember sitting in a caf in San Francisco and having pancakes and hash browns.

We nicknamed the guy cooking “Cranky Frankie” because he was so cross and the poor waitress was “Nervous Nora” because she was so anxious about getting told off. In Disneyland I had a stack of pancakes with fresh strawberries and had a hotdog on the street in New York.

It was an amazing trip that took us all the way round including Chicago, Washington, Niagara Falls, LA and Hawaii. In the UK I go to Cornwall a lot as my two older children live down there.

Sennen Beach is absolutely brilliant and Porscatho is really cool. You can go to Cornwall at any time of the year and the elements are what make it. It can be lovely and sunny but that’s not what Cornwall is about.

It’s about walks and pubs and friends and food. It’s a great place to be. And I’m a big fan of Thailand. It’s an amazing place. The great thing is they haven’t discovered refrigeration yet so their food is fresh which is always a joy.

For me a holiday now isn’t about sitting around on a beach. It’s about wandering around, which I love to do. I like to explore and smell and taste and be excited about what’s going on around me.”

John Torode’s Australia is new and exclusive to Good Food, weeknights at 8pm from Monday March 3 (Sky 247, Virgin 260).