BILSON KNOCKS INTO THREE COCKED HATS

TETSUYA WAKUDA, TONY BILSON AND NEIL PERRY ... THE AUTHOR FIRST MET THE NOW GREAT TETS WHEN HE WAS MAKING SUSHI AND COOKING BURGHERS IN BILSON'S LEGENDARY KINSELAS, A THREE-STOREY EMPORIUM FOR HUNGER, THIRST AND THEATRE IN TAYLOR SQUARE, SYDNEY, AROUND 1985 ... PERRY HAS NEVER BEEN ON THE BILSON TEAM, BUT MAKES A FAIR GO OF IT WITH HIS FISH

FROM the blackest extremes of his dark moody gizzards, the DRINKSTER congratulates a beloved lifelong friend and colleague, Tony Bilson, for this week regaining his Three Hats in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide awards, and a fortnight back winning the 2011 National Award for Best Restaurant from the Australian Hotels Association, the hotel industry’s highest award for culinary perfection.

This follows his triumphant Penfolds dinner at the Australian embassy in Paris, with incredible Penfolds classics selected by co-host and sponsor, Penfolds chief winemaker, Peter Gago. The dish below is Nick Haselgrove's phone deleriousness of Bilson's Manjimup Truffles, Foie Gras, Fig and Brioche. Western Australian truffles!

Click on the image to see the entire menu and wine list.

Bilson’s restaurant history is a formidable and persistent skyrocket, at the head of Australian cuisine for over forty years. A tad spitty, maybe, when all the money in the world suddenly vanishes, and customers withdraw their tease. But Bilson was never a gastronomic fizzer, and he never goes away. From cooking chops in a pub in South Melbourne, through Johnny Walker’s steakhouse in the Sydney CBD, to, in some sort of order, Tony’s Bon Gout, Berowra Waters Inn, Kinselas, Bilson’s on Circular Quay, Tony’s Fine Bouche, The Treasury, Ampersand, Tony Bilson’s Canard, Bilson’s at the Radisson Blu, Number One Wine Bar and The Royal Exchange (the latter three which he runs simultæneously, now), this amazing man, and his family, has never ever given up, through economic slump and boom, and the odd personal health and wealth pisser that would erase lesser mortals.

From Bon Gout on, I recall great meals in each of those restaurants: dining with Bocuse in that astounding Bilson's in the International Passenger Terminal on Circular Quay; with Richard Olney at The Treasury; with Stephen Hickinbotham and David Hohnen at Berowra; with Gretel and Steggers at Kinselas; don't get me started.

AMANDA BILSON, PAUL HAMLIN BOOK EDITOR, WIFE OF TONY, AND MOTHER OF LILY AND EDWARD, THEIR RESPECTFUL BOHAUTE RESTAURANT INSURRECTIONIST OFFSPRING ... RED BERRIES IN KIRSCH AND THE AUTHOR, IN TONY'S FINE BOUCHE, CA 1990 ... THE WALLS WERE HUNG WITH PERFECTLY SENSUAL CARDBOARD COLLAGES BY PETER POWDITCH




To see the current wine list at Bilson’s at the Radisson Blu, click here. To perve on the funky bohaute cuisine of Number One, click here. To join the fustier clubland of The Royal Exchange, click here.

For a recent profile, click here, understanding the journalist’s regular mistake - there was no divorce of Gay and Tony – they never married: she changed her name by deed poll from Cheeseman to Bilson, which was easier when they had their children, Morgan and Sido.

Gleefully married to Amanda for 24 years, grrr, of recent years Bilson's been working hard with the people in the Bawaka homelands, East Arnhem Land, trustfully swapping seeps of knowledge. They're thinking of a modern industrial kitchen to swap and merge their stuff. You watch the graduates of this school!

Bilson has also been busy in Bangla Desh, building essential cultural connections through the friendship of cuisine.

In the Winegrowers' Diary introduction written by the great Walter James for David Wynn in 1970, there lies a very frank paragraph:

"In some fields of productive endeavour, of course, you cannot achieve much without substantial means; it is only a little sad that so many men of ability as they reach for success and meet it are beguiled into allowing the means to submerge the aim and in the end are content to do, adequately enough, no more than a hundred others around them are doing equally well. Their obituaries describe these people as successful businessmen and they pass promptly into oblivion."

This did not apply to David Wynn, and will never apply to the fearless Bilson.

BILSON: EASTER BREAKFAST AT WHITEY'S, BAROSSA RANGES, ABOUT 1989

For Jancis Robinson's review of the Paris dinner, click here.