"I love everything French," exclaims Maeve O’Meara when we speak a few days before she flies to Adelaide to MC a dinner at the Adelaide French Festival.
She has spent quite some time in France in the last few years, on her own time and to make the TV show French Food Safari with Guillaume Brahimi.
"We spent a lot of times in bakeries, exploring cheese and charcuterie, and of course, in beautiful restaurants," recalls O’Meara.
She has met legends of French cuisine like Alain Ducasse, Paul Bocuse and Pierre Hermé.
La Soirée Cliché in Adelaide
As a massive fan of French cuisine, O’Meara is the perfect MC for a French dinner at the Adelaide French Festival. La Soirée Cliché will mix contemporary art, seductive entertainment and of course, food.
The menu developed by restaurant Cliché’s executive chef Fabien Streit is banking on French classics like duck pâté, escargots, duck confit and beef cheeks.
O’Meara is especially excited to try the escargots, prepared with brioche, and the beef cheeks: "It’s such a beautiful, luscious meat," she says.
"He’s [chef Fabien Streit] serving them with lardons, baby onions and a mushroom sauce," she says.
French food at restaurant Cliché Source: Adelaide French Festival
Food Safari Earth and Water
O’Meara might be a fan of French food, she also has plenty of love for the local food scene: “France is such a fantastic repository of amazing food, but I think Australia is evolving as new cuisines come to our shores.
For the latest season of Food Safari, she travelled all around Australia to discover the endless possibilities of vegetables and fruits.
“We’re starting to learn that vegetables are not a side dish, that they are at the basis of so many cuisines,” she says.
She’s already putting together the next season, around the theme of water, which will be all about fish and seafood.
Maeve hunting for mushrooms with father-and-daughter duo Franca Norris and Angelo Bonacci. Source: Food Safari Earth
She’s also working on the cookbook of the Food Safari Earth and Water series, as well as preparing food tours with her company Gourmet Safaris, in exciting parts of the world like Corsica and Sardinia, but also closer to home in Byron Bay and the Victorian high country.
“I’m always having a food adventure, one way or the other,” she laughs.
La Soirée Cliché, part of the first edition of the Adelaide French Festival, is this Saturday, 13 January. .
