I've been fascinated by Australian cuisine for years, since discovering their glamorous food and wine magazines at an international newsstand. There, in page after glossy page, was a familiarly English-speaking world made exotic by Asian and Eastern influences - and an irreverent, cool attitude. In Australian Gourmet Traveller and Vogue Entertaining (imagine, a Vogue devoted to eating), beautiful food was lovingly displayed, often so tight in the frame that it got a little embarassing. These people weren't squeamish about getting intimate with their food: In those pages, they ate, they drank, they could even look a whole fish in its glassy eye and drool.
  That cold evening in Melbourne, in my search for someplace to eat and recalibrate, the magazine world became real. Light poured from brightly-lit restaurants, the crowds coolly casual, no expensive shoes or secret handshakes required to have a nice night on the town. Melbourne feels like a city that enjoys going out, that isn't afraid to indulge. It also feels like the port town it is, with a diverse density of people all packed into a small space. There are hundreds of restaurants to choose from, and even the bistro menus are wild. At the current hot spot, Ezard, Teage Ezard is serving a tortelli of veal sweetbreads with chinese mushrooms, seared spinach and Sichuan pepper glaze, while the local favorite, Punch Lane, spikes its crabcakes with cilantro and cumin for a distinctly Middle Eastern twist.
  You could call it fusion food if that weren't such a curse, but in fact this deft blending of cultures is the reason Australian chefs have garnered such a buzz. Like Britain, Australia was accused for years of having no cuisine (if you don't hold meat pies in high esteem). And just as last decade's British brat-pack of chefs pulled their country out of that rut and into the spotlight, now the Australians have bumped them out in turn, with chefs like Cheong Liew, Christine Manfield and Tetsuya Wakuda on the tip of every food critic's tongue.
  Raw products constitute one area where Australia stands apart, as I found out first-hand at 7 a.m. the next day. Langton's, a restaurant noted for its wine list, had kindly offered to let this out-of-practice chef come in and help for a day. I took them up on it, but soon found there was little I could offer, as these fish were straight out of Oz. Chef Jeremy Strode informed me that the big silver was hapuka, the meaner-looking one barramundi; both were cold-water fish from off the coast of New Zealand with meaty, rich flesh. Then there were Port Allington mussels, Streaky Bay scallops, Smokey Bay oysters and King George whiting, all straight from local waters. Strode was accustomed to good fish back in the UK, where he's from, but he's thrilled with the quality and variety here, and almost ecstatic about the greens: "The produce is one of the pluses of working in Australia," Strode said, checking in celeriac so fragrant it tempts biting like an apple. "Back in Britain, it was nothing like this - you couldn't get the variety, the season was so much shorter."
  Variety is key to interweaving cuisines successfully: It's much more convincing when the chef comes by the ingredients honestly. In this vast country, with its continental clime in the south, desert in the middle and tropics around the edges, there's not much the land can't produce. Quality is as important, and Strode, it turns out, knows who raises his chickens; who makes his cheese; who bakes his bread; and who grows his pears, as does everyone in the kitchen.
  Wine plays a part in defining Australian cuisine, too, I soon learn. As an outsider who didn't grow up with these wines, Strode consciously designs his food to complement their exuberant flavors, a strategy that natives have long incorporated into their plates. He's put a lot of thought into it, and when I confided to him that I'd always been confounded as to what to serve with a big, burly Aussie chardonnay, he scoffed at the thought and sent me out a plate. A thick, meaty fillet of hapuka sitting on a bed of fried diced potatoes, ringed with golden oyster mushrooms and dressed in a chicken jus bolstered with veal stock: It's a rich, delicious dish that becomes stunning with a glass of bold Yarra gold.
  This emphasis on the provenance of the produce and the quality of the wine recalls a similar trend in the States, the culinary awakening inspired by a recognition of what the land itself can produce. But back home a few weeks later, matching Australian wine with our own very fine food, I find there's an element missing, without which the excitement and Australian-ness is lacking. So I pick up every Australian cookbook available here - which would have been none, before these Australian chefs hit the big time.
  The first is Arabesque, a book of "Modern Middle Eastern Food," by chef Greg Malouf of O'Connell's in Melbourne. It's arranged by ingredient, as per the current focus. But for a twist, Malouf has chosen foods that reflect his Lebanese heritage and woven them into Australian bistro cuisine. So under "almond," Malouf gives a risotto; under "yoghurt," a fragrant basil tzatziki. While some people detest this mix-matching of cuisines, he believes it's a natural transition. "Without this eternal quest for new and different ideas we would still be munching on lentils and cabbage," he writes. For him, the synthesis of his Lebanese household and suburban Melbourne upbringing is entirely natural. By extension, any suburbanite who grew up with Lebanese neighbors could do the same thing - if they paid enough attention.
  Apparently they haven't, though, until very recently, if Christine Manfield is to be believed. The rockstar-chef of Sydney writes in Spice, "Until recent times, Australian cooking in general had very little to do with spice. In the formative years of white settlement in this country, diet and eating habits were entirely inappropriate to resources, climate and lifestyle." Manfield's exotic recipes show how far Australia has come, with plays on traditional Australian dishes made exotic with borrowed cusines, or traditional foreign cuisines brought home with western methods and Australian style. The results are stunning, thought-provoking plates of intense compexity (chef-y things like duck livers with garam masala, or seaweed noodles with oysters and cilantro pesto), Australian in their multitudinous influences but rendered into a very personal cuisine.
  The excitement of Australian cuisine really comes home in Tetsuya, though, the eponymous book from Tetsuya Wakuda, the Sydney chef of the season. The first page it falls open to says it all: rack of lamb served with blue cheese and miso sauce. Something about this recipe short-circuits the brain. It's the cheese in a Japanese dish, or the miso in an Australian dish, or the unexpected good sense it makes to put these two deliciously sweet-funky fermented food products into a sauce where they will seamlessly combine. Food-lovers are predictable: I immediately run out and buy the ingredients.
  Dinner is stellar. The lamb is roasted to perfection, in a method that would shock Julia Child (turn the oven to barely warm and let the meat slowly heat through, so it never loses its rosy glow). The sauce is all silken richness, sweet and funky, familiar and new. It's all I need in order to be convinced that Australia is producing some of the most compelling dishes in the world, and I resolve right then and there to pay more attention to America's own varied foods.

Roasted Halibut with Chicken and Thyme Jus
Adapted from Chef Jeremy Strode, Langton's.
Serves four.

1 1/2 cups rich chicken stock
3 sprigs fresh thyme
sea salt and pepper
1/2  cup white flour
cayenne 
3 tablespoons olive oil 
20 small oyster mushrooms
4 thick fillets of halibut (or other meaty white fish)

1 tablespoon sumac
1 tablespoon fennel seeds, toasted and crushed
zest of 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
4 salmon medallions, skinned
1/4 teaspoon salt
pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

4 small racks of lamb, 6 cutlets each, trimmed
3 tablespoons grapeseed oil (or olive oil)
1 large bunch thyme
1 large bunch snowpea leaves (or peashoots or pea sprouts)

1 1/2 cups chicken stock
3 1/2 ounces Japanese white miso paste
1/2 ounce blue cheese
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon mirin
1 teaspoon grated ginger