Australian chefs travel world in search of taste sensations

The first time Benjamin Cooper took his kids to Thailand, his son was set on eating bugs. He'd heard his parents' travel tales of consuming creepy crawlies and boiling buffalo blood larb with tribal elders and wanted to follow suit. There was only one problem: they couldn't find any insects.

"For three weeks there were no bugs," says Cooper, executive chef of Melbourne's Chin Chin, Kong and soon-to-open Hawker Hall. "My son refused to get on the plane until he'd eaten some and then on the second-last night, we found a stall. He walked up to it and was like a kid in a candy store, not a 10-year-old eating bugs."

Like many chefs, Cooper travels regularly with family and colleagues; his ear always to the ground and his waist on the line. Before Kong opened there was a trip to New York to investigate Korean barbecue. Earlier this year he was in Singapore and Malaysia alongside restaurateur Chris Lucas and Lucas Group general manager John Kanis.

"Anywhere there was a version of food, we were there," says Cooper, who estimates that they ate more than 50 versions of Hainanese chicken, 20 roast duck dishes and more than 200 satay sticks. Apparently eating to excess overseas informs the restaurant planning process – in this case Hawker Hall, set to open in Windsor this month.

Neil Perry believes that travelling is essential for a chef and "part of the learning curve". Watching others cook overseas and visiting markets to learn about produce is just as important as eating abroad.

"San Sebastian and Tokyo are my two favourite food cities in the world," he says, citing the variety of seasonal ingredients as the reason. "In San Sebastian there's this amazing thing called Basque caviar. About six weeks of the year, from the beginning of May through the first week of June, the peas are so tiny they're almost the size of caviar and they're so sweet it's ridiculous."

Scott Pickett of the Estelle restaurants and Saint Crispin, agrees.

"I think it helps you make decisions," he says. "As a chef you don't always think about anything beyond food in a restaurant until you experience it for yourself." Pickett travelled to Paris, London and New York last year before relaunching Estelle, working his way through 32 restaurants in 21 days.

While they might sound luxurious, chefs' sojourns don't always go according to plan. Pickett, for example, booked his meals before his accommodation, resulting in having to fork out €1400 (about $2100) for a night in a suite at Chez Bra – the only room left at the hotel attached to Le Suquet.

Earlier this year on his way to Burgundy, Pickett's sous chef had to explain why he was carrying little white packets of powder and gas canisters at a Singapore stopover. It turns out the authorities don't have any issues with agar and lecithin powder.

Fermented fish is also in the clear with customs, according to Jerry Mai, from Pho Nom. During her most recent visit to Vietnam, Mai bought equipment for the new CBD store in The Grid food precinct, while her mum sent a box of fermented fish home with her partner.

"When she got to Customs she asked if they wanted to open it and have a look," says Mai. "They were like, 'No! We've seen these boxes come from Vietnam before and they reek. Don't even unwrap it; just take it out of the airport!"'

On the less stinky end of the scale, Alla Wolf-Tasker recently returned from a 12-day trip to China with dried fungus and Sichuan peppercorns, the latter of which were planted in the Lake House grounds. Wolf-Tasker wasn't interested in adding rabbit skulls and deep-fried bamboo worms to the Daylesford restaurant's menu, but she was inspired by an Italian pool villa during a trip to Puglia last year to add a new waterfront pavilion.

"There were many years when we couldn't go anywhere as we were flat out developing Lake House. Now that we manage to travel a great deal more there's no doubt the business benefits," says Wolf-Tasker. "Besides, it's absolutely critical to have something to benchmark against."

The best point of reference for a cuisine is undoubtedly its origin and if that means a tax-deductable vacation for chefs and restaurateurs, then so be it. Consider Big Boy BBQ owner Lance Rosen – he's been to the States six times in the past five years to make sure his restaurants stay ahead of the grill game. The first trip to Kansas City in 2009 is what inspired him to close Rusk – his successful, mod-Oz restaurant – and pioneer barbecue in Australia. When Rosen opened the first Big Boy BBQ in 2011, he had to import a smoker. Now they're stocked at Barbecues Galore.

Rosen's most recent road trip was originally meant to be a wedding anniversary in the south of France with his wife. In the end it turned into a 6000-kilometre barbecue cruise with the kids. The 26-day journey was the foundation of Temples of Barbecue, Rosen's new travel cookbook complete with recipes, stories and his favourite smoky stops from Arkansas to Alabama. Alongside his notes and thousands of photos – which he backed up onto two separate hard drives stored in different suitcases – he also brought back 20 litres of barbecue sauce. "When you smell something familiar from your time away, it evokes a memory. For me, all I have to do is open this sauce and all of a sudden I'm back in those restaurants," Rosen says.

In Sydney, Sepia's Vicki Wild and Martin Benn are the Tokyo experts. They visit Japan once, if not twice, every year and have been making the trip for a decade. "Japan's one of those places where the food culture is so prolific that every time we come back we're really inspired and we go off in another direction," says Wild.

For other itinerant chefs, travel is about remaining inspired. Jesse Gerner (Bomba Bar, Anada and Green Park) has been heading to Spain for the last 13 years and makes sure someone from the team visits biannually. When they return to Melbourne, there's usually a one-off event inspired by their travels, with seasonal dishes appearing on menus throughout the year. In April Gerner ate his way around the country alongside Andrew Fisk (Bomba Bar) and Russell Hall (Anada), cooking up giant deep-sea prawns, imbibing at vermouth bars and even eating "crunchy, sandy razor-clam poo pie" as part of a 22-course degustation at a Michelin-starred restaurant. But nothing quite beats the specialty they sampled in Seville.

"We went to this beautiful little taverna, Bodega Mateo Ruiz. The two owners are brothers in their 60s and their specialty is cuttlefish vaginas," says Gerner.

Self-confessed "travel junkie" Christine Manfield – who carries a mini pepper grinder and chilli jam when she travels – believes that eating like a local, regardless of what ends up on your plate, is a must. She spends half of the year out of the country, hosting tours to India and south-east Asia, as well as making regular trips to Turkey's south-west coast. Next on her agenda is a stint in South America.

"I always stick to local food wherever I am, I don't eat French food in Thailand for example, and I never ever eat Western food in India," she says. "I'm going to have to eat guinea pig in South America because that's the main protein. I don't eat silly stuff just for the sake of it, so it will depend on what the dish is and how it's presented."

What one eats overseas is essential to the travel experience. That doesn't necessarily mean forcing yourself to scoff small mammals or shellfish genitalia, but exploring a country's culinary offerings imparts knowledge and supplies the kind of stories worth sharing. Manfield puts it perfectly when she says: "The greatest introduction to a culture is through its food. Food is something everybody can communicate; it's a universal language and the best way to broaden your horizons."