Former AFL footballer Nick Riewoldt on his favourite places to eat, drink and stay

When former AFL star player and Fox Sport commentator Nick Riewoldt entered Celebrity MasterChef last year, he made a bet with his American wife Catherine that if he won the competition, he'd alleviate her of the family cooking duties.

Being crowned the winner has seen the former St Kilda captain keep his promise enthusiastically. "I find the kitchen therapeutic. I actually love cooking for my family. For me, it doesn't feel like a chore," he says.

The Cobram Estate ambassador also loves baking cakes – cheesecakes and carrot cake are on high rotation in the home.

Riewoldt divides his time between the family home in Melbourne's bayside Brighton and another in Orford, on the east coast of Tasmania, where the family has had connections since the early 1900s. The couple's three sons, James, 7, Will, 5, and Teddy, 3, also enjoy the foodie and footy spotlight on their father's social media too.

Eating in

Signature dish at home

I find the kitchen therapeutic. I actually love cooking for my family. For me, it doesn't feel like a chore.

Nick Riewoldt

Crayfish pasta. I love this dish because it's so simple and flavoursome. It feeds the whole family and is a winner at our place. I braise the crayfish first. You don't need long in the pan at all. In another pan, I add garlic, chilli, tomato paste and mustard seeds and reduce that down to give it a deep flavour. I then toss the crayfish back in and add some fine pasta like spaghetti or linguine. It's subtly rich and so beautiful. I would never have had the courage to try something like this before doing MasterChef, but that is the great thing to come out of the competition. I used to cook with this sort of produce before, but now I have the confidence and ability to experiment.

My guilty pleasure

I am doing a lot of baking at home at the moment. I am in a cake phase and love making carrot cakes, Basque cheesecakes and olive oil cake. I am experimenting with the latter right now. The cakes have certainly become a guilty pleasure – and it's great the kids can get involved. They love using the KitchenAid and learn to measure ingredients and it's difficult to stuff it up. Something I have learned to love about baking is that it is almost a little bit mindless. We constantly have fresh cake on rotation in the kitchen. My love of being in the kitchen stems from my parents, who have always been brilliant cooks and inspired our palates as kids. Now my kids enjoy everything from the cakes to oysters, curries and sashimi. They aren't afraid to have a go at anything.

Best kitchen wisdom I cling to

To always season and taste. My grandmother, Fay, is 94 and she always told me to do this. She also taught me how to make a perfect curried scallop pie, her favourite recipe, which I did on MasterChef. The key is to find the largest scallops around.

Eating out

My favourite Melbourne haunts (and go-to dishes)

Melbourne's food scene moves so fast, but I love Tipo 00 in the city. In terms of a favourite dish, I don't think I have ever had the same meal twice when I have been there, everything is incredible! I also like to eat at Gingerboy in the CBD for the son-in-law eggs – I dream about those. We go to Donovans a lot in St Kilda and Stokehouse too. They're bayside and local favourites for us. The fish and chips are always really good quality. Minamishima in Richmond is another favourite restaurant. The sashimi quality is phenomenal. I love Japanese food as a top choice, and here, a lot of the thinking is taken out of it because it's omakase. The flounder fin nigiri is a favourite.

My favourite hometown cafe (and favourite drink)

I am also a big coffee drinker – usually three or four cups a day. We have the best coffee shops around the corner – Superrandom. It doesn't matter if there's five or 15 people lining up, you get your coffee in three to four minutes and it's always super high quality. Someone is always grinding; another is on the machine frothing the milk – it's efficient and I love it. Oat Magic for me.

What is your favourite place to eat in Australia, and any special food memories here you have?

I love Vue de Monde. We've had some big family celebrations there, which I look back on with plenty of emotion. One of the last times we ate there as a family of five was with my little sister Maddie in 2014. She died in 2015. It was just the five of us and I got to go back there while making Celebrity MasterChef in 2021 and I had to keep myself distant from everyone as I was determined to cook well but kept thinking of being there with her. I didn't want my meal on the show to turn into a mess because I would start getting emotional. It's one of the best restaurants in the world, with the best kitchen.

On the road

What's your favourite food city and why?

Cabos San Lucas is my favourite food city in Mexico. I have spent a lot of time there. My wife's family live in Texas, so proximity is the reason we get to visit so much. It's like going to the Gold Coast in terms of the trip distance from Texas. The food is so tactile and the flavours so memorable. I'm a big fan of the spice, the incorporation of a lot of seafood into what they eat and the fact you can eat it on the beach, too. Consuming Mexican food by hand appeals to me too and it pairs nicely with tequila.

What are your favourite places to eat there and why?

There is a place called El Farallon situated on the edge of a cliff in Pedregal – it's all fresh fish here and you're seated high above sea level overlooking the ocean. There's a lot of ceviche-style dishes and fresh fish tacos, the crispest corn chips too. Edith's is more of a tourist thing to do – mariachi bands come around and play requests. It's Mexican-style food we would recognise, but more high-end – think lobster enchilada – and dessert is tres leches (milk cake), which is phenomenal. I love that place. Flora Farms is a very rustic place. It's all about seasonal food here and the menu changes – a beautiful experience and place to visit. I also love to drink a Tommy's margarita – my recipe for replicating at home is mixing Reposado Tequila in place of Triple Sec, agave syrup and fresh lime juice. It's delicious.

Where do you stay when you're there and why?

We always stay at Waldorf Astoria – the luxury hotel is cut into the cliff and to get into the resort you have to drive through a hollowed-out section. It's an incredible piece of architecture and engineering and completely isolated on this stretch of beach around the heads of Cabos San Lucas.

Hobart

A favourite restaurant that is no longer around was the two-star Hobart restaurant Garagistes, which closed in 2015 – it was where you went for amazing abalone. Now when in Hobart (we have a home an hour north-east of the city), we always go to Peppina by Massimo Mele – it's brilliant, fresh and seasonal.

Sydney

I always go to Parlar in Potts Point when in Sydney – it's where I enjoy the octopus (with tomato and smoked almond salsa), gilda toast and the bacalao croquettes. Shady Pines Saloon is also a cool spot. Lox Stock & Barrel, a NYC-style deli, is where I go for bagels and sardines on toast.