Restaurant quality food and natural wine join the lineup at music festivals this summer

The era of the traditional music festival is over, and the lifestyle festival is here. It's no longer enough to fan out watching War on Drugs and faint over the hotness that is Father John Misty, we have to see them while drinking natural wine and eating snacks from some of the country's most exciting chefs.

Across Melbourne and Sydney Laneway festivals coming up in the next few weeks, it's an all-star line-up not just on the stage but around it with the likes of Dave Moyle (Longsong), Dave Verheul (Embla), Daniel Pepperell (Hubert) and Shannon Martinez (Smith & Daughters).

At the Sydney City Limits' festival pans you can catch Ben Sears and Eun Hee An (Paper Bird), Monty Koludrovic (Icebergs and The Dolphin) and Akira Urata (Fratelli Paradiso).

So when did the Australian music-loving public get such hifalutin tastes? What happened to drinking a pre-opened, not-quite-cold-enough tinny to chase down a bag of soggy chips?

Inversely, staging a food festival without at least a small nod to entertainment is unthinkable in 2018. Giovanni Paradiso (Fratelli Paradiso, 10 William Street) said he and Maurice Terzini (Icebergs, Da Orazio, The Dolphin, Bondi Beach Public Bar) started Italo Dining and Disco (the neon pasta party combining some of the country's greatest Italian chefs and some of the world's greatest Italian DJs) because they were sick of going to music/dance festivals where the food was terrible and vice versa.

"There wasn't enough blurring of the lines between restaurant, club, bar and festival," Paradiso says. "Now with City Limits and Laneway it's great to have a food and drink area you can properly get into. You can see the Libertines and have a great bowl of pasta and a bottle of natural Australian wine and life's good. Even if you go to somewhere like Coachella you still can't get that sort of vibe happening."

Danny Rogers, founder of St Jerome's Laneway Festival in Melbourne, credits the dawn of food truck culture with the rise of better food at contemporary music festivals. But it's also the engagement between hospitality workers and gig culture that creates the electricity.

"There's a lot of crossover between food and music, and at the same time, when I went to Dark MOFO [in Hobart] and saw the quality of the food in the grand hall… you see things like that and you get inspiration and you think, 'Wow. How can we do something like that?' and it just takes it up another notch. It's fun, and it's different and it engages the local community as well. Getting really interesting, creative people to be a part of a festival just gives me a real kick."

The idea of Royal Moyle in both Sydney and Melbourne – Laneway's snacking sideshow curated by Longsong head chef, David Moyle – came about during a trip to Franklin in Hobart during Dark MOFO, where Moyle was cooking at the time. It got Rogers thinking of broadening the food offering at the cult music festival. "We'd talked for a few years about getting someone who can understand what we're trying to achieve at the festival and also find the energy to do it," Rogers says. "But it was all pretty organic. [David Moyle] loved the line-up, reached out to a bunch of his contemporaries, they all came back really fast and I was like, 'holy shit – this is actually real'.

"And then we just kind of ran with it."

The reality, though, of serving restaurant-style food in a festival setting presents a few lessons of its own – something of which Jessica Ducrou, founder of Byron Bay's Splendour in the Grass, knows intimately. "That's always been the challenge. We've been interested in trying to do it but it's only really possible when you're putting on a show in the city, where you can convince all these amazing chefs to come and cook. The second you start telling them they need to drive a thousand kilometres for a five-day festival, it becomes a challenge."

For the last few years, Kenny Graham and Jake Smyth (Mary's, the Unicorn, the Lansdowne) have been collaborating with the Splendour team. And this year, they're taking it a step further with Sydney City Limits – an intimate offshoot of Austin City Limits (everything's bigger in Texas).

Getting people in through the gates and keeping them engaged takes more than A-list acts. It takes something original. "People are pretty jaded," Rogers says. "And also, they have a lot of choices. If you look at the summer here in Australia it's probably the busiest it's ever been. How do you blow people away?"

Rogers believes the future is integration, and he has his eyes set on food festivals. "I've been thinking about how to make them really interesting and incorporate music culture into that."

But more importantly than anything else, there has to be a sense of ownership and authenticity. "I look at a really successful festival like Woodford Folk Festival which sells 35,000 tickets a year. They just put on the most amazing event with yoga, food, Bob Hawke does talks, there's contemporary music … they've created a culture and people love that. Or you might have Splendour which is like a summer vacation to solve the winter blues and escape to Byron. They've sold that dream really beautifully. I think you've just gotta have something that's real."

Ducrou travels the world looking at festivals. She says what makes her most happy, apart from seeing great music, is people eating and drinking well while they're doing it. She recognises now that having great food isn't just a nice thing to have, it's a necessity to draw crowds. "We're responding to what people are interested in. We're lucky enough to live in a country with incredible produce and food is a big part of our culture. I think, to a degree, people don't want to eat a shitty hotdog and soggy chips. They want to eat a great hot dog. And knock-out hot chips. So it's up to us to deliver that."

A taste of the festival menus

Laneway Festival Melbourne

Featuring Father John Misty, The War on Drugs and Mac DeMarco.

David Moyle, Longsong: Aged beef grilled over coals with saltbush and horseradish.

Dave Verheul, Embla: Chickpeazza. A mash-up of an Italian chickpea pancake and spicy 'nduja pizza.

Shannon Martinez, Smith & Daughters: Bloody vegan cheeseburger. "Literally a cheeseburger," Martinez says. "I guess the real difference here is that it's vegan. But not just a regular vegie pattie. This one looks and tastes like the real thing."

Josh Murphy and Rory Cowcher, Harley & Rose: Margherita pizza with fior di latte, local basil and Crystal hot sauce.

Footscray Community Arts Centre, February 3, lanewayfestival.com

Laneway Festival Sydney

Dan Pepperell, Restaurant Hubert: Cafe de Paris butter chicken and roti.

Enrico Tomelleri, 10 William Street: local squid cooked over coals with fermented chilli, capers, oregano and anchovy powder. Served on charred bread dipped in tomato water.

College of the Arts, Rozelle. February 4, lanewayfestival.com

Sydney City Limits

Featuring Beck, Grace Jones and The Avalanches.

Gregory Llewellyn, Hartsyard: Fried chicken with Hartsyard's famous hot sauce; poutine with beef gravy, celery salt and cheese sauce.

O Tama Carey, Lankan Filling Station: Eggplant hopper with kefir mascarpone and pickled green chillies; lamb hopper with pol sambol; tamarind cordial; semolina love cake.

Elvis Abrahanowicz and Ben Milgate, Porteno: Charcoal-grilled pork belly sambos.

Akira Urata, Fratelli Paradiso: Busiate (hand-rolled pasta) with smashed meatballs in a rich tomato base. Also available in a vegetarian eggplant version.

Monty Koludrovic, Icebergs and The Dolphin: Porchetta rolls with crackling; buffalina wings; fried eggplant and caprese mash-up.

Nick Smith, Rising Sun Workshop: The Darkness ramen with shoyu bone broth, kurobuta pork belly, kikurage, black onions and noodles; The Fiery Monk ramen with spiked miso broth, pickled shiitake, bamboo, corn and noodles.

Centennial Park, February 24, sydneycitylimits.com