Michael Symons

GASTRONOMY is the diner's sense of the world. That's been undertaken by, among others, Epicurus, Brillat-Savarin and now MICHAEL SYMONS.

Dr Symons' latest work is MEALS MATTER: A RADICAL ECONOMICS THROUGH GASTRONOMY, published by Columbia University Press in 2020. It's been a while between books because, having brought PhD sociology to gastronomy, Symons now makes sense of political philosophy, economic theory, and more.

Among Symons' other works, ONE CONTINUOUS PICNIC tells the gastronomic history of his country, Australia. A HISTORY OF COOKS AND COOKING takes on the world, starting from when people picked up the first cook's knife or flint. Rather than the more common transformational theory of cooking (using fire), Symons promotes a distributional theory (using knives), because the cook's core task is sharing food around.

Now living back in Sydney, Michael Symons started as an environmental journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald, opened the Cantina di Toia restaurant in Bacchereto in Tuscany, and then became a partner in the Uraidla Aristologist restaurant in the Adelaide Hills for 15 years. Having instigated the highly influential Symposiums of Australian Gastronomy in 1984, he gained a PhD in the "sociology of cuisine". He enjoyed, and wrote about, flat whites, while living in Wellington New Zealand from 2001-2007.