Cuisine

Having being fed canned soybeans and boarding school food it is no wonder that therapeutic chef Samantha Gowing embarked on a culinary journey as a child in Melbourne during the gastronomic boom of the 1970s. Developing her passion for Asian cuisine through language and travel.

Shannon Bennett, Vue de monde Melbourne
“With the increasing demand for beautifully prepared, healthy food and the escalating global health issues, Vue de monde enjoys a nurturing nutritional alliance with Samantha Gowing. Sam has shared her extensive knowledge and unique insight into food as medicine and well being for the past four years with our team. This combined with twenty-five years experience in hospitality and the corporate arena makes her a true champion of balanced living!”

Sam learnt to cook from the age of six and was influenced my her maternal grandmother, Evie and her beloved father, Dennis. Both taught her the fundamentals of food including baking and Australian/Anglo-Saxon fare such as pavlova, classic sponge cakes, Yorkshire pud and roasts of all sorts. Dennis Gowing was a cockney orphan who came to Australia as a ‘10 pound Pom’ and made his fortune in the car, art, horse racing and restaurant industries in a career that spanned over three decades. He was a colourful Melbourne entrepenuer who successes include owning the winner of the 1985 Melbourne Cup, What A Nuisance, creating multi award winning fine dining establishments such as Gowings Restaurant, awarded 2.5 Chef’s hats by the Age Good Food Guide and nominated as one of the 50 best restaurants in Australia by renowned food critic Stephen Downes.

In 1990 Dennis and Samantha took on the freehold and business of the Grace Darling Hotel, an iconic pub in the heart of Collingwood. During this era they turned Gowings Grace Darling into a multi-award winning culinary and entertainment emporium that featured fine food, vintage wines, prestigious artwork by Clifton Pugh and Tim Storrier.

When the Collingwood Football Club won the Grand Final in 1990, it was seen as a blessing and thus a new era was born for this historic landmark. Dennis Gowing died from a long battle with cancer on December 6th 1991, and for the next seven years, Samantha and her brother Chris Gowing jointly owned and operated this historic hotel, reaping a raft of industry awards including 3AW’s Pub of the Year, Best Hotel Dining Room and a coveted Chef’s hat from The Age Good Food Guide.

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An insatiable desire for understanding the causes and cures for the insidious disease that took her Father’s life saw Sam embark on her own culinary journey into the healing cuisines. She took a fork in the road and studied naturopathic nutritional medicine and founded her organic cooking school in 1999. Sam has been a driving force for building awareness of the health benefits of organic food and labelled the “Don’t Panic, It’s Organic Lady” by food icon Matt Preston – a reference to the events she has run for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival over the last decade.

Her signature healing cuisine, Surf Spa Food celebrates food as medicine with a contemporary culinary twist and has been embraced around the globe for health retreats such as Australian properties Gaia Retreat and Spa and Gwinganna, Kahanda Kanda, Sri Lanka and the new Kempinski Zanzibar health retreat due to open on 2011.

Sam currently lives in Byron Bay where she enjoys the amazing surf and is delighted to be in the process of creating her dynamic spa and surf cuisine  and motivational mentoring programs  for private consultations, organic luxury spa retreats or corporate team building incentives.