http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/ed-charles/ Ed Charles is a food and drink and business journalist. What he is not, is a foodie. In fact, he has instructed his wife to slap him if he shows any signs of foodie-ism. This includes waxing lyrical about the new season’s peaches, slurping his wine to aerate his palate and mentioning Heston Blumenthal more than five times a day. Ed began his food career as finance journalist being wined and dined in London and Europe’s best restaurants by some of the City’s biggest swinging dicks. His career highlights as a finance journalist include being banned from Warburg’s merchant bank and upsetting the UK’s largest arms dealer, basically all the wrong people. And this is probably why a career writing about food beckoned. In 2005 he established the cheeky Melbourne-based food blog Tomato where he has started to annoy the right people. Subsequently he’s written about food and restaurants for titles including SBS Food, the Herald Sun, The Australian, and GQ and reviewed restaurants for The Age’s Good Food Guide and the Gourmet Traveler Restaurant Guide. His pastimes – apart from food, drink and photographing food in restaurants – include digging up his front garden to create a vegetable patch and walking his dogs along St Kilda beach to avoid kite surfing. en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:00:13 +0000 Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:00:13 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/building-the-ultimate-burger/ The gourmet burger is now mainstream. Even Hungry Jacks has its own salt and fat packed version dragging down the reputation of Angus beef. It’s the latest trend in food, knowing the provenance of your ingredients - with Maccas being the first mainstream brand to name Angus beef as a selling point back in August. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Ed Charles) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/building-the-ultimate-burger/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/building-the-ultimate-burger/#item1846 Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:50:05 +0000 Ed Charles | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/finger-licking-good-a-brief-history-of-food-sex/ Only the other night gazing out at the opera house from Quay restaurant in Sydney I had the good fortune to sit at dinner with the new, improved, much, much larger than life Matt Preston. Not only was I subject to his advice on all things Myf Warhurst, his pony skin R.M. Williams boots and dressing-up box chic but his stagey sexy looks. The look that stuck in my mind is when his sultry eyes gaze towards what should be a camera and while he sucked A-list chocolate off his index finger. What I can only imagine is a lot of practice in the mirror had paid off. Although I can’t say the earth moved for me, Matt later may have retired for a cigarette. And it made me realise how we got to this point that food isn’t food on TV without some sort of sexual imagery. Two decades (and more) ago food writing and TV was left to the stuffy, recipe writers and cookbook authors, dry enough to pucker the mouth up like a plain Carrs Water biscuit. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Ed Charles) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/finger-licking-good-a-brief-history-of-food-sex/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/finger-licking-good-a-brief-history-of-food-sex/#item1576 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:45:50 +0000 Ed Charles | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/restaurant-awards-are-the-nations-silliest-private-party/ Restaurant award season is finally over. But I’m wondering if anybody really cares outside those who won gongs from the Sydney Morning Good Food Guide this week, The Age version last week and Gourmet Traveller the week before. Certainly, there has barely been a blip in the blogger or Twitter sphere. Once again, the old-media appointed arbiters of taste have taken one for the team by eating the finest foods known to Aussies with the usual predictable conclusions: plenty of excellent but very very expensive restaurants in Sydney; only two of these in Melbourne plus lots of very good moderately priced restaurants; not much else in Australia. Forget Tasmania. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Ed Charles) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/restaurant-awards-are-the-nations-silliest-private-party/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/restaurant-awards-are-the-nations-silliest-private-party/#item1170 Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:50:29 +0000 Ed Charles | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/eaaaarggh...what-really-made-you-sick-last-night/ Restaurants are defensive of their hygene in the same way that newspapers are defensive of the accuracy of their reporting. Phone up and complain and the last thing either will do is admit liability. And nowadays when people are treated shabbily they turn to the internet. Or me. What surprises me is the number of emails and comments that come my way from diners who’ve returned home from some of Australia’s top restaurants only to fall ill. I have become, you might say, shit-central - and vomit-central - of the blog world. The truth is for what I see is there is a good chance you may become ill eating out although not always is it the restaurant’s fault. Apart from the food authorities in NSW, the food inspection Stasi can’t really be bothered to help diners.   feedback@thepunch.com.au (Ed Charles) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/eaaaarggh...what-really-made-you-sick-last-night/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/eaaaarggh...what-really-made-you-sick-last-night/#item593 Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:37:50 +0000 Ed Charles | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/11-ways-to-spot-a-food-wanker/ Typical. Just as the world peaked Paul Levi, the man who had no small part in bringing us the slightly dubious word “Foodie”, launches the Gastrosexual, a man with more dazzling kitchen tools than penile length. I’ve never had much truck for foodies (although a few of you are okay). I’ve met too many who know nothing whatsoever about food. If you would like to see this variety you only have to watch Masterchef which is packed full of wannabes who mostly have no idea how to shop (cottage cheese with sun dried tomatoes) or cook (raw chicken, insipid tarte tatin) for that matter. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Ed Charles) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/11-ways-to-spot-a-food-wanker/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/11-ways-to-spot-a-food-wanker/#item203 Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:40:21 +0000 Ed Charles | Author bios | The Punch