Food
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The Urbanite—13 October 2026·2 min read
Brisbane's inner-city voice since 2014
Brisbane's inner-city voice since 2014
From wood-fire kitchens in France to the paddocks of south-east Queensland, chef Alastair McLeod brings a career grounded in produce and practical craft to the Main Stage as MC of the 2026 Good Food & Wine Show Brisbane.
Deep in the south of France, in a kitchen perched near the Spanish border, a young Alastair McLeod once stripped down to his shorts and t-shirt to haul logs for a wood-fire stove. His head chef, Frank, caught him on the stairs and stopped him cold.
Frank demanded to know why he had taken off his whites. At the time, McLeod secretly wondered whether cooking was truly a valid profession, still nursing the quiet doubt that it might not be a real trade. But the stern reprimand that followed gave him something unexpected: permission. His mentor told him to put his uniform back on, stand tall, and be proud of being a cook.
It was an illuminating turning point. "I'm really proud to be a chef," McLeod reflects today. "I'm really proud to do this simple craft of cooking and making people happy. And I enjoy it more today, probably than I did then."
That hard-won conviction took years of travel to cement. Born in Belfast into a multicultural family where adventurous home dinners routinely crossed culinary borders, McLeod first stepped into commercial kitchens as an adolescent. His initial duties were decidedly unglamorous—chiefly de-eying local potatoes for 55 pence an hour—yet the hum of the stoves left a mark. Professional kitchens, he noticed even then, had an atmosphere and energy where the air simply moved differently.
Seeking a fresh start beyond Belfast, McLeod left Northern Ireland at 19 for Glasgow, working six days a week in the city's west end and rising through sheer tenure until he found himself running the kitchen. Yet leading a brigade in his early twenties felt unearned—a case of "fake it till you make it" while managing rosters and orders without actually loving the job. Realising he had no business teaching others without mastering the fundamentals himself, he completed his formal qualifications and looked toward Europe, eager to understand why French and Italian chefs spoke of the craft with such genuine reverence.
Arriving in Paris and studying the map on the board, he quietly bypassed the glamour of the Côte d'Azur, worried the big coastal resort towns might be too intimidating. Instead, he headed south to the rugged border country of Catalonia. There, running a single-handed wood-fire kitchen under Frank, his mentor’s blunt demand to own the craft finally took root. Without temperature dials to rely on, working solely with burning logs and hyper-local ingredients forced him into an exacting, primal dance with heat, timing, and provenance.
McLeod subsequently moved through demanding brigades in London and Turin, where each post further refined his instincts. Handling pristine seafood in Covent Garden and prepping globe artichokes in northern Italy taught him the beauty of elemental cooking. It steered him away from culinary vanity—no geometric cuts, foams, or decorative gels required. True flavour began and ended with the raw ingredient, guided by the simple rule that the number of elements on a plate bears no relation to how delicious it tastes.
In the mid-1990s, maternal ties pulled McLeod across the world to Queensland. Arriving in Brisbane with no local profile or network, he sat down and wrote handwritten letters to the city’s top ten restaurants, leaving his Nana’s home phone number as the only contact. The persistence paid off when Francis Domenech, owner of Ascot’s storied Baguette, called him in for an interview, offering him the job some weeks later.
From there, McLeod rapidly established himself across the city’s evolving dining scene, eventually leading the brigades at Bretts Wharf and the ambitious, 38-seat Tank Restaurant and Bar. Industry accolades and national recognition followed, but formal awards never matched the everyday validation of a satisfied diner. At the pass, the true reward was never status or pay packets, but the simple satisfaction of making people happy.
After years at the helm, the relentless, 24/7 grind of running static dining rooms prompted a reset. Wanting to step away from the all-consuming machinery of restaurant operations and work on his own terms, McLeod chose a completely different direction. To generate immediate cash flow while building a new venture, he set up an open-air stall at Brisbane's Jan Powers Farmers Markets, trading dining room formality for direct contact with the public. There, he turned out a "croque madman" and a 90-second omelette sourced entirely from neighbouring stalls.
That market hustle laid the foundation for Al'FreshCo, the bespoke catering outfit he has steered for the past 12 years. Outside the permanent restaurant pass, it remains a lean pursuit where work surges and stalls, and where McLeod chooses his own hundred hour weeks. He packs salt, pepper, and spoons into the van to cook on site himself, chasing seasonal produce straight from growers in Wamuran and beyond. He also channelled that passion for regional provenance into Off the Eaten Track, a television series funded by the Queensland government as a genuine love letter to the state's farmers, fishers, distillers, and makers.
That same devotion to local provenance anchors his role at the Good Food & Wine Show Brisbane, where he returns this October as Main Stage MC. Over a 17-year association with the national fixture, McLeod has watched the three-day event expand into an essential culinary powerhouse spanning upwards of 300 exhibitors. According to event organisers, it remains Australia's longest-running and most awarded consumer food show, welcoming more than 90,000 visitors across its national circuit.
For McLeod, the biggest shift has been out in the aisles. In the early days, audiences crowded the stage asking for recipe sheets; today, home cooks arrive hungry to know about the land, the season, and the grower. It is an informed crowd focused on produce, and this year's lineup feels tailor made for them, pairing dedicated areas like Bakers Alley and the Cooking School with demonstrations by Miguel Maestre, Luke Nguyen, Brendan Pang, Simone Prest, Viviana Barile, and George Georgievski, alongside masterclasses with sommelier Shanteh Wale and cheese specialist Valérie Henbest.
At the centre of it all, McLeod treats his Main Stage post less like an emcee chasing the spotlight and more like a supportive rhythm section. Comparing a guest chef's demonstration to a concert where the headliner is playing their greatest hits, he steps in at the chorus to keep tempo—acting as an interlocutor for the crowd, teasing out quiet techniques, and coaxing boisterous talents like Maestre to share the craft behind the showmanship. For McLeod, that is the true soul of the weekend: stripping away pretence to give curious diners a direct, unvarnished connection to genuine kitchen wisdom and the extraordinary produce that makes Australian tables sing.
Photography: supergood.video
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