Quotes from Melissa Leong

Growing up in a Singaporean Chinese family, for me food is almost the primary means of communication between family members, both immediate and extended... hey, it beats discussing which cousin did better at end of semester exams, or who's getting married next, right?

In Australia, Chinese food culture has imparted flavour, dimension and excitement to the way we eat.

In the cultural Thermomix that is Australia, it's natural that we pick up a taste for flavours, techniques and ingredients that are integral to a place or a people not from our own background.

Whether your childhood roots lie in the city, the country or possibly more crucially in the neighbourhood suburbs of this wide brown land, a trip to the milkbar with your friends has long been a beloved rite of passage when it comes to growing up in Australia.

Almost everyone who loves to cook has at least one recipe handed down to them from a member of their family or community, and those kinds of recipes represent generations of cooking, testing, adjusting and evolving, so you know they're killer.

My family taught me to be adventurous. As fearless eaters, mum and dad were never afraid of exposing us to strange textures, scents, and offally bits - the works.

If it's a competition for which country has the best street food culture, you could do worse than back Thailand.

I am flattered that so many people have resonated with my style and that beauty and fashion standards in the media continue to grow in their inclusivity and reflection of the real world.

As a ghost writer, many words I have written have been for someone else.

I'd like to see a return to old-school values, classic service and the old-world glamour of what dining - going out - is supposed to be.

The symbolism of certain foods trip the nostalgic wire in all of us, whether the context is cultural heritage or geographic location.

First and foremost, if you want to be a good writer, you need to be a good eater. You need to be fearless when it comes to eating, you can't show predilections or bias.

Perceived value is paramount for most diners; a feeling of satisfaction that what you've paid for is commensurate with what you've received. That is, provided your expectations are rational.

Knowing how much was sacrificed to give me the opportunity to find the thing that lights me up isn't lost on me, and it's something I know a lot of people can relate to, whether their parents arrived here in Australia recently or not.

You don't have to follow every recipe to the letter.

One of the best things about 'The Chefs' Line' has been seeing how these generations-honed recipes fare when they go up against professional ones.

I am very proud of my family and my heritage and my history, and I'm also proud of my own achievements.

I've really missed my Reformer Pilates sessions during lockdown because I'm someone who likes to workout with a lot of toys!

I am a tiny lady with curves... that's who I am.

For the young, and those newly introduced to Australia, milkbars represented an opportunity to dip a toe in the water when it came to discovering Australian food culture at a grass roots level.

I would have these massive eating sessions with my chef friends where we'd go out for a whole day and eat all of the things, and it never occurred to me once that all of my friends are dudes who are six-foot-something or 150 kilos. I would just match them to the toe.

Australians do love a good food festival. From regional gems like The Taste of Tasmania to Margaret River Gourmet Escape, diehard eaters have a litany of opportunities to revel in Australia's great produce and chow down on food made by some of the brightest culinary talent from here and abroad.

I am a huge fan of so many Indian regions and dishes, but if I had to pick one, as simple as it is, 'dal' will always have my heart.

I don't really like being asked how I feel about being a 'household name.'