Megan Chalmers

Megan Chalmers is Essentials' long-time resident chef and recipe creator, and a two-hat rated chef under the Good Food Guide. Her recipes for the magazine range from precise, luxury-driven breakfast dishes — vodka and vanilla-cured ocean trout with salmon caviar among them — to elaborate desserts built on unexpected combinations, among them a buttermilk rice pudding finished with baklava wafer, Turkish delight and sugared rose petals.

Her career spans premium kitchens across two very different landscapes: the resort kitchens of Hamilton Island, and a run of respected restaurants through regional Victoria's Beechworth, including Gigi's of Beechworth, The Green Shed, Freeman on Ford and Project 49, an Italian providore kitchen. She also spent time at The Baths in Middle Brighton, on Melbourne's bayside.

Across all of it, Chalmers has remained committed to a slow-food philosophy — food built on patience and technique rather than shortcuts — paired with a chef's eye for plated design that makes each dish as considered to look at as it is to eat.