Food & Wine Expo
Our Celebrity Chefs

BIOGRAPHY
Alison Taafe 

Alison Taafe is Australia’s Fun, Fast and Fabulous celebrity Chef. She was the resident chef on Channel 9’s Brisbane Extra and Saturday Afternoon Extra for many years and made many appearances on Channel 9’s The Shak. She has appeared on Today Tonight on Channel 7 and is currently filming a new show: The Taste Travellers. She can be heard on Brisbane’s 612 ABC radio with Warren Boland on Sundays throughout the year where she tantalizes listeners with her fun, fast and fabulous food for family and friends.

Alison trained at Westminster Hotel School in London which boasts other celebrity graduates like Jamie Oliver. She has lived in multi-million dollar suites in exclusive hotels, with neighbours such as Barbara Streisand, Robert Redford and Danny Kaye. She has cooked for the likes of Greg Norman, Lauren Becall, the Queen of England, George Bush Senior, Ronald Reagan and a number of other White House dignitaries, diplomats and ambassadors. Alison landed her first Head Chef position with New York’s J P Morgan Investments branch in London at age 20, which involved managing many of its boardroom kitchens. From there, her culinary career took off with several overseas appointments in France, New York and Washington cooking for film stars, presidents, pop stars, sporting greats and even royalty. Alison eventually decided to leave behind the high life and head for Australia where once again she was in demand. This time, the Western Australian Parliament was eager to have her services. It was in Perth where Alison cooked for Queen Elizabeth at Government House.

Eventually, she made her way to Queensland for Expo ’88 where she met and married Steve Taafe, who was a Warrant Officer in the RAAF at the time. Alison and Steve were drawn back to Brisbane in 1991 where they successfully ran a gourmet catering business and delicatessen together. She is now a Leading Teacher of Professional Cookery at Southbank Institute of Technology. The year 2004 saw Alison winning a Churchill Fellowship – the first chef ever to win the prestigious award – which took her back to America for research in culinary arts. After this very successful trip, she wrote the first graduate program for Australian qualified chefs in Australia. Then in 2006, Alison claimed a further award of Outstanding Educator for the program that she wrote, which was a wonderful endorsement. Alison is one of the few female members of Les Toques Blanches, an international organisation for leading chefs.

Alison has recently taken a sabbatical from her full time teaching job and has been developing a large following in all her cooking schools and demonstrations in and around Queensland and Melbourne. You can catch her at one of her cooking classes which have become very popular and sell out instantly. Alison is a very talented and gifted teacher and she loves nothing more than sharing her astounding knowledge of food with everyone, young and old!