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MATT PRESTON (born July 2, 1961 in London, Great Britain) is an award winning food journalist, restaurant critic, and a television presenter. Best known for his weekly Unexplored restaurant column in The Age newspaper’s food section Epicure and as a judge on Masterchef Australia, Preston is also a senior editor on Vogue Entertaining + Travel and delicious. magazines. He is a former National Chair of Judges for the Restaurant and Catering Awards of Excellence and was Creative Director of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival until April 2009.

Ancestry
Preston is the great, great nephew of Victorian food writer Andrew Valentine Kirwan – the author of Host and Guest (a book about dinners, dinner-giving, wines and dessert). He is a direct descendant of archaeologist Sir Laurence Kirwan who helped manage Sir Edmund Hillary’s successful attempt on Everest, and of Sir Charles Price, 1st Baronet who was Lord Mayor of London from 1803. Other ancestors include influential 16th Century law maker and United States Founding Father, John Jay; Uvedale Price, the gentleman gardener at the heart of the 'Picturesque' debate of the 1790s; and Peter Stuyvesant, the seventh and last Dutch Director General of the colony of New Netherland.Sir Laurence Kirwan and Andrew Valentine Kirwan were not from the same branch of Kirwan, if indeed Preston is a great great nephew of Andrew Valentine the descent is unknown to the family.

MasterChef Australia
From April 27, 2009 Preston joins fellow judges Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris on the judging panel of MasterChef Australia. Network Ten’s major new primetime show for 2009 is dedicated to finding Australia’s best home cook.

Matt brings a dazzling array of scarves and cravats as well as 12 years experience as a reviewer, eating his way around Australia and the world, to MasterChef Australia. Debonair and cultured, MasterChef Australia contestants will be desperate to impress Preston with their dishes.

Vogue Entertaining + Travel and delicious
Preston has contributed to Australia’s two leading glossy food magazines for the past eight years, writing about restaurants, chefs and leading culinary destinations. His role with the two magazines has taken him to more than 30 regions across Australia and around the world from Copenhagen to Hyderabad. He is currently Vogue Entertaining’s restaurant reviewer with a brief to cover Australia’s most influential restaurant openings.

Epicure and The Age
Matt began regularly contributing to the food section of The Age in February 2000. He writes a weekly review of a cafe or ethnic eatery in his Unexplored column in The Age newspaper’s Epicure magazine and, since February 2009 has written a weekly column in the The Age’s Saturday section A2. Preston’s also contributes cover stories to Epicure where he has won a number of awards for his food and recipe writing.

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival (MF&WF)
As creative director of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival for five years, Matt was responsible driving the creative vision of the Festival and securing the international culinary talent that attended Melbourne for the Festival including Andoni Luis Aduriz, Shane Osborn, Heston Blumenthal, Rene Redzepi, Ferran Adria, Fergus Henderson, Inaki Aitpitarte, The River Café’s Rose Gray, The Clarks of Moro, Anthony Bourdain, Carlo Cracco, Philip Howard, and Michel Roux.

During Preston’s tenure the MF&WF grew to become arguably the world’s biggest food and wine festival with 315,000 people attending over 16 days and the event generating close to $30-million annually for Victoria.

Matt concluded his tenure as creative director of the Festival on April 8, 2009.

Other professional roles
Preston is a contributor to The Age Good Food Guide and Food and Wine (US). He is a semi-regular on 9am with David and Kim on Network 10 and has also participated in SBS’ Blue List, Six Degrees for Lonely Planet TV and SBS, Channel 9’s Postcards and Channel 7’s Absolutely Melbourne.

On radio Preston is a regular guest on Dennis Walter’s show on 3AW, and on ABC 774 where he has also occupied the co-hosting chair a number of times.

Previous roles include five years as the National Chief Judge for Restaurant and Catering's National Awards for Excellence, contributing drink editor to Good Taste magazine and secret reviewer on series one of Channel 7’s My Restaurant Rules.

== Perss educated in Sussex and graduated from the University of Kent with a BA Hons in Politics and Government. He began his career in the sales and marketing departments of British magazines including City Limits where he wrote the popular Backhanders column for five years. He then spent four years with the UK’s biggest selling magazines, TVTimes and What’s on TV, rising to head of their promotions and marketing department.

In 1993 Preston moved to Australia. His first role was as Australian soaps correspondent for British magazines What’s On TV, TVTimes and Women’s Own, covering Neighbours and Home and Away.

Resident in Melbourne, Australia for the past 16 years, Preston is married with three children. He enjoys playing tennis, supporting Chelsea F.C., watching Australian Rules Football and making pizza. An accomplished cook in his own right, besides pizza Preston’s signature dishes are pomegranate glazed lamb with nine-jewel couscous and Coco Pops with whipped cream.

His most memorable meals are Christmas lunch with “the boys” at The Fat Duck in the UK back when it only had two stars, eating Ajo Blanco (Andalucian almond garlic soup) in a little restaurant in Ronda with his “old man”, his mother’s cabbage rolls, and any meal when his wife has been sitting on the other side of the table.

Awards
2008 Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards, Food Journalist of the Year for articles in delicious. magazine and the Epicure section of The Age.

2006 Food Media Club of Australia Calypso™ Mango Award for Best Recipe Feature in a Newspaper or Newspaper Magazine Winner: Matt Preston for “Preserving knowledge”, Epicure, The Age.

2004 Food Media Club of Australia Australian Mushroom Growers’ Award Best Food Article Winner: Matt Preston for “The Temple Kitchen”, Epicure, The Age.

2003 Food Media Club of Australia Grand Marnier Award for Best New Writer Winner: Matt Preston for articles published in the Epicure section of The Age.

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival Awards
2008 Melbourne Airport Victorian Tourism Awards “Major Festivals and Events" award winner: Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

2008 Melbourne Awards “Community Organisation Division – Contribution to Profile“ award winner: Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

Quotes
"Some of Australia's best cooking doesn't happen in restaurants but in ordinary Aussie homes. MasterChef Australia celebrates these great home cooks, whether it is a mum of three, a lawyer, a labourer or a foodie who sees cooking as their hobby. It's a show that unites Australians of all backgrounds and from all walks of life through a common love of food and the joy we all share breaking bread together"

“Cooking has become a hobby in the last 10 years. People, rather than seeing it as a chore, want to learn more and want to get clever little inside ideas.”