Terry Durack: Why I’m giving up the best job in Sydney

Before becoming one of Australia’s most celebrated restaurant critics, Terry Durack had a charmed advertising career. In his first job as a copywriter at Paton Hughes Melbourne in the late sixties he worked with the inspirational Lionel Hunt, Peter Carey and Gordon Trembath. Later he flew to London, where he became JWT’s youngest creative planner at just 23, working mainly on the Guinness account.

In 1975 he reunited with Carey at Grey Advertising in Sydney, later moving to SSB, followed by The Campaign Palace in Melbourne. In 1994 the Melbourne Art Directors Club Gold honoured him with the coveted Gold Award for The Most Outstanding Contribution Made By A Creative Person. As he had left advertising some two years earlier to become a full-time food critic, he wondered if they weren’t trying to tell him something.

Now, as he retires from what he calls “the best job in the world”, Durack, chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, has penned this piece for SMH reflecting on his remarkable journey as he farewells his review column after 30 years.

I haven’t told anyone that I am stepping down from my role as chief restaurant critic of The Sydney Morning Herald, until now. Mainly because I know what they are going to say when they hear the news. They’re going to tell me I’m stupid.

Why walk away from a weekly gig reviewing the best restaurants in town? From a column that I’ve made my own since arriving from Melbourne in 1994? From all that charred Fremantle octopus, lobster mafaldine and dry-aged Maremma duck? Granted, I may well be crazy, but I think it’s time, for a number of reasons.

In my years on the beat, the hospitality industry has ridden the ups and downs of economic and global financial crises and soldiered on. This time feels different. Everyone is working so much harder, for less. It makes it tough for a reviewer to be tough.

I’m also a bit over deadlines, to be honest. They’ve gotten me out of bed and to the desk for a long time now, and it’s going to be very weird without this one. I’ll probably be like the laboratory rat that still jumps on the treadmill and starts pounding away because it doesn’t know what else to do.

And I’m really looking forward to booking restaurants under my own name, because at least I’ll be able to remember it when I turn up at the restaurant door. Hopefully. When you run four or five false names across half-a-dozen online reservation systems, it can be a struggle. (I know, the pathos – you can feel my pain, right?)

I was born to be a restaurant critic. When you know what it’s like as a youngster to be both hungry and lonely, you have a special relationship with food that lasts all your life. In my teens, I was living in cheap lodging houses and eating half a can of soup a night. Food has always made me feel better. So when I started earning money, it made sense to seek out ever better food, and to pay attention to it.

Above: Durack with wife and food writer Jill Dupleix at the Campaign Brief Legends Lunch in 2020

And I love the writing side of reviewing. The frustration when you can’t quite nail the description of a dish so that the reader can taste it. The satisfaction when you can.

I’ve had a great run. I’ve edited eight different Good Food Guides, I’ve won all the awards, written books and moved to London to review restaurants for The Independent on Sunday. Together with my wife and partner-in-crime Jill Dupleix, I’ve travelled the world, met some amazing and inspiring chefs and restaurateurs, and traced some of my all-time favourite ingredients back to their source.  Continue reading here on smh.com.au…