Lewis LIKES it.

The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.

Wallace Wattles

Outstanding In The Field was created in 1999 by acclaimed sand artist and self taught chef, Jim Denevan. His mission was to honor the women and men who grow, nurture, catch and harvest the food that we enjoy each day, by staging communal dinners on their land. Denevan seeks to bring us back to the source of our food, turning the soil where it’s grown into the restaurant where we dine.

For the past ten years, Jim’s been staging his hugely ambitious culinary roadshow all across America. What started with just three California based dinners in 1999 grew to around 58 dinners nationwide in 2009. I first read about Outstanding in Howie Kahn’s James Beard Award winning 2007 GQ article and was immediately taken with the concept.

Last year I attended my first dinner, at Devil’s Gulch Ranch in beautiful Marin County, CA. My friend Andre and I were actually nervous about going, concerned we wouldn’t meet anyone to connect with. We needn’t have worried – Outstanding attendees tend to share the same ethos – the importance of sourcing and using locally sourced food and a desire to enjoy it in the company of others – all you have to do is show up and you’re guaranteed a memorable time. Our section of the table got very merry indeed (we all ended up partying back in San Fran together after the dinner) and our long table went down as the first in Outstanding history to drink them out of wine (it’s on their blog!). Jim even warmly called me a “Rabble Rouser” that night – I guess that’s his polite term for “shitfaced drunk”.

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Black as the devil, Hot as hell,
Pure as an angel, Sweet as love.

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord

Coffee paid my way through college.

While most students drink the stuff to get through midterms and finals, I made it instead, working as a barista to help pay my way through school. I must’ve made literally hundreds of thousands of lattes, cappuccinos and flat whites over those years. On quieter days, it’s a really lovely, meditative process making coffee. If I ever needed to, I could go back to that job tomorrow and be pretty content. I never drank a single cup during that period, preferring the aroma of freshly ground beans to the taste of coffee. These days though, I love the stuff.

Australia has a serious coffee culture. Unlike much of America, where serious coffee means seriously huge cups, Aussies know their lattes from their macchiatos. Recently, I’ve discovered a couple of spots in LA that serve incredible coffee (I’ll share them with you soon), but the sad fact is that it took me six years to find a decent coffee in a city this large. Whereas in Sydney or Melbourne, you could throw a handful of coffee beans in the street and be sure to hit at least one spot that makes incredible coffee.

In Sydney, there’s nothing better after a swim at Bondi Beach than sitting down with a towel wrapped around you for a flat white (like a cappuccino, but with just the coffee crema instead of the foam on top). My brew of choice is a soy flat white with a teaspoon of honey or raw sugar. I don’t go overboard with coffee, at most a cup a day, sometimes two, always single shot.

Here’s my vote for the top three best flat whites in Bondi -

bru COFFEE

The new kid on the North Bondi scene (with equally young owners), bru coffee operates out of a tiny, hole in the wall storefront – it used to be a hair salon when I lived there – and makes a seriously good cup of coffee. Patrons spill out onto the astroturf, lazing in the sun with a latte and the paper. Like all Bondi spots, the vibe is relaxed.

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Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

Will Rogers

I first walked the Bondi to Bronte Coastal Path during the Sydney 2000 Olympics. I was visiting the city with my best friend Raquel and we heard it was a great walk. But nothing prepared me for its beauty.

The path starts at Ben Buckler Point in North Bondi and extends all the way to Coogee (3.5 km/2.17 mi) but the most popular section starts next to the Icebergs Swimming Club and ends at the Bronte Baths (1.5km/.9 mi) – a smaller ocean pool at the south end of Bronte beach.

It runs along coastal cliffs until picturesque Tamarama Beach (a popular surfing cove), where it converts to a regular street sidewalk until Bronte. Along the way, there’s exercise stations and ample places to sit and read, meditate or enjoy the views.

Raquel and I stood looking over the Pacific from an incredible cliff top vantage. “After seeing this, why would you live anywhere else?!” she said incredulously. I agreed wholeheartedly, and relocated from Perth a few months later.

Sydney is a huge flirt of a city, with its stunning harbor and man made wonders like the Opera House. But it was this walk that sold me on the city, and on living in Bondi. It’s a walk you never tire of. The lucky souls who get to walk and jog it daily know what I’m talking about.

The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.

Charles Du Bos

While Bondi summers are hot, humid, overpopulated and sexy, Bondi winters are a quieter affair, often sunny with crisp blue skies. The famous wide arc of Bondi Beach, so packed with tourists in summer, is virtually empty. Locals know better, filling up the cafes and enjoying the relative peace of the season. It’s a time of year when Bondi feels like a village.

Bondi itself is a ramshackle mixture of art deco, beach shacks and, increasingly, modern apartment buildings that many feel threaten the character and history of the beachfront. Every time I return, there seems to be a new structure looming over Campbell Parade. While I’m ordinarily a huge fan of contemporary architecture, I tend to be a Bondi purist, wishing developers would leave the beachfront well alone. But Bondi has never been an architectural gem. It’s more like an old school Aussie suburb that just happens to be located on one of the most stunning urban beaches in the world.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an out of shape person in Bondi. The fresh air, stunning locations and generally amazing weather lend themselves well to outdoor activity, and most locals get around in little more than swimmers, sunnies (sunglasses) and thongs (flip flops) – a comfortable dress code and fitness incentive in one.

All of Sydney’s eastern beaches have their own ocean filled pools. The largest is Bondi’s Icebergs Swimming Club (pictured in gallery). I was a competitive swimmer all through school and college and at some point developed a pretty bad allergy to chlorine, so Icebergs Olympic sized salt water pool was a godsend for me. It’s an institution in Bondi and the club was renovated about a decade ago, with the addition of the famous (and infamously expensive) “Icebergs” restaurant and a total overhaul of the pools. It is one of my favorite spots in the whole world, and every return visit to Sydney begins with a swim there. The pool is open every day except Thursday when they drain, clean and refill it with water from the Pacific.

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Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.

Winnie the Pooh

As a small child, my favorite books were A.A Milne’s original Winnie The Pooh series. I loved the tales of unconventional communal friendships – bear, tiger, kangaroo, piglet, rabbit, donkey, owl and boy – now that’s diversity! Mostly, I loved the way the books celebrated the magic qualities of honey and Pooh’s gentle, yet determined obsession with it. I love honey. Raw, natural, untreated and nurturing.

I was backpacking through the Middle East a few years back, and honey was a staple when I wasn’t sure about what was safe to eat. In Damascus, at the top of a small steep street near my hostel, there was a large open window with a woodfired oven behind it. For a few cents, you got turkish style flatbread straight out of the oven, generously drizzled with raw honey. Every morning I’d sit with my piping hot bread and a cup of sweet black tea and think I was the luckiest guy alive.

When I read that bees were starting to disappear and honey was predicted to become a rare commodity, I seriously considered stockpiling it. Visions of doomsday scenarios flooded my head and I imagined myself in a bunker somewhere eating honey while armageddon descended upon the poor honey-less souls outside.

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