The quest for Australia's fine food experience

Chef, cooking teacher and food editor Rodney Dunn celebrates the new 'Restaurant Australia' tourist campaign, but warns that the fine dining promise must be backed up.

Next year Tourism Australia will launch an international campaign designed to lure tourists to Australia to experience the country's fine food and wine.

Rodney Dunn from Tasmanian farm based cooking school, the Agrarian Kitchen in the Derwent Valley produces heritage vegetables and breeds of animals and runs cooking schools for clients from overseas and across Australia.

Chef and cooking teacher Rodney Dunn in the kitchen garden where he grows heritage vegetables.

"I think it's a good thrust. I think it's very important that we do back it up however.

I think Australia as a whole and I say this about Tasmania has a huge potential.

It's very easy to rush into it and go, 'yes, we are already there'.

I hate to put a dampener on it but we're not there, we've got a long way to go but we are heading in the right direction.

If we can harness the potential it could be amazing."

The farm based cooking school the Agrarian Kitchen has been created in a former school at Lachlan in the Derwent Valley.

Rodney Dunn is a former food editor of Australian Gourmet Traveller magazine and one-time apprentice to Australian Chef Tetsuya Wakuda.

He warns of the impact customer disappointment might bring.

"I see that, people coming in and thinking that they are going to have paddocks of amazing food everywhere and on every corner there's going to be amazing food, and there's not.

They're going to have to search for it.

That's not to say that it's not like that in other parts of the world, you don't go to France or Italy and it's like that.

The cooking school specialises in heritage and rare breed varieties of animals and vegetables.

But Tasmania and Australia as a whole has plenty of land and a great climate in which to develop this culture, I think it's doable", he said.

Since establishing the Agrarian Kitchen five years ago Rodney has trialled over 200 varieties of heritage tomatoes, has planted heritage hops and is now searching for a range of heritage grains.

"We do make our own bread and we've just starting making our own beers. Grains are something very innate to us, our human culture.

I'm just starting and looking for different varieties, I had real trouble finding anything that was local and heritage.

In home gardens people don't grow grains, it's not something you think about doing, although it's very exciting and interesting.

Whereas the farmers have moved into very specialised varieties that have been highly bred and selected.

It's led me to cast the net wider and really try to gather up these different grains."

On the weekend Rodney Dunn launched the 2013 2014 Tasmanian Open Gardens season which will feature 26 open gardens, including productive gardens through until early May next year.

Capturing the summer harvest, the pantry at the Agrarian Kitchen.

Source: ABC News, 25 September 2013