Annie Smithers is one of Australia’s best-regarded female chefs. She has built a distinguished career in the restaurant world since apprenticing with Stephanie Alexander back in 1984 at Alexander’s acclaimed eponymous Melbourne restaurant. In the past decade, she has worked in regional Victoria, first at Annie Smithers’ Bistrot in Kyneton and, since 2013, at du Fermier (‘From the Farmhouse’), her charming, perfectly formed little restaurant in nearby Trentham (central Victoria). Here, she has garnered even more acclaim as a one-woman band, turning out rustic French provincial-style food that is dictated very much by the seasons. As well, she has established a thriving vegetable garden on her home property in Malmsbury. This garden (chooks, geese, apple trees, and about an acre of vegetables) is about both feeding restaurant guests, and her broader goal to be, where possible, self sustaining. Annie’s work has been called out for excellence by the country’s foremost food guide (awarded one hat), is regularly identified as a favourite of leading national critic John Lethlean, and has been named as one of The Financial Review’s top restaurants nationally.