"Global gourmet" by Sue Bennett

Full article: "Global gourmet" in Sydney Morning Herald

Normally, I’m quite good at summarizing an article, but for this one, I’m lost. That’s because I can’t find the central point of the story; I’ve read the story thrice, so I think I’ve done the writer justice.

The lack of supporting visual 
makes this article all more confusing.
Source: www.ilovefoodtrucks.com

It’s clear that the article is about Amanda Gale, the group executive chef of the luxury Como Hotels. But I’m not sure if the story it’s about Gale’s curiosity to discover exotic cuisines, how she became a chef or something else entirely.

Between the article and its headline, there is a short paragraph: “Wherever she goes around the world, Amanda Gale is curious to discover other cultures' flavours, writes Sue Bennett.” So I presume that’s the central idea of the story. But only the first half of what follows seems to support that.

The first half of the story talks about Gale’s excitement and the difficulty she faces in making exotic cuisines such as Bhutanese, Maldivian or Dominican.  This is actually a very interesting angle because you don’t hear about these cuisines very often and I doubt many people have tried them. So why not keep this as the central idea of your story, Bennett?

Then all of a sudden, while we are sitting in a restaurant in Bangkok with Gale, Bennett brings us back in time when Gale quit university and started working at restaurants. However, Bennett never brings us back to that Bangkok restaurant and I don’t even know why we were there in the first place.

The incoherent ideas in the article confuse me. The story doesn’t flow because there is simply no transition to link these different ideas. To illustrate this, let me quote this:

“In addition to her group role, she’s [Gale’s] now executive chef at the Uma Ubud hotel and Como Shambhala Estate health resort, both in the heart of the island.

It’s important for the hotels menus to reflect their locations.”

I see what point Bennett is trying to make but that big blank space between the two points juts me out of the story. And this is only one example.

Lastly, I’m simply bored by the monotone of the story – Bennett repeats the same short-sentence structure again and again with 800 words. All I hear is “blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah…”

Oh god, even typing this tone bores me.