Following from the Ask Gourmantic reader questions, and in the spirit of Gourmantic’s 10th Birthday, we thought we would share more information about us and the website, so here are 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about Gourmantic.
10 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About Gourmantic:
- Gourmantic launched with four categories. Aside from Travel, Food, Drink (and later events), we had a Music section. It was a space for Kevin to write about his long-time hobby/passion. While he had some good ideas, it didn’t quite eventuate and after 6 months, we removed it.
- We were highly anonymous. For a long time, we didn’t use an author name and simply went by Gourmantic, followed by Ms Gourmantic. It wasn’t until I won the Grantourismo global travel writing competition that I started using Corinne, and a few years later I started using my full name.
- The first restaurant we intended to review was a most horrible experience on all counts. This quickly established our ethos of only writing about positive experiences and giving zero publicity to the bad ones. Whether we’re paying customers or invited media guests, we’ve never strayed from that ethos.
- I was terrified of attending our first event. That meant breaking the anonymity. When we visited restaurants with the view to review, I hid a tiny camera on my lap (before iPhones) and I quickly snapped a photo when no one was looking.
- Before starting Gourmantic, I was writing a fictional novel. I had completed it and feedback from various sources, I was working on major edits. When Gourmantic took off, I had no time for it. It sat on the corner of my desk for 3 months before I filed it under “one day”.
- I’ve been writing since I was four years old. Writing is in my blood. My father was a journalist, writer, political analyst and translator in three languages. He passed away four months before I started Gourmantic.
- The one thing I don’t enjoy but is an essential part of my work is social media. I’m a writer not a social media marketer. We
spendwaste too much time yelling to the world on social media platforms that we’ve published an article. I’d much rather spend my time writing and bringing people to my websites rather than build some social media platform that inevitably gets you by theshort and curliesalgorithm. - Two pivotal moments sparked my interest in writing about bars and cocktails. First, it was our experience at the newly-opened Eau de Vie bar and soon after, the masterclass on cocktail families by Sam Ross. And yes, I have told both Sven Almenning and Sam Ross about it.
- In 10 years of publishing (and that’s a few thousand articles), we have never removed one. They’re a snapshot in time and remain there as part of history.
- The two things I am (equally) most proud of: Gourmantic was one of a handful of online publications that wrote about the nascent Sydney small bar scene and later saw the rise of Australian whisky and Australian craft spirits. The day when I found out back in 2013 that I was named in Bartender magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential List will always be a highlight of my career I’ll never forget.
