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Teage Ezard inducted into the MFW Legends Hall of Fame | Combat MSA

05 Sep 2026

A Legend of the Kitchen: Teage Ezard Joins the Melbourne Food and Wine Hall of Fame

Some honours land exactly where they should. This week, Teage Ezard was inducted into the Melbourne Food and Wine Legends Hall of Fame, recognising the chefs and restaurateurs who've shaped Victoria's food and drink scene.

Tina and their two children, Sienna and Kingston, were guests of honour on the night, with Tina accepting the award on his behalf. For everyone who knew him, worked alongside him, or has eaten at one of his restaurants, it's a moment to feel proud rather than sad, and that's exactly how we want to mark it.

Teage's food story started in the 1980s, learning under Hermann Schneider at Two Faces in South Yarra, before he took his first head chef role at Guernica. In 1999 he opened Ezard, the restaurant that became his signature: a style he called Australian freestyle, built on serious technique but never afraid to borrow from Asia and Europe in the same dish. He followed it with Gingerboy, his pan-Asian canteen, then took the Ezard name to the Yarra Valley, Sydney and Hong Kong, and found time to publish three cookbooks along the way. It's the kind of career that quietly built the industry other chefs now take for granted.
His widow and Combat MSA's CEO, Tina Ezard, put it simply: hospitality and restaurants were always his first love. "He would always spruik how important it was to have restaurants that actually define who we are," she said, adding that she feels humbled and proud that "he made a difference and imprinted something positive on the industry." Jane Semple, who worked alongside him as sommelier at Ezard, remembered him as "this big boofy Aussie bloke who could cook like an angel," with a bedrock understanding of everything that makes a restaurant work. Fellow MFW Legend Tony Tan described being staggered by his passionate commitment and vision to promote Melbourne as a culinary destination.
We built Combat MSA on that same energy. Teage founded it after his own MSA diagnosis, determined that a disease most people had never heard of wouldn't just take without a fight. His own words still guide how we do this: "If I can help make someone else's path through this a little less confusing, a little less frightening, then that's something I can live with." That's awareness, advocacy and research in one sentence, and it's exactly what we get up every day to do.
A Hall of Fame induction is an industry telling Teage his work mattered. We already knew that, but it's a lovely thing to see recognised so publicly, and a reminder that his story keeps reaching people well beyond the kitchens he built. If you'd like to read more of that story in his own voice, our "Teage's Table" newsletter shares the food philosophy, and even the recipes, that shaped him. And if this is the first time you've heard of MSA, that's exactly why we're still telling this story: the more people who know about it, the sooner others get the answers Teage never had time to wait for.

Learn more about MSA and the work it funds at combatmsa.org.au, subscribe to Teage's Table, or get in touch about supporting Feed the Fight and the next Table of Hope.

Facts and quotes about the Legends Hall of Fame induction are drawn from Melbourne Food and Wine's coverage: Legends Awards 2026 – Chefs, Restaurateurs.

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