James Taylor

James Taylor came to Australia with chef Rick Stein, after working with him for three years in the United Kingdom, and headed for the Red Centre in search of what he calls “an authentic Australian experience.” He joined the Longitude 131° kitchen as chef de partie in 2023, then left the desert to broaden his experience at Spicers Hidden Vale in Queensland and Rosewood Matakauri Lodge in Queenstown, New Zealand. But the pull of Uluṟu proved difficult to shake. “It must be some kind of Uluṟu magic that always draws us back,” James says of the remote landscape and close-knit Yulara community. In 2025, he returned to Longitude 131° as Executive chef, drawn by the people, lifestyle, and opportunity to continue building a career in a place he already knew well.

Cooking in the desert has taught James to embrace both its possibilities and its limitations. With almost nothing sourced locally, ingredients travel extraordinary distances to reach the lodge, making resourcefulness, sustainability, and zero waste central to his kitchen. “We use what we have, and it doesn’t make sense to throw things away that have traveled so far,” he says. Native Australian flavors give that philosophy a distinct sense of place, from cinnamon myrtle and rosella to saltbush, an ingredient James first encountered here and remembers chefs picking outside while waiting for the morning transfer bus. That connection becomes especially vivid at Table 131°, where the team cooks by torchlight on a remote dune top, adapting to wind, wildlife, forgotten equipment, and curious guests. For James, the goal is not complexity for its own sake, but food that feels unmistakably Australian and surprisingly familiar. The best moments, he says, are when a dish transports a guest back to something they ate as a child: “almost a Ratatouille moment,” experienced beneath the desert sky.