Maggie Beer Biography
Maggie Beer AO is a chef, author, restaurateur, and food manufacturer from Australia. Beer, along with Matt Moran, is a judge on The Great Australian Bake Off and a regular on MasterChef Australia.
How old is Maggie Beer? – Age
She is 78 years old as of 19 January 2023. She was born in 1945 in Sydney, Australia.
Maggie Beer Family
Beer was born to Ronald Ackerman, whose paternal grandparents were German, and Doreen Carter, whose maternal great-grandparents were English. Her father’s family were gold miners who lived in Hill End, New South Wales. Beer thought they were Jewish, but an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? revealed that her ancestors had been Catholic for as long as records existed.
She grew up in Sydney’s western suburbs with her family. Beer’s parents went bankrupt while she was growing up and had to reinvent themselves as caterers. She remarked that this influenced her strong work ethic later in life.
How long has Maggie Beer been married? – Husband
She married Colin Beer on January 17, 1970, and they own a cottage in South Australia’s Barossa Valley. She is the mother of two daughters. Her eldest daughter died unexpectedly on February 14, 2020, at the age of 46.
Maggie Beer Net Worth
She has an estimated net worth of $25 Million.
Maggie Beer Illness
She is free of any disease or illness. Maggie may be quite healthy and active while she continues to work as a chef.
Does Maggie Beer have a Restaurant? – Barossa – Restaurants
Maggie and her husband Colin moved from Sydney to the Barossa Valley in 1979 and opened the Farm Shop, which later became the Barossa Pheasant Farm Restaurant. Pheasant Farm Pate, a pâté made from locally sourced pheasant, became popular at the restaurant. The restaurant received the Remy Martin Cognac – Australian Gourmet Traveller Restaurant of the Year award in 1991. Maggie and Colin owned the wildly popular restaurant until 1993. Later, she became a partner in the Charlick’s Feed Store restaurant in Adelaide’s city center, Ebenezer Place.
Beer currently runs a business in the Barossa Valley that makes a variety of gourmet delicacies such as Pheasant Farm Pate, quince jam, verjuice, and gourmet ice creams. She co-hosted the ABC television cookery show The Cook and the Chef with Simon Bryant, the Hilton Adelaide’s Head Chef. She has also served as a guest judge and masterclass presenter on MasterChef Australia multiple times.
Maggie Beer Cookbooks
Beer has written books about food and food preparation, as well as co-authored one with renowned chef, restaurateur, and food writer Stephanie Alexander. Stephanie Alexander and Maggie Beer’s Tuscan Cook, one of her co-written books, has been translated into five languages. She appeared on Who Do You Think You Are in 2012, where she discovered a convicted bigamist in her family history.
Maggie Beer Career
Despite having no official culinary experience, Beer has had a successful career spanning nearly five decades. During a European tour in her early twenties, her first paid cooking job was at a Scottish sailing school. Beer and Matt Moran were revealed as the judges for the second season of The Great Australian Bake Off in April 2015, which premiered on LifeStyle Food on October 13, 2015.
Beer was named Telstra South Australian Business Woman of the Year in 1997. On January 1, 2001, Beer was given the Centenary Medal for services to Australian society via cuisine and writing. Maggie Beer received the Australian Publishers Association’s Illustrated Book of the Year award in 2008 for Maggie’s Harvest.
She received the 2010 “Senior Australian of the Year” award. She delivered the Dymphna Clark Memorial Lecture the same year. Beer was named a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2012 Australia Day Honours for “service to the tourism and hospitality industries as a cook, restaurateur, and author, and to the promotion of Australian produce and cuisine.”
Beer received an honorary doctorate from the University of South Australia in April 2016 in honor of her contributions to tourism and hospitality, as well as the promotion of Australian food and cuisine. In the 2022 Australia Day Honours, Beer was elevated to Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the tourism and hospitality industries as a cook, restaurateur, and author, as well as to aged welfare.”