Pete Evans - judge/host

Pete Evans is a man of many talents – he is a respected chef, businessman and dad as well as co-host of My Kitchen Rules.

Sampling food across Australia alongside good friend Manu Feildel is a role he cherishes. "I love people's home cooking - that excites me more than restaurant meals sometimes. You can taste people's passion when they're cooking for you at home," he says. "People have to eat food every day so everyone can learn from cooking shows. It's all about educating people and I love sharing my love of food with others."

Born in Melbourne and raised on the Gold Coast, Pete's passion for cooking was discovered early on.

"My cooking life really kicked off when I started working in my mate's pie shop at the ripe old age of 13. I carved my way through the pie shop, McDonald's and Sizzler before wondering where my real passions lay.

"At the age of 17, I turfed the uni idea, became an apprentice chef and cooked all night and surfed all day."

After opening his first restaurant, The Pantry, in Melbourne's bayside suburb of Brighton in 1993, Pete moved to Sydney in 1996 with his brother Dave and established Hugos in Bondi, Hugos Lounge and Hugos Bar Pizza in Kings Cross and Hugos Manly.

Pete's restaurants have gone on to win numerous awards, including the coveted Sydney Morning Herald Chefs Hat seven years in a row.

The keen fisherman and seafood devotee has a raft of cooking shows under his belt both locally and internationally and even boasts cooking for royalty, having prepared dinner for Princess Mary and members of the Danish Royalty.

Pete appears annually at some of Australia's most acclaimed food events such as Tasting Australia, The Good Food Show and The Great Barrier Feast. He's travelled to New York and Los Angeles for the G'day USA promotion in recent years where he's appeared on the The Martha Stewart Show and CBS Early Show.

He has combined his love of food with a passion for writing and published four books. Fish, a collection of more than 130 fish and seafood recipes utilising Australian and New Zealand species was published by Murdoch Books in 2007. My Table – Food for Entertaining was released in 2008 and My Grill (2009) shares his barbecuing secrets.

Pete released his fourth book in 2011 entitled My Party: Canapés and Cocktails, which features delicious party and matching drink recipes.

The book offers handy hints to people entertaining at home; some advice the My Kitchen Rules teams will be heeding when they host their instant restaurants.

Pete's also launched his signature pizza maker with Breville and a range of sauces exclusive to David Jones as well as becoming an Ambassador of Jacob's Creek Reserve.

In October 2011, he released a new range of kitchen tools and cookware, in association with Baccarat.