Some of the biggest names on the world food scene are heading to Sydney this October for the Crave Sydney International Food Festival, including some of the hottest stars from the World's Best Restaurants list.Festival Director Joanna Savill today announced the extraordinary line up fronting the World Chef Showcase, one of the festival's signature events.

The World Chef Showcase is presented by Etihad and held at Star City Hotel. This must-see event sees remarkable chefs and food personalities from around the world bring their creative genius to Sydney, to join Sydney's and Australia's finest for two action-packed days.

The 20 international arrivals include the highly original New York chef, Wylie Dufresne from wd~50 restaurant (No. 45 on the San Pellegrino World's Best Restaurants list) who will show off his extraordinary, techno-based cooking. Marcus Wareing from the elegant Berkeley Hotel in London (two Michelin stars, No. 58 on the World's Best list) is also coming to town, along with rising new-generation star, Alexandre Gauthier from France (No. 76) and Ben Shewry from Attica in Melbourne (No. 73).

They will be joined by Sydney's own Peter Gilmore from Quay (no. 27) and Tetsuya Wakuda (Tetsuya's, No. 38) plus a number of other local and international stars, including TV faces Kylie Kwong, Rick Stein, Luke Nguyen and Sean Connolly.

This year's Showcase themes reflect the culinary Zeitgeist: an increasing concern about where fresh produce comes from and how it is grown; the fascinating flavours of the Middle East and Turkey; and of course, the latest in kitchen wizardry from the avant-garde chef set.

From Hong Kong, there's Margaret Xu Yuan from Kitchen Yin Yang, with her field-to-plate approach to ingredients and cooking. We'll learn all about extraordinary village traditions in Turkey from Musa Dagdeviren of the famed Ciya restaurants in Istanbul and find out why dessert chefs, like such as Janice Wong from Singapore's 2am:dessert bar, are the new restaurant rock stars.

"The inaugural World Chef Showcase in 2009 created an incredible buzz with inspirational ideas, food and the chance to get up close and personal with a really exciting group of top chefs and food experts," said Savill.

"This year is set to be even more thrilling and Sydney will literally be the centre of the world for all things food."

The Crave Sydney International Food Festival (October 1 - 31) is a month-long celebration of Sydney's amazing food scene and offers extraordinary food experiences in unique Sydney locations.

Kicking off with the Barbecue Madness launch weekend (October 2), October 2010 will be a month-long feast of extraordinary food-themed events, from the finest fine dining at the city's leading restaurants to the buzzy hawker-style Night Noodle Markets in Hyde Park (October 11 - 22).

Crave Sydney International Food Festival is one of five anchor events in the NSW Master Events Calendar created by the NSW Government through Events NSW.

The full Crave Sydney International Food Festival program will appear in The Sydney Morning Herald in September.

For more information on the Crave Sydney International Food Festival go to www.siff.com.au and for tickets to World Chef Showcase, go to www.ticketmaster.com.au/worldchefshowcase from June 29.