Tasting Australia: Meet the young stars shaping the future of dining in South Australia
They’re the young stars shaping the future of dining in this state. Ahead of the 2022 Tasting Australia festival, they talk to Simon Wilkinson about their life in the kitchen.
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Being a chef is a young person’s game, they say. To a point, it is true. Many have their first experience in a kitchen while they are still going to high school and can be running the show before they are 30.
All those years of standing up, the pressure/adrenaline of a busy service and the unsociable hours take a toll as well, so by the age that workers in other professions would be at their peak, many chefs are looking for an escape route.
Still, look around the restaurants that are leading the way in this state and the relative youth of those responsible for creating the magic on the plate is astonishing. They bring open minds, energy, creativity and optimism – qualities that have been tested more than ever over the past couple of years.
The line-up of “culinary stars” for the Tasting Australia festival reflects the impact of this generation. Here five of the young guns featured in the program talk about their careers and the future of food, and their industry.
EMMA McCASKILL, 35
Food curator, Tasting Australia
Business development consultant, Adelaide Institute of Hospitality
Emma McCaskill can see both the possibilities and the challenges facing the next generation of chefs and waiting staff.
Having worked for almost 20 years on the front line herself, at restaurants in the UK, Japan and, most recently The Pot and Sparkke at the Whitmore, she is now mentoring high school students who are interested in hospitality careers and connecting them with potential employers.
When she did her apprenticeship “in an old school kitchen” in Melbourne, she was expected to work extraordinary hours.
Now, she says, restaurants are changing their ways. Issues around work-life balance and hours compared to pay had been bubbling away already, she believes, “but the pandemic blew them up”.
“Things have changed. We can’t use the same formula,” she says of this generation of school-leavers, many of whom aren’t prepared to make the same sacrifices for the sake of their careers. “We have to evolve with what is happening around us and that includes adapting to how people are entering the workplace now. I try to explain to the kids I see what it was like back then, but also how it is now, and how lucky they are having people wanting to support them.”
While the expectations of the students she works with are different, McCaskill believes their passion for the industry is still there – it just comes from different places.
“There are kids from different cultures who are brought up around food and cook a lot already at home,” she says.
“Then there are kids who have an illusion of what the industry will be like from watching MasterChef. Then there are some who are just interested in working in a restaurant.”
Looking forward, McCaskill believes that restaurant owners will be more cautious and money savvy. The shift from fine dining to upper level casual will continue.
Asked what ingredients she sees on the horizon, she points to those featuring regularly on menus prepared by guest chefs for Tasting Australia – persimmon, marron and wild ingredients such as boar and foraged mushrooms.
“If anything, cooking styles are reverting back to basics, cooking over fire, over coals, without water baths or induction. It’s like we are going backwards. There was the molecular gastronomy trend and it’s reversing back to keeping food as simple as you can without too much faffing about.”
JAKE KELLIE, 31
Arkhe
While finding a charcoal grill in a restaurant has become commonplace, Norwood hot spot Arkhe takes cooking over fire to a whole new level. A furnace-like oven turns timber into the coals that are used as the only heat source across the kitchen – beneath an adjustable grill loaded with premium meat cuts and whole fish, reducing sauces on a “stove top”, even powering the cauldron filled with oil that acts as a deep-fryer. For chef Jake Kellie and his team, each day has its own challenges but the process is also deeply rewarding.
“Cooking on fire is never consistent,” says Kellie, who developed his skills at the world-renowned Burnt Ends in Singapore during one of several forays working overseas. “Every piece of wood can burn differently. You have to find your own knack for running the kitchen and you need to be prepared.”
Considering his age, Kellie has already crammed an enormous amount into his CV since leaving school and starting an apprenticeship at a small French restaurant on the NSW Central Coast when he was 16.
After two years, still “very green”, he headed to Sydney and the lavish surrounds and professional standards of Matt Moran’s Aria. Then he travelled the world, staging in Paris and London, and cooking alongside countryman Brett Graham at Michelin-starred The Ledbury in Notting Hill.
Back in Australia, he moved to Melbourne, headed a kitchen for the first time at age 23 and was named Young Chef of the Year. The prize was more travel, including an introduction to Dave Pynt at Burnt Ends, where he stayed for three years. Now, he has brought his own take on that experience to Adelaide.
Kellie describes opening Arkhe as “the hardest thing I have done”, not helped by Covid-related shutdowns on two occasions just as the kitchen and the front of house brigades were getting into stride. “But I think it has ended up making us stronger as a business,” he says.
Kellie has a number of fresh faces in his team and is sympathetic towards the generation of hospitality workers who are just finding their feet. “Looking after staff is going to be a key thing in the future,” he says. “Giving them a sense of pride … or a bit of an incentive. Nurturing them …”
CLARE FALZON, 29
Hentley Farm
The rural, creekside setting is gorgeous and the food memorable, but perhaps the most unexpected part of lunch at Hentley Farm is the youthful faces of the chefs who bring each dish to the table. As they tell the story of the ingredients and their preparation, then apply the final flourishes, you will be amazed that they are cooking at this elite level.
In the world of fine dining at least, Hentley must have one of the youngest kitchen teams in the country. It is led by head chef Clare Falzon who, at 29, is a relative veteran. At the other end of the scale is a 15-year-old apprentice.
“It’s very energetic. Everyone is so passionate and open to learning,” Falzon says of her team.
“It can be a challenge because there isn’t that foundation (of experience) for them to fall back on but it is great that they have open minds and are willing to push themselves. And they all support each other which is lovely. “It’s really nice to see them go to the table and get first-hand feedback and grow from that and be proud of what they do.”
Falzon started young herself, washing dishes at 15 and taking up an apprenticeship the following year.
“Mum got me a job washing dishes because she thought it would put me off (wanting to be a chef) but it only made me want to do it more,” she laughs. She then headed to London in her early 20s, working in Gordon Ramsay restaurants including Maze and Petrus, before returning to Sydney and a position at Nomad.
After more travels, she started at Hentley in 2018, working alongside founding chef Lachlan Colwill. She took charge at the beginning of last year.
“It’s been a good challenge and it’s growing me both as a chef and a person,” she says.
“If you can run a restaurant during these times, I guess you can do it at any time.”
Hentley is as popular as ever, with the Atrium dining space booked out on weekends months ahead.
KANE POLLARD, 35
Topiary
After a challenging year in the city, Kane Pollard is back in his happy place at Topiary, the astounding little eatery he runs in a garden centre out at Tea Tree Gully.
For the chef who grew up in a market gardening family and has fond memories of picking blackberries and walking through fields of wild fennel with his brother, it is a setting in which he feels at home.
And he is also appreciating a reset in his work-life balance, an issue for many chefs, as he learnt early in his career. Not long after leaving school, he was an apprentice at a city hotel and working 70 to 80 hours a week. He can laugh about it now.
“Sleeping in the car park in the back of my Torana became a regular thing,” he says. “But I was just shattered and Mum said, ‘You can’t keep doing it’.” He left and ended up travelling to Germany, where he worked for 18 months.
Back home, he moved to Cairns with wife-to-be Adele, then returned for an ill-fated stint at a city restaurant.
Still wanting to be a chef but not be away from his family every night, he responded to a job ad for a cafe at Newman’s nursery and, despite initial reservations, took the position. Eighteen months later, he and Adele bought the business and began developing it into a more contemporary dining experience – while still keeping the regulars happy.
Given what he experienced as a young chef, Pollard is very conscious of making work sustainable for his team. “It’s a huge challenge but we make sure it is five days a week, and eight, maybe nine hours max,” he says. “That’s how we’ve kept our chefs for the whole 10 years we have been there.”
Sustainability of the environment and food sources are also huge issues for Pollard, and many of his best dishes at Topiary feature either secondary cuts or parts of fruit and veg (such as carrot tops) that would normally be thrown away.
It’s a theme he will explore further, with fellow chefs Karena Armstrong (Salopian Inn) and Ben Devlin (Pipit, NSW) in the Wasted dinner during Tasting Australia.
TOM TILBURY, 36
Press
Tom Tilbury is bringing his garden-led, hyper-local cooking from the countryside where it was nurtured into the heart of the city.
Fresh from numerous accolades (including Restaurant of the Year) with Gather at Coriole, and before that Robe, Tilbury has taken over the kitchen at Press in what looks to be a winning combination.
Reopened a little more than a week ago after an extensive renovation, it marks the latest chapter for an eatery that, in its early years, broke new ground for Adelaide.
Tilbury grew up in McLaren Vale and knew he wanted to cook from an early age, though he wasn’t sure where or how. But a birthday lunch for his grandmother at the Botanic Gardens Restaurant proved inspirational.
He found jobs in city restaurants and finished his apprenticeship at d’Arry’s Verandah, before heading to Margaret River, the eastern states and a stint at the Botanic Gardens, of all places. He then spent eight years in Robe, working on a farm with his in-laws and in the town’s restaurants, before opening the first Gather in an old wool store. Moving back to McLaren Vale and Coriole, with its massive vegetable patches at hand, proved an inspired choice.
Now, at Press, he will need to forage further afield but cooking “what’s around you and what’s best at that time” is still his guiding principle. His first menu, then, includes Nomad chicken liver parfait and onion jam in a choux bun and kingfish with variations of fennel, horseradish cream and finger lime.
As restaurants everywhere try to cope with increased costs and ensuring staff are fairly rewarded, he believes their customers need to understand that prices may increase. Shorter or fixed menus are another solution. “Your people are key to a successful business so you try to look after them first and everything else follows,” he says.
“If you have a happy working environment then you have happy guests.” ■
Tasting Australia begins on Friday, April 29. For information and bookings go to tastingaustralia.com.au
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