‘Enough is enough’: Fight for the truth over famed sand crab lasagne

Imitation might be the greatest form of flattery, but one Brisbane chef is claiming it’s “just rude”. HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN

It’s been hailed as an Australian cult classic, but now the woman behind Queensland’s famous sand crab lasagne believes it has been subject to a “blatant rip-off” which she describes as “just rude”.

Gillian Hirst says she invented the lavish dish in 1992 as inaugural executive chef of the acclaimed Il Centro restaurant, however embattled French chef Romain Bapst has long since claimed a version of it as his own.

Speaking publicly for the first time about the controversy, Hirst said she felt it was flattering to have someone copy her food, but offensive to profess ownership.

“It’s just rude – and it’s been going on for years; enough is enough,” said the chef, who since leaving Il Centro in 1995 has run a string of restaurants and consulted to luxury hotels such as Palazzo Versace and Ritz Carlton.

“I want the truth to come out,” she said.

“Everyone in the kitchen at Il Centro knew how to make the dish because I showed them, so I figured it would live on, which is quite flattering, but I do take offence when people claim it as their own.

“It’s a blatant rip-off.”

Bapst was appointed executive chef of the Brisbane riverside restaurant in late 1997.

The popular eatery sold 400 serves a week of sand crab lasagne to long-lunching lawyers, politicians and bizoids, as well as Queenslanders dining out for a special occasion, before it closed in 2020.

Gillian Hirst with her contentious crab lasagne. Picture: Steve Pohlner

In 2013, three years after controversially exiting Il Centro, the Strasbourg-born chef opened his own place, Lutece Bistro & Wine Bar, in Bardon, proudly trumpeting “his” sand crab lasagne as a menu highlight.

While Lutece sold in July 2020 it is still registered as a business under the entity Bapst Restaurant Consulting Pty Ltd (which went into liquidation in July 2022) and Bapst cooks for special events in other restaurants under his new enterprise, Lutece Culinary Friends.

The Lutece website currently states: “His celebrity was cemented during his years at Mietta’s [Melbourne] and 13 years at Brisbane institution Il Centro, where his fresh, modern menu featuring (sic) his famous Sand Crab Lasagne.”

In last week’s Sunday Mail Bapst admitted to withholding $100,000 in unpaid superannuation to former Lutece staff since 2017, then sensationally blamed complaints on impatience and racism, saying they were “proof that people hate the French”.

In response to the revelation, Hirst said it was time to set the record straight.

Hirst – one of the “it” crew of trailblazing chefs (along with Russell Armstrong, David Pugh and Philip Johnson) credited with transforming the Queensland culinary scene in the 1990s – talks fondly about the inception of her sand crab lasagne.

“It was a modern take on the classics and I knew it would work,” she said.

“It ticked all the boxes – comfort food with a touch of luxury but also approachable, everyone knows lasagne.

“Mine was basically crab mornay turned into a lasagne, and I am still amazed at how many people remember it.”

Chef Romain Bapst blamed Hirst’s complaints on impatience and racism.

Hirst pitched the dish to the owners of Il Centro – legendary hospitality figures Andy and Marcia Georges, who ran the restaurant for 25 years – in her job application.

“It was a delicate, made-to-order dish on my sample menu, and they honed in on it immediately and I thought, ‘wow, that means I have to modify the recipe so it can be prepared in advance for 140 people [the restaurant’s capacity]’.

“It started as fresh crabmeat tossed in butter served between grilled bocconcini, fresh layers of pasta and tomato sugo – a gorgeous little tumble of a dish,” she said.

“That’s only doable if you’ve got a 30-seater [restaurant] so I added the bechamel and made slabs of 30 portions in one go – I was pumping out at least 10 trays a week.”

By 1998 – three years after Hirst left Il Centro to open Indigo Bistro in New Farm – the dish had become so popular that a Courier-Mail review noted Il Centro regulars “would take to the streets in protest if ever it were to be removed from life’s short list of certainties”.

In 2020, when Hirst was selling her lasagne exclusively through The Stores Grocer in West End, Gourmet Traveller magazine hailed it a “cult classic” and one of “Australia’s best-loved bites”.

“There are lots of better chefs than I am and they don’t have a signature dish – I feel very lucky that happened in my career,” said Hirst, who works at Morningside providore Fino Foods but no longer sells her lasagne, which she said cost around $25 per serve to make.

She acknowledged the dish had been reproduced by other chefs, including her former apprentices and sous chefs.

Sand crab lasagne at Il Centro restaurant in 1998

“I don’t begrudge anyone for doing that, but it still doesn’t make it theirs. We all make caesar salad but don’t claim to have created it,” she said.

Mr Georges, who sold Il Centro to then-neighbouring restaurateur John Kilroy in 2017, confirmed the restaurant’s sand crab lasagne was first created by Hirst.

“Gillian Hirst was the one who created the dish – we gave her a brief to do a new modern Italian cuisine menu and this happened to be on it,” he told The Sunday Mail this week.

“It was a very different, unique sort of dish; everyone still talks about it and at our peak in the late 1990s we were doing 400 serves a week.”

Bapst said “anyone can do a sand crab lasagne”.

“Food is not invented, the Italians have been making seafood lasagne for decades,” he said.

“When I got to Il Centro in 1997 I fixed up the lasagne. Gillian Hirst’s lasagne was sloppy, so I changed the sauce, added more crab so it was higher in the tray, put in more butter and less milk.”

Bapst said Anna and Henri Burky, of Pasta Al Dente in Capalaba, began making crab lasagne in the 1980s.

Mr Burky said his Puglia-born wife’s lasagne “was tastier than any at Il Centro because she puts a bit of chilli in it”.

Pasta Al Dente sells a single serve of sand crab lasagne for $16 and also supplies delis including Rosalie Gourmet Market and Zone Fresh in Windsor.

Gillian Hirst’s sand crab lasagne. Picture: Steve Pohlner

GILLIAN HIRST’S SAND CRAB LASAGNE

Serves 12

Cost: about $300

Ingredients:

■ 1.5kg crabmeat

■ 250ml Napolitana sauce or sugo

■ 80g grated mozzarella

■ 1.5 litre bechamel sauce

■ 50g tomato paste

■ Salt, white pepper, pinch of cayenne pepper

■ 15-22 instant lasagne sheets

For cream sauce:

■ 600ml cream

■ 1 tbsp tomato paste

■ 2-3 tbsp Gold Prince abalone sauce

Method:

Preheat oven to 160C.

Bring the cream to a simmer, whisk in tomato paste and simmer until a sauce consistency. Whisk in abalone sauce to taste. Set aside.

Take 300ml bechamel sauce, whisk in tomato paste until an even pink colour. Set aside.

Mix 1200ml original bechamel with crabmeat, salt, pepper and cayenne.

Into a large oven tray, pour 120ml Napolitana sauce.

Layer pasta sheets over top, with half of the crab mix.

Sprinkle with Napolitana sauce and cheese. Repeat.

Finish with a layer of pasta topped with remaining pink bechamel.

Bake for 45 minutes.

Remove and refrigerate immediately (overnight).

To serve:

Cover and reheat at 150C for 50 minutes or until hot through, or portion up individual servings and microwave each until hot (around 3 mins on med-high setting). Smother with warmed abalone cream sauce.

Chef’s note:

* If you serve the lasagne on the day it’s made, it will not hold its shape.

* Chill as quickly as possible for food-safety reasons. In the restaurant, we would use a blast chiller or walk-in cold room.

* Gold Prince abalone sauce is available at The Fish Factory at Morningside and selected delis.

Leftover sauce may be frozen.