Kitchen Confidential: First look at Qld’s top new cooking school

Everyone from home cooks to professionals will learn something at a new top-of-the-line culinary school run by the brains behind Montrachet.

QUEENSLAND’S most state-of-the-art domestic-focused cooking school is set to open in Brisbane next month.

Located in the flash Mercedes-Benz building in Newstead, Lumiere Culinary Studio is the work of Shannon Kellam – behind award-winning French restaurant Montrachet in Bowen Hills – and will offer classes for everyone from the amateur home cook to the professional across everything from baking and pastry to butchery and seafood.

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“It’s about sharing our knowledge with people who are interested and how they can gain something that they can enjoy at home,” Kellam says.

Tara Bain, Yazmin Maestre and Shannon Kellam at the new Lumiere Events and Culinary Studio cooking school in Newstead. Picture: Claudia Baxter/AAP

The stunning 500sq m cooking school with gorgeous concrete rendered walls, matt brass detailing and views to Mt Coot-tha is split into three zones: a savoury kitchen, patisserie/bread/sweet kitchen and a private 22-person dining room and event space for guests to enjoy their dishes at the end of a class, should they wish.

Both kitchens have been decked out with gourmet Miele domestic appliances, including 900mm ovens, steam ovens, sous vide drawers, warming drawers, even teppanyaki grills.

“We’ve designed and built this with nothing spared,” Kellam says.

His long-time chef Tara Bainwill be chef de cuisine of the culinary studio, running most of the classes that include cooking with Australian seafood, French cooking at home or making brioche.

The patisserie studio for learning how to make the likes of breads, pastries and sweets at Lumiere Events and Culinary Studio in Newstead. Picture: Claudia Baxter/AAP

“It’s exciting. It’s something I haven’t done before,” Bain says about hosting classes.

“People always ask me questions and want to know (how to make something), so now they can ask questions and be shown and do it hands-on.”

Vegan classes will also be a major attraction, run by French-trained pastry chef Yazmin Maestre, who will show students how to make everything from egg and dairy-free macarons and pavlovas to plant-based cakes.

“We’ll be able to show a lot of different techniques here,” she says.

There will be four savoury and four pastry classes each week with a maximum of 18 people per class – on Thursday nights, Saturday mornings and afternoons and Sunday mornings – with the rest of the week available for private lessons, whether that be as a romantic couple’s activity, hen’s party or even a corporate team building exercise.

The private dining room at Lumiere Events and Culinary Studio. Picture: Claudia Baxter/AAP

“(For the corporates) we do pressure tests that we have designed specifically for people to learn how to work together well,” Kellam says.

He also hopes to add classes for professional chefs next year, specialising in the likes of sauces, meat cookery and vegetables.

Public classes will change every two months, with the first kicking off on April 2.

Kellam has also just launched his monster, top-of-the-line production kitchen at the Newstead site, with the 1000sq m space featuring a climate-controlled viennoiserie for making pastries such as crossiants, escargot, danishes and more; his The Kneadery business, preparing breads, biscuits, cakes, tarts and the like; and a savoury space, which will handle prep for Montrachet and all the dining requirements for the six event spaces spread over four levels at the riverside location.

The Deck Oven at The Kneadery pastry and bread production kitchen, which produces stone-baked artisan bread. Picture: Claudia Baxter/AAP

While the bread and pastry kitchens are currently only supplying Montrachet, Kellam’s Bowen Hills boulangerie King Street Bakery and a handful of wholesale customers, he plans to increase the wholesale business, providing delicious baked goods to hotels and restaurants across the city that share his ethos for artisan products.

“We want to integrate old world skills with modern technology but not go the step too far where it’s a manufactured product – it’s still a true artisan product,” Kellam says.

The kitchen has the capacity to make about 3000 breads a day, 5000 pieces of viennoiserie, 2500 cakes, biscuits and tarts and about 5000 savoury items such as pies, pasties and quiches.

Alongside Kellam, looking after the whole operation is executive chef Jamie Pearce (ex-Banc, Sydney).

Croissants from The Kneadery in Newstead. Picture: Claudia Baxter/AAP

“It’s like Montrachet on steroids,” he says of the production kitchen, with millions of dollars worth of culinary equipment imported from France, Germany and Italy.

“If you can’t cook in this kitchen, you can’t cook anywhere.”

Pearce says the impressive facility will ensure the team can carry out functions and events for groups from two to 1000 at the same exacting standards of Montrachet.

The production kitchen has also allowed King Street Bakery to reduce its kitchen space and add additional seating, which will officially launch this week, taking the venue to 60 seats.

And if that’s not enough for Kellam and his team, their next exciting opening will be new restaurant Mica, at the base of the Newstead building, which is due at the end of April.

We’ll bring you more details on that later.