Celebrity chef Colin Fassnidge re-imagines our food future
When COVID smashed his industry, celebrity chef Colin Fassnidge decided to do something positive to make a difference.
Wentworth Courier
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Monday afternoons are busy at the Banksia Bistro. Celebrity chef Colin Fassnidge and his team are in the car park lining up large brown bags filled with food on a picnic table. Each one is packed with pre-cooked meals from the kitchen, loaves of fresh sourdough bread and cheeses from the best farms around the country. However, this isn’t the average Sydney gourmet market stall; everything is being handed out for free.
“I didn’t think I’d be running a soup kitchen,” Fassnidge says.
“A lot of families turn up with kids, dads who turn up with kids. Imagine how hard it is for a father to turn up to take a hand out.”
The soup kitchen started at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown. Fassnidge, famous for his role on My Kitchen Rules, had to close his signature bistro inside the Banksia Hotel as the entire venue shut its doors to customers, leaving him without the option of running a takeaway. Facing fridges full of food about to go to waste, he decided to cook everything in the building to give away. His suppliers quickly got on board and with their help the generous initiative has been running every week since then.
About 100 people in need turn up in the car park to pick up a bag of food. Fassnidge makes a point of lightening the mood by having a laugh and a joke with them. Even with this enduringly positive attitude, seeing the human cost of the crisis has been difficult.
“Some days you can go home feeling a bit down. It’s not nice to see people who have never had to take a handout to take a handout. It’s a big dent to a lot of people’s confidence,” he says.
“We’ve seen grassroots how bad it is on the streets with people who have lost their jobs. A lot of people in the Banksia area worked for the airlines.
“A lot more people are doing worse than I am so if I can help them, that’s what we do.”
The COVID-19 crisis has pounded the hospitality industry with the brute force of a meat mallet since the lockdown started. Many restaurants are surviving on a fraction of their former clientele, others have closed their doors for good. For Lease signs are pasted optimistically in the windows of cleaned out venues across the city. Banksia Bistro is among those that have bounced back but Fassnidge’s second venue, Terminus Pyrmont, took a significant hit. Once commanding 200 covers for Friday lunch time, it crashed down to 30. With people still working from home, venues in the business districts are doing it tough.
In the suburbs there has been a steadier flow of customers to local venues but the crisis has brought ongoing challenges.
On the lower north shore, fellow celebrity chef Alessandro Pavoni decided to use the lockdown to completely renovate his Mosman venue Ormeggio. The degustation menu was retired and the dining room was completely gutted to make way for a buzzier atmosphere and a long open cocktail bar. He is proud of a meat-free menu filled with sustainable seafood and vegetables. On reopening, Ormeggio was as busy as it could be within the social distancing limitations (it’s down to a 42 per cent capacity) and customers were thrilled to be back. At the start of August things changed.
“There has been a terrifying drop,” Pavoni says.
“People are really scared of going out. Three weeks ago it was waitlist every service, it’s certainly not that at the moment.
“We can’t take it personally. Everyone in the industry is saying the same thing.”
The unpredictable nature of business in the COVID-19 era has also had other consequences. The hospitality industry relies on a substantial foreign workforce and with the borders closed there are real concerns about filling roles. Farmers who rely on backpackers are echoing the same message. Ormeggio and its sister venue at The Spit, Chiosco, employed a mix of Australians and people on visas before the lockdown and only a small group of staff were eligible for assistance from JobKeeper. When it came to reopening something unexpected happened.
“None of our Aussies came back,” he says.
“We have 67 employees at the minute. Aussies get government entitlements, they get JobSeeker.
“All the foreigners who are stuck here are desperate, they are homeless, they are dying for work. The only thing you can do is create jobs.”
The two venues now have an almost fully foreign workforce. Pavoni is staring down the barrel of a season without a steady supply of staff. He is opening a restaurant and cafe at the Crown in Barangaroo before Christmas and has genuine concerns about how they will fill 120 positions. “Where is the staff going to come from? It’s a big problem,” he says.
Bourke Street Bakery is a popular foodie brand across Sydney and it has faced significant problems as well. Several of its bakeries have been doing it really tough through the crisis, especially those in CBD areas like North Sydney. The Surry Hills branch has kept up a solid trade alongside the outlets in the suburban areas where people are working from home. (The bakery is one of the companies pitching in with free food for Fassnidge’s soup kitchen). The company’s operations manager James White expects the tough times to continue.
“It’s going to be a very, very slow path back,” White says.
“Maybe seeing what is going on in Melbourne is a great warning sign for Sydney as well. It’s showing us slow and steady will win this race.
“I’m concerned we haven’t really hit the worst of it yet … I think there are some very tough times to go.”
As challenging as this year has been for Fassnidge, it’s also been a chance to recreate himself; something he’s been doing throughout his career. He earned his credibility in the kitchen the hard way under Raymond Blanc, one of the world’s most highly regarded chefs. The hours were long and he has compared the experience to “prison camp”. Unsure if he wanted to stay in the business, he hopped on a plane to Australia for a holiday and stayed. He made his name at the Four in Hand in Paddington (achieving a coveted two hats) and then the acclaimed 4 Fourteen in Surry Hills. The quick-witted and charming Dubliner stepped onto the My Kitchen Rules set for the first time in 2013 and the audience both loved and hated him, the perfect combination for a firebrand TV chef. Like many reality rating grabbers, it gradually lost its shine and the latest season closed in March after losing a sizeable chunk of its fanbase. It’s unclear when or if it will make a comeback.
He describes his time on the set as “some of the best years ever” but it seems that, just like most of the audience, he has had enough. His contract is up with Channel 7 and he doesn’t want to go back.
“MKR is not going to happen again, not for a while. Channel 7 have their own pandemic, they’ve got no cash in the bank,” he says.
“I want to do stuff where I don’t have to listen to people f***ing crying in my face telling me how good they are. I’ve had enough of that. It pays my bills but I’ve got other stuff to do.
“The TV companies haven’t got the money now. Everyone watches Netflix and online. That’s the way to go.
“If you never go on TV again, it’s not the end of the world. There’s bigger things in life … I’m nearly 50. I’ve bigger things to worry about.”
The pandemic gave him time to reinvent his media presence. He hints he is in talks about doing shows and has already made a mark in the online space with his own live cooking classes. He launched the classes in the first week of the lockdown and they quickly built up to a steady side-business. He has also finished off his second book, The Commonsense Cook.
Fassnidge expects that it will be at least another year before the hospitality industry returns to normal and he is in it for the long-haul. When it’s too hot, Fassnidge isn’t the one walking out of the kitchen.
“When your back is to the wall you come up with the good stuff,” he said.
“That’s good business. You have got to be ready for the bad. It’s not always going to be good.”