Melbourne’s Curtis Stone on food, family and being a ‘celebrity chef’

Curtis Stone has cooked for Oprah, been on TV for decades and just earned his second Michelin star, but one of our biggest food exports still doesn’t see himself a celebrity chef.

Curtis Stone will be in Melbourne later this month for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. Picture: Supplied.

Curtis Stone remembers one of the last times he wasn’t a celebrity chef.

It was at the Good Food Show in Birmingham, before Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen meltdowns went mainstream and Marco Pierre White was dubbed “the world’s first celebrity chef”.

“I remember walking into the bar towards Marco, Gordon and Gary Rhodes, and a handful of these great chefs who cooked in restaurants,” Stone tells VWeekend from Tampa, Florida.

“At the other side of the bar there were all these celebrity chefs. I won’t name them, but they were the ones you’d seen on TV in the UK.

I remember thinking, ‘I’m so glad I’m not with them – I’m with the real chefs.’”

These days it’s hard to imagine this northern suburbs boy with the golden mane, twinkling blue eyes and beaming smile as anything but a global megastar.

In his 30-year career, Stone has worked with both culinary and pop culture royalty.

He earned his keep in White’s UK kitchens and has cooked for Oprah Winfrey; both on her talk show and on a glistening Hamilton Island beach during her Ultimate Australian Adventure tour.

The long-time Coles Supermarkets posterboy has rarely turned down a chance to appear on MasterChef Australia since the show’s 2009 premiere.

He even married American actor; Lindsay Price (Beverly Hills 90210, Lipstick Jungle) with whom he shares two children Hudson, 11, and Emerson, 8.

Curtis Stone says he’d much rather be in the kitchen than shaking hands on the dining room floor.

Outside of TV land, Stone’s Los Angeles restaurant, Gwen, earned its first Michelin star in November. Later this month he’ll bring the restaurant to town for the first time at this scale for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, launching next week.

Despite his global fame and fortune (Stone reportedly has a net worth exceeding $25m), he doesn’t see himself as a superstar.

“I never have. I love cooking, I like being in the kitchen,” he says. “When you come and see me at the restaurant in LA, you’ll find me on the grill. I’m rarely out shaking people’s hands on the dining room floor.

“I’d much rather be in the kitchen. That’s what I like doing. I started my life in pretty tough, interesting restaurants where we titled ourselves on that good meal, not who we were.”

Curtis Stone with his brother Luke at the Presidents Cup golf in Melbourne.

When you meet Stone in the flesh, it’s surprising how refreshingly down-to-earth and likeable he is. Sure he’s a hunk, the Ken doll of the cooking world, just without arrogance or ego. A generous, friendly, tender and charming human. Some may attribute Stone’s demeanour as a by-product of his humble upbringing, surrounded by strong-willed and hardworking women. His mother Lorraine Coles, “granny” Maude and “nanny” Gwen would inspire Stone’s success.

Lorraine separated from Stone’s father, Bryan, when he was a toddler. She raised two boys, Curtis and Luke, while working as a florist in Melbourne’s inner-north.

“I grew up with a single mum and I used to watch her work her butt off,” Stone says. “I think to myself, ‘Is that where I got my work ethic from?’”, he told News Corp in 2016.

“She would literally drop us at school, go to work, clock in, clock out, pick us up, come home, get dinner on the table and you’d still hear the washing machine going at 10 o’clock at night.”

His mum may not have been a knockout cook, but she was a passionate baker. As was Maude; who he later named his Beverly Hills restaurant after. She grew up in the United Kingdom cooking “plain food” but Stone cherished her roast dinners with Yorkshire puddings, as well as her sweets.

Curtis Stone’s ‘granny’ Maude helped inspire his success— and the name of his Beverley Hills restaurant.

“She used to make a sugary fudge from her home town of Yorkshire and she always had a plate in the fridge, which was awesome,” said.

“She also used to make roast lamb. The gravy was a bit lumpy and the lamb was probably overcooked, but to me it was delicious.”

Stone’s burning desire to cook continued through his school years.

He went to Essendon Grammar with a guy who’d later become a kitchen superstar in his own right: Vue de Monde founder Shannon Bennett.

The bromance blossomed from a young age, according to Bennett, who wrote to Curtis while he was working overseas, encouraging him to get on that plane too.

“I’m glad he did – that’s where his career really took off,” Bennett told News Corp.

Stone wasn’t afraid to take risks.

Curtis was raised by cohort of strong women, including his mother Lorraine and grandmothers Gwen and Maude.

He dropped out of Victoria University while studying commerce to study a cookery at TAFE, which led to a gig at Melbourne’s then Southern Cross Hotel and Savoy Park Plaza before finally taking Bennett’s advice to backpack around Europe. Yet it was by chance Stone scored his first big break.

He was 22, broke and living in London when he met a guy who worked with Marco Pierre White.

Stone said he’d work for White for free, and despite rocking up without a uniform or knives on his first day, he was asked back the next week.

A quick-tempered White was more a celebrity in hospo circles than widely in living rooms at this time. At 32, he had become the youngest British chef to earn three Michelin stars.

Stone, 10 years his junior, was at his one-star restaurant, The Grill Room, where he’d work 15 hours each day, six days a week, until he was promoted to another White restaurant, Quo Vadis.

Curtis with Oprah Winfrey.

Curtis and mate Shannon Bennett.

It was here Stone had his time to shine.

He stepped up to lead the kitchen and cooked for some of the world’s biggest stars including Madonna, Paul McCartney and Elton John.

This eventually led to his first TV break, London on a Plate, and more work on home soil with ABC’s Surfing the Menu with Ben O’Donoghue and a brief stint as My Kitchen Rules host in 2004.

But by 2006, Los Angeles was calling.

He moved to the United States and quickly became the prince of the talk show circuit. Within two years he’d already appeared on Oprah, Ellen DeGeneres, been a regular on NBC’s Today show and The Biggest Loser, and starred in two series of his own program, Take Home Chef.

And this was before the MasterChef craze took hold in Australia. Stone’s career was about to get even more interesting.

Curtis Stone with wife Lindsay Price and their sons Hudson and Emerson.

The rock stars of the kitchen looked a little different in Stone’s era.

“I grew up with people like Iain Hewitson, Geoff Jansz and Gabriel Gaté,” he says.

“There were a handful of these guys who did cooking segments on morning TV and we watched them and thought, ‘Oh, so that’s a celebrity chef’.”

In 2009, the MasterChef phenomenon exploded in Australia. Suddenly everyone was interested in cooking – and it wasn’t three veg and meat dinners.

Families were making croquembouche at home, serving jus with their steaks and the term “plating up” became part of our everyday vernacular.

No other TV shows had an impact like MasterChef did in those early days, Stone says, and changed the way we defined a “celebrity chef”.

“When you think about TV shows and how long they go for, there are only a handful that did what MasterChef did,” he says.

“It’s made people megastars, the judges as well as the contestants, but more broadly and importantly, it’s got Australians more interested in food.”

And by default, opened our eyes to the wider culinary universe, where Stone and his chef comrades had been playing for quite some time.

“By watching MasterChef we all started to learn ‘Oh this guy is from Denmark and his name’s Rene (Redzepi) and he has this restaurant called Noma and this is Marco Pierre White, and all these wonderful chefs from around the world. It’s been really eye-opening for people.”

Stone has hardly missed a beat, appearing almost annually in the show’s staggering
14-year run, ironically as one of those “celebrity chefs” he rolled his eyes at way back in Birmingham.

Curtis Stone rarely passed up the opportunity to appear on MasterChef Australia.

“I know that’s changed over the years for me and I’ve done a bunch of TV shows,” he says.

“I’m not delusional … I know that I do a bunch of stuff in the media but I don’t care what labels people put on that. I’m not offended by that,” he says.

Stone’s life may be much more embellished than his days as a 22-year-old broke backpacker begging White for a job – but he’s remained true to his purpose.

In 2014, almost one decade after moving to Los Angeles, Stone opened his first restaurant, Maude. Two years later came Gwen; both named after his grandmothers.

Five years after opening Maude, it received its first star in the California Michelin Guide, and last November Gwen earned its first.

“I think I squealed (when I found out),” Stone says, “I haven’t heard that noise come out of me before.”

“Of course you want for these things, you work really hard and you hope, but you don’t expect it.

“Our attitude is always, if we could do one thing just a little bit better today than we did yesterday, and we do that each day, by the end of the year we would have made relatively significant improvements.

Curtis Stone with the team from his LA restaurant Maude.

“That’s our attitude and we try to be real true to that.”

Stone even travelled from the Michelin ceremony to deliver the team the good news in person the night Gwen won.

“I got in the cab afterwards and I was like: ‘Quick, take me to Gwen.’

“To be able to run into that restaurant and hug everyone, and congratulate them, it really was a team effort.”

Stone is stoked to be returning to his home city later this month for his second-ever Melbourne Food and Wine Festival event (his first was with Meatsmith’s Troy Wheeler).

He’s throwing a one-off Gwen dinner at Grace by Curtis Stone Events in Richmond; his new events company which he runs with his brother Luke and business partner Chris Sheldon.

“When I look through the (Melbourne Food and Wine Festival) line-up of all these incredible people coming to Melbourne for the festival, or (Melbourne chefs) being highlighted … I look around and think – awesome I’m one of them.

“I feel proud to be in with Melbourne’s best chefs or international chefs that are visiting. I just think it’ll be a fun event.”

As for where you’ll find him on the night?

“I’ll be on the pots and pans. If you know much about me, I’m always on the pots and pans,” he says.

Gwen by Curtis Stone is part of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. mfwf.com.au