In praise of old hands who point the way

Josh Niland is internationally renowned for his pioneering approach to seafood — using everything from ‘nose to tail’.

Chef Josh Niland, left, with his mentor Steve Hodge at Niland’s Fish Butchery in Waterloo, Sydney. Picture: Nic Walker

Josh Niland is internationally ­renowned for his pioneering ­approach to seafood – using everything from “nose to tail” – and that is on display at his Sydney fish butcheries and restaurants.

But what is not so well known is the 33-year-old chef’s obsession with fish was ignited when he met his mentor, chef Steve Hodges, and how it influenced his cooking.

“I still remember the impact of that visit some 17 years ago,” ­Niland says of going to Hodges’ restaurant, Fish Face. “To see first-hand a man so possessed by the granular details of how fish should be handled from sea to plate and everything in between in something I will never forget.”

The role of mentors is key in the hospitality world and six ­notable chefs have paid homage to their mentor in the May issue of WISH magazine, our annual food edition, out on Friday with The Australian.

Another chef, restaurateur Mark Jensen, came to professional cooking late and, by his own admission, at a stage of life when he might easily have gone down the wrong path. “I was a fairly typical mid-20s bloke, lots of parties, late nights, drinking … it was a path that might have led to other things,” he says.

The chef and co-owner of Sydney’s renowned Red Lantern restaurant attributes much of his turnaround, his knuckling down to make something of himself, to a mentor. That mentor just happened to be one of the most talented and respected chefs ever to toss a pan in Australia, the now-retired Janni Kyritsis.

“(It was) a time when my ­career and life could have easily gone off the rails,” says the chef who trained in classic European cooking in his mid-20s, first with Matt Moran and then with Kyritsis at Bennelong at the Sydney Opera House, before ultimately marrying into a Vietnamese family and retraining in the cuisine he specialises in today at Red ­Lantern.

“I’d done a stint in Byron, tried university … I was at a bit of a loss as to what my profession might be,” Jensen says. “Matt (Moran) was very good to me, but it was a different sort of personality.”

Moving to his second serious job in cooking, to work for the chef who became his true mentor, was a career-defining move.

“Janni was a calmer soul, he had a different perspective, a ­tolerant approach and it showed me how harmonious a kitchen can be. I still do a lot of things the way I learned them from Janni, and I’d like to think it’s reflected in the way I deal with people.”

Jensen attributes his success and longevity in the industry to time spent with Janni in the Bennelong Restaurant kitchen at Sydney Opera House.

“Janni presided over a traditional kitchen brigade, a kitchen brigade populated with the usual bag of misfits from various ethnicities,” he says. “The work was taken seriously but there was a palpable difference to kitchens I’d worked in previously, a difference I believe is intrinsically Janni.

“An ever – present sense of playfulness, laughter, respect and joy permeated the work environment.”