Racing back home in time for dinner

Australian cooking ­talent has been fleeing home from overseas to escape COVID-19.

Paul Bentley at Si Paradiso. Picture: Colin Murty

What’s the converse of brain drain? Intel ingress?

Whatever. In West Australian food circles it’s been happening quickly, as Australian cooking ­talent flees home from overseas to escape COVID-19. And it’s helping reverse a time-honoured tradition of ambitious food pros seeking greener pastures … abroad.

In the Perth suburb of Mount Lawley, Paul Bentley is back on the pans at Si Paradiso, an inner-city hipster paradise. The cognoscenti might ask: isn’t that the same Perth chef who went away at 22, at the turn of the century, and ended up a partner in eight restaurants in Mexico and more in Hawaii?

The very same.

“I fought for so long to get out of Australia, and I stayed away 20 years,” says the chef “and now I realise, it’s pretty damned good … Australia has some of the most creative food I’ve had anywhere in the world.’’

And this from a guy who ­became sous (second) chef at Daniel, the revered Manhattan institution of Frenchman Daniel Boulud, before discovering Mex­ico after answering a job ad on Craigslist.

Bentley has had a hell of a ­career, both in New York and south of the border, and 2020 was shaping up as big year for his ­Hawaii-based Taqueria El Gallo Rosa brand. He was flying to Sydney and Melbourne to secure sites, then on to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics for a pop-up. Then back to Guadalajara.

“My dad called me in Melbourne and said ‘they’re going to close the border’. I got the first flight I could to Perth, hung over at 6am, and here I am,’’ Bentley says.

That was 10 months ago and Bentley is putting down roots. He has his own place, Casa, about to open in Mount Hawthorn with ­experienced local partners and former 10 William Street (Sydney) chef Enrico Tomelleri.

“I’ve come back to Perth in its best moment. Everything is getting a push … and if it’s a little bit of a slower pace, I don’t mind that,’’ he says.

He’s not alone.

In the state’s South West town of Yallingup, Kirsty Marchant and Ben Ing are “enjoying the simplicity of a life not being fearful of people with COVID’’.

Ing, a Canadian, was head chef of possibly the best known restaurant in the world — Copenhagen’s Noma — for the past four of his seven-year tenure in Denmark, while Marchant was the restaurant’s head gardener.

They worked all through 2020 as COVID regulations roller-coastered through Europe and Scandinavia. Plans to travel, ­before moving to Western Australia had to be scuttled.

“COVID changed our plans big time,” says Marchant, who grew up in Perth. “This will be a year of consolidation. We see the potential for us to have a balanced life in the South West. Noma was fantastic but personal life and work were so entwined. We had to step out.”

Colin Wood was living in East Harlem, New York, 18 months ago, and was culinary director for chef-restaurateur Ignacio Mattos at his three venues, including ­Estela, his one-Michelin-star dining room in SoHo. It was, he says, a great opportunity after 10 years in Melbourne with the McConnell group of restaurants. Now he’s back, living in Yallingup too, and not certain what’s next.

“Basically, we were running from COVID,” the chef says.

He has developed his cheese making skills, and that may well be the next career step. “There’s possibly unfinished business overseas, but we’ll see,” Wood says. “It’s very hard to make plans right now.”

Another high-achiever from the Perth fraternity is chef Jesse Blake, who launched Petition Kitchen at the State Buildings/Como redevelopment in 2017. He and wife Kate Christou were poached by regular customers from the United Arab Emirates to spearhead a hospitality business in Dubai, and all was going well.

“I’d say COVID’s the reason why I’m staying; it’s not the reason I came back,” Blake says.

Elsewhere in Western Australia, Bali-based chef and restaurateur Will Meyrick, primarily known for his highly successful Seminyak restaurants Sarong and MamaSan, both of which are currently closed, is cooking at the flash new Rottnest Island Samphire resort’s Lontana. Meyrick’s star power has been a big part of the mod-Asian restaurant’s launch at the striking new hotel.

But the expat influx is not an entirely western phenomenon.

Sydney chef Isobel Little spent most of 2020 unemployed in Amsterdam, trying to get home. But the chef-turned-­engineering-student-turned-chef again had tasted the big time before the lows of lockdown Holland: she’d worked as sous chef to Welsh chef Tomos Parry at the acclaimed London restaurant Brat and was on the team when it picked up its first Michelin star. Like so many London restaurants, Brat is currently closed.

Little, whose Sydney reputation is already very healthy, has landed her first head chef position, at 29, at Newtown’s hip LP’s Quality Meats.