Launceston TAFE’S main course
A class of Tasmanian students is about to be served a treat.
Launceston is a small city in northern Tasmania not particularly noted for its eating out. Little changes on the gastronomic map from year to year in Tassie’s second city.
Lob in town and it’s the same old names going round and round. Good names, but established names: Stillwater; Black Cow; Josef Chromy Winery; Mud. This year everyone’s talking because, finally, Launceston has a cool new cocktail-focused bistro, Geronimo, doing good things.
Paris, on the other hand?
The concept of the restaurant was invented there. The French capital has given the world most of its great chefs, such as Alain Passard, chef-patron of L’Arpege, which picked up its third Michelin star in 1996. Passard’s restaurant is an outrageously expensive gastro-temple where particular prominence is given to vegetables. Unsurprisingly, many noted chefs trained there.
Like Sydney’s Mark Best.
“Why is Passard important?” says Best. “Because he has gone against convention for his entire career. In France that is no small thing and was considered iconoclastic, along with Michel Bras and Pierre Gagnaire. He was decades ahead of current food fashion and was the first chef of his stature to go vegetarian. ”
Says Californian chef David Kinch, of Manresa: “He is the only chef I’ve ever met that I can unequivocally call a true artist.”
Prima facie then, Launceston is a rather unusual destination for the Parisian Passard, 60, to make his first visit to Australia. But there you have it.
And it’s not even for commercial or promotional reasons.
Sure, Passard will participate in a series of public events, but the impetus for the trip is working with students at Launceston’s TasTAFE Drysdale hospitality school, an initiative of the college’s education manager, Christopher McGimpsey.
It doesn’t stop there.
Having kicked off the Great Chefs Program in 2015 by bringing several noted cooks including Best to Drysdale to work with students, and repeated the exercise again last year with chefs such as Dan Hong (Mr Wong) and Donovan Cooke (Atlantic), McGimpsey started thinking bigger. With the World’s 50 Best Restaurants coming to Australia this year, he reasoned, why not get some of them to Launceston and put true, global stars of food in the same kitchens as his students?
So began an ambitious direct lobbying campaign with a short hit list of potentials, the revered Passard at the top. Emails; late-night phone calls; calling on favours for introductions …
McGimpsey says: “It’s all about creating moments to give them (the students) the motivation to continue. Expanding horizons.”
Then, late last year, with the financial backing of several public sector and private benefactors, including local tycoon Josef Chromy, McGimpsey grabbed his passport and headed off to seal the deals.
Many were sceptical. Best told McGimpsey: “It won’t work.” Passard famously shuns events and will not even be attending the World’s 50 Best in Melbourne.
But two weeks later, having visited London, Paris, Copenhagen and San Francisco, armed with bottles of Tasmanian whisky and the internationally decorated Chromy 2011 chardonnay, McGimpsey had pulled off one serious coup for his college and Tasmania. Not only had Passard agreed to several functions working with Drysdale students and staff; McGimpsey had a handshake on the contribution of Dominique Crenn, of Atelier Crenn in San Francisco, and Christian Puglisi, of Relae in Copenhagen.
On the World’s 50 Best list, Relae is ranked No 40 and is the winner of that body’s sustainable restaurant award 2016; Crenn, with two Michelin stars, was named by the 50 Best people the world’s best female chef in 2016.
McGimpsey says he appealed to different facets of each chef’s professional values and the impact each could have on hospitality education in this faraway town.
“I was very careful and looked at their social conscience first,” he told Hobart’s The Mercury. “I looked at what pushed their buttons, and started harassing people in my own time, approaching each of them differently.”
With Passard, it was about the impact such engagement could have on participation and completion in educational programs.
“Passard has a genuine interest in giving back and an interest in disadvantaged youth at risk.”
With Crenn, it was the importance of produce from a clean environment; while for Puglisi it was all about the opportunity to reinforce the importance of sustainability in commercial cookery, using Tasmanian organic and biodynamic produce.
Says McGimpsey: “It’s first and foremost about the students working for a day or two with people who are frankly luminaries in their industry, but almost as much, it’s about the teachers. It’s about creating inspiration and setting new benchmarks, too.”
The acclaimed internationals will be doing their thing when the country is overrun by the world’s restaurant industry elite, here for the World’s 50 Best in Melbourne.
But when the music’s over, TasTAFE has a remarkable roster of Australian talent joining its staff and students throughout the year for collaborative dinners. They include Guillaume Brahimi, Phil Wood, Best, Mike McEnearney, David Moyle and veteran Jacques Reymond.
At his recently opened Geronimo, Launceston restaurateur Jeremy Kode, a well-travelled South Africa-born Tasmanian, recognises the value of these experiences not only to his own apprentices but the Tasmanian restaurant industry as a whole.
“The hospitality industry in Launceston is trailing behind Hobart, the rest of Australia and the world when it comes to trained chefs and front-of-house professionals,” says Kode. “(And) as a restaurateur in Launceston, that worries me.
“Northern Tasmania simply lacks the number of inspired, engaged and knowledgeable hospitality professionals to compete … But at least the Great Chefs series inspires up-and-coming hospitality professionals in northern Tasmania by exposing them to the experience, knowledge and pure ingenuity of some of Australia’s most outstanding chefs. By bringing chefs with global profile to Launceston, the young people of this industry get incredible insight to what a diverse, exciting, passion-fuelled, incredible F&B industry Launceston’s could be.’’
Collaborative events featuring Passard, Crenn and Puglisi will happen in Tasmania between March 27 and April 12. For more information: greatchefsseries.com.au.