The French-born Australian chef on married life and why food is everything
Chef Guillaume Brahimi reveals his must-go restaurants and the one food habit of the French and Italians that Australians need to adopt.
L’amour du travail bien fait. The love of work well done. It is an expression that has guided French-born Australian chef Guillaume Brahimi throughout his professional life and is an integral part of the identity of his birth country. It is also something that inspires in him great passion and pride.
“What I love is the craftsmanship of the artisans in France; that is what France is all about,” he tells WISH.
“All these people are just doing their thing and their thing is to achieve excellence in their craft whatever you are making; whether you are making a belt, you are making bread, you are making chocolate or you are making wine. They have this passion for excellence. The French say L’amour du travail bien fait, which in English means the love of work well done. That is my motto.”
We are chatting about all things French as Brahimi has just returned from Europe after his lavish Paris wedding to Tamie Ingham (pictures of the event in the gardens at Musée Rodin went around the world). The fourth season of his SBS Plat du Tour series, produced to coincide with the Tour de France and which sees the chef travel around his home country cooking wonderful French food, has also just aired.
Brahimi, who came to Australia more than 30 years ago on holiday as a young chef and never left, will also be back in France this month as an ambassador for Rugby Australia at the Rugby World Cup. He will be leading private culinary walking tours of Paris and Lyon as well as overseeing the food at two gala events (as well as watching the Wallabies play of course and hopefully seeing them win).
“I love rugby. I love the game, I love the camaraderie. When I arrived in Australia, that is where I met all my friends,” Brahimi says. “They say the game of rugby is two halves, but the third half is when you have a drink and it is very friendly. In France, you talk about rugby over a beautiful dish and a glass of red wine. Rugby is played in southwest France and that is where all the best produce comes from.”
Brahimi was brought up in a soccer-loving family in the suburbs of Paris but says he gravitated towards rugby because he loved food so much and he thought the game matched his “physical attributes” more than soccer. “I grew up thinking I could play rugby and obviously I am really good when I go to sleep and dream about me playing, but on the field it was a different story,” he says, laughing.
As one of Australia’s most famous French chefs, with his namesake bistros at Crown in Melbourne and Perth, multiple cookbooks and television programs, it is extraordinary to think Brahimi came here not knowing a soul or being able to speak English.
This is when rugby became more than a game for him; not only did he meet his friends through the sport but reading the sports pages of the newspaper every day for five years was how he taught himself the language. It was also his rugby mates who filled the dining room of his first restaurant Pond in Kings Cross and then later Guillaume at Bennelong within the Sydney Opera House.
“The way that Australia adopted me when I arrived and the way I have grown in Australia, I will always be thankful for that,” Brahimi says of his experience. “And there is so much talent here in the world of restaurants and food. The dining here is really world class, especially in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.”
In 2014 Brahimi was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Merite (Knight of the National Order) by the French government for his outstanding services rendered to France in foreign affairs. He now considers himself a citizen of both countries.
“I am a proud Australian, but my mother home is France and I consider myself, without any arrogance I hope, as a little window of France for the Australian people,” he says. “And the same when I am in France, I’m a little window of Australia. I am a big ambassador when I am in France, I make sure everyone comes and visits this country.”
Like everyone, the chef found the pandemic-related restrictions on travel very difficult. He is usually in France two or three times every year but instead found himself unable to visit for almost two and a half years. The worst part was not seeing his parents and siblings. But there was a positive for Brahimi during this period and that was meeting his now wife Tamie at a friend’s dinner party. Their relationship started just as covid threw the world into turmoil, which meant they were spending so much more time together on account of the pandemic restrictions.
“When Guillaume and I met it was a very surreal time for all of us,” says Tamie Ingham Brahimi. “Large group gatherings were no longer taking place and, perhaps to our great advantage during our courtship, no one was eating out! I had the fortune of getting to know him in a very intimate setting, all the while enjoying his beyond-delicious home-cooked meals.”
As soon as restrictions were lifted on international travel, Brahimi took his girlfriend to experience his home country and Paris. He asked Ingham to marry him at La Colombe d’Or Hotel in the southwest of France last June. “It is such a cool place and they have the most incredible paintings from Picasso and Matisse because all the artists used to stay there and pay with paintings,” Brahimi explains. “So I proposed there and she said yes.”
The couple were married in the gardens of Musée Rodin this June and had their reception at the famous French bistro Maxim’s de Paris on rue Royale in the 8th arrondissement. Ingham Brahimi says she’ll never forget walking into the grounds of Musée Rodin for their ceremony. “Paris holds a very special place in our hearts and our ceremony venue was simply spectacular,” she says. “Being in that place, in that moment, with the man I love, surrounded by the people that we love most in this world. Nothing can ever beat that.”
The celebrations were attended by friends and family who were described by various Australian media outlets as star-studded, A-listers and the “incognito elite” attending the “celebrity wedding of the year”. But when asked about his nuptials making the front page, Brahimi just laughs. “We didn’t want any of that,” he says. “That just happened. We invited 180 people, 165 said yes. And it was beautiful. The people that I love were there and it was just full of love. My friends all say they had the best day.”
The chef goes on to share that he still hasn’t come off the high of his wedding, smiling ear to ear at the memory. “It was just so good. It was a beautiful day and in Paris, too. I am very, very happy.”
Brahimi says Tamie, a designer, often comes with him while he is filming his cooking shows in France except in the lead up to the wedding (“She told me ‘I’m not traveling and eating butter every day’.”). The couple are also working on a few projects together and Brahimi loves his new wife’s creativity and her ability to give genuine feedback on his work. “She is honest, very, very honest,” he laughs.
As well as eating lots of butter in different places, what Brahimi loves about filming his series, including a new one on SBS last year called Guillaume’s Paris, is the people he meets along the way. “On one day, I will meet a great baker, at lunchtime I will meet a cheesemaker and in the afternoon, I will meet a farmer,” he says.
“And this breadmaker, I am with him at 4am. He’s making this bread and I’m tasting it and it’s one of the best breads I have ever tried. And he is not just making it for me or for the television cameras. He does it every day, this amazing bread. That is what I love so much, this craftsmanship and the respect this baker has for what he produces.”
The chef’s other favourite part of cooking and filming in France – and what he thinks the French and the Italians do better than the Australians – is eating seasonally. He says we are getting better here, but we still eat tomatoes all year around and expect fruit and vegetables to be available all the time.
“We need to only use seasonal produce and we need to support farmers markets. The same people who go to restaurants in France and Italy in summer and say how good are these tomatoes also expect those tomatoes when they come home in the middle of winter,” he explains.
“But it is not the same. They are hydroponic tomatoes. If you do a simple dish of oxheart tomato slice with a drizzle of olive oil and a beautiful anchovy in the middle of winter, it won’t be that good. In Italy they are full of sun.
“When you go to the farmers market in France, when I was there in June, you see them full of white asparagus and you will see that in every market for the next three weeks. You know why? Because it’s white asparagus season and that is what you should see. You will not see that in winter.”
Using seasonal produce, knowing the provenance of what you eat and getting to know farmers and growers across Australia is what guides Brahimi in his approach at his Bistro Guillaume restaurants in Melbourne and Perth. He is also a culinary ambassador for Crown, which means he mentors young chefs, works with the culinary teams and ensures the properties in three states have the right hospitality offerings.
“People do ask me whether I miss being in the restaurant kitchen every day, but I cook every day,” he says. “My happy place is when I’ve got a vegetable like I did yesterday when I bought some broad beans and I thought I am going to make chicken soup with the broad beans and corn tonight. I think about food all the time. When I wake up in the morning, I think what am I going to have for lunch? And by lunch, I’m talking to people about what to have for dinner. Food is everything.”
Guillaume’s Paris Top 5 Restaurants
Restaurant Allard This traditional bistro is a Paris institution of some 80 years.
L’Arpège Fine dining at legendary chef Alain Passard’s three Michelin-starred restaurant.
Benoit Paris Known since 1912 for its garlicky snails, profiteroles and slivers of beef cheek.
Du Pain et des Idées For the best bread, pastries and croissants in Paris.
Frenchie Bar à Vins A legendary restaurant with a tiny dining room.
This story appears in the September issue of Wish magazine, out on Friday with The Australian.
