Winter Feast chefs Vince Trim and Vaughan Mabee set to shake up 2024 winter event with wild menu
Vince Trim moved to Tassie for a lifestyle change. He never imagined he’d become Mona’s executive chef or that he’d partner with one of the world’s top chefs to present mind-bending meals at Hobart’s upcoming Winter Feast
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Vince Trim moved to Tasmania 14 years ago, seeking a better life for his young family.
But he could never have imagined the wealth of weird and wonderful career opportunities that would present themselves once he settled in Tasmania.
Trim initially worked at Moorilla, which soon led to his current role as executive chef at David Walsh’s Museum of Old and New Art, a position Trim describes as “extraordinary” and “life changing”.
Not only does the 55-year-old oversee Mona’s food and beverage team, providing an immersive, world-class, art and food experience at Faro Bar and Restaurant, as well as The Source restaurant, Mona Wine Bar and Café and the Heavy Metal Kitchen.
But he’s also cooked as part of major festivals like Dark Mofo and Mona Foma, and has experimented with some unusual ingredients over the years, having worked collaboratively on projects like Eat the Problem, transforming invasive species such as cane toad and feral cat into food and art.
Now the New Zealand-born chef is teaming up with another Kiwi – internationally-acclaimed chef Vaughan Mabee – to present an innovative menu and interactive cooking experience as the two guest chefs at popular food event Winter Feast, which runs at Hobart’s Princes Wharf 1 from June 13-16 and June 20-23.
And the chefs will be serving an interesting assortment of savoury dishes inspired by wild and invasive species within the Tasmanian environment – including sea urchin, wakame (a species of kelp native to cold, temperate waters) and wallaby – which can be followed with a deer milk ice cream for dessert.
Trim has been involved with Winter Feast from the beginning, with the event now in its 11th year.
In fact Heavy Metal Kitchen – an impressive collection of custom-built, supercharged barbecues created by Tasmanian blacksmiths to cook a various assortment of whole animals over fire – was the original starting point and centrepiece of the Winter Feast concept.
Trim says it’s an “ever-changing journey” with Heavy Metal Kitchen and Winter Feast expanding and growing every year.
“Since that time we’ve built so many different barbecues,’’ he says of Heavy Metal Kitchen’s early beginnings.
This year a new custom barbecue is needed to cook wild deer and Trim says it will be a sight to behold.
“It’s going to be an artwork, I shouldn’t call it a barbecue,’’ he says.
“It’s a fire sculpture you can cook on … a brutal but beautiful contraption.’’
Another difference is what will be on the Heavy Metal Kitchen menu this year.
“Originally we were serving traditional meats of lamb, of pork – a whole pig, a whole lamb – and one year we built a barbecue that could cook a whole cow in one go. It was 600kg at a time, which took 24 hours to cook on rotisseries,’’ Trim recalls.
“Now we have stopped using farmed animals, all of our red meat protein comes out of the wild.”
Wallaby and rabbits will be among this year’s offerings, as well as wild Tasmanian venison.
Trim is looking forward to cooking with Mabee, who is executive chef of esteemed eatery Amisfield, on New Zealand’s South Island. Mabee was also ranked 44th in the Top-100 list of chefs internationally in The Best Chef Awards for 2023.
The fact Mabee hails from New Zealand is a happy coincidence for Trim, who will be flying to New Zealand – where his mum and sister still live – ahead of Winter Feast to meet Mabee and his team, dine in his restaurant and prepare for their collaboration.
“It will be fantastic to work with another Kiwi brother from down south,’’ Trim says.
“This guy is now 44 in the world’s top chefs, he’s spent a lot of time working in Europe in Michelin-starred places like Noma.
“He’s such an important chef in New Zealand, bringing New Zealand cuisine to the world. So to have another Kiwi out here, doing this, is pretty special. I’m so excited by the way in which he approaches cooking – his artistry is extraordinary when you look at the work he’s done. The aesthetic of his food is mind blowing. This is a great opportunity for us to collaborate and share ideas and learn from each other.’’
They’ve already had a couple of chats over Skype, and have been formulating a plan for their offerings at Winter Feast.
The chefs will be collaborating in a custom-built dining arena on Castray Esplanade which will allow festival-goers to watch them work, before sampling one – or all – of the four collaborative dishes they will be serving.
Trim says the plan so far is to prepare a dish featuring invasive long-spined sea urchin, a dish featuring wakame, and also a wallaby dish. And finally, an ice cream made from deer milk, which is a specialty at Amisfield and is described by Mabee as “quite a complicated dish” which is “challenging to execute”.
“His cuisine is really embedded in his local environment and I think that is one of his successes,’’ Trim says of Mabee.
“I want him to find that same feel here when he comes to Tassie.’’
Mabee, 42, has been to Australia before but never to Tasmania.
“I’m so excited to go there for the first time ever,’’ he says.
“I’ve heard many people tell me in my life that if I had to work in a place in Australia, Tasmania would be absolutely perfect for my style, because of the beautiful offerings from the land and the ocean there. I have heard that I am going to connect with this land really well, I think we’re going to create something so special, I’m super excited – me and my team are super pumped.’’
Mabee has been executive chef at the three-hatted Amisfield restaurant, near Queenstown, for 12 years, with the eatery ranked as one of the world’s 50 best restaurants. He has also been chef at Copenhagen’s world-renowned Noma restaurant and at Barcelona’s famed Martin Berasatgui restaurant.
Mabee was once described by Forbes magazine as a “mad genius”. He asks helicopter pilots to drop him off in the middle of nowhere so he can forage, hunt and cook. He also spends his time researching the molecular structure of animal proteins.
He grew up in the far north of New Zealand and some of his earliest memories stem from outings with his mother when they would forage for field mushrooms, before taking them home and frying them with onion and garlic, or creating mushroom pasta.
Mabee also spent a lot of time near the ocean, catching a variety of fish and harvesting mussels.
“I’ve always been very passionate about food,’’ says Mabee, who credits the cooking skills of both his mum and his dad for inspiring his own love of food.
“Cooking was a huge part of family life growing up, I’ve loved cooking since I was very young.’’
Before he arrives in Tasmania, Mabee will be jetting across the globe, spending time working in the US and in Spain during May.
He will arrive in Tasmania on June 10, a few days before Winter Feast begins, giving him time to have a look around and get a feel for Tasmania, while also prepping for the event.
“I’ve been talking a lot with Vince, he’s a really cool guy and I’m looking forward to working in his zone,’’ Mabee says.
Before agreeing to come to Tasmania for Winter Feast, Mabee reached out to last year’s guest chef, Slovenia’s Ana Ros, to see what advice she had for him.
“She said it was one of the coolest experiences of her life,’’ Mabee says.
“She said it was one of the coolest things she’d ever done and I need to do it.’’
Trim says one of the things that makes cooking at Winter Feast – and also at Mona – great is the interaction with diners.
He says everyone is always so interested in what’s being prepared and served, with plenty of questions and feedback, and that interaction makes the experience special for both the diners and the chefs.
Trim spent 25 years running kitchens in pubs – which is actually where he met his wife, Jen, who once worked behind the bar – and estimates that he cooked “hundreds of thousands of steaks” during that time.
And it’s a skill that has translated well to his work with Mona, Heavy Metal Kitchen and Winter Feast, where meat is a major focus.
Trim says moving to Tasmania in 2009 with Jen and their two sons, Jack and Charlie, who were only babies at the time, was the “best decision we’ve ever made”.
The boys are now 16 and 15 – both work at Mona in the school holidays and the eldest is interested in a career in the industry. They love their home in West Hobart and they love calling Tasmania home.
“I could talk about it for a week,’’ Trim laughs of his enthusiasm for Tasmania.
“Honestly, the opportunities that have come, the good fortune to have made that decision to have come down here, and to start working out at Mona have been extraordinary.
“It’s life changing. And I know people say those sorts of things quite often and it’s a cliche, but it has been fabulous.
“It’s a joy for me to be at Mona. To have the opportunity to start again (in a new state) and still be in the kitchen now, at 55 years old, and still be spending every day in the kitchen and still love it.’’
Trim grew up in New Zealand and moved to Australia to start as an apprentice chef at 16.
It was a big move at such a young age, but ultimately set Trim on a long and successful career path in the food industry.
“Looking back, it was probably a little bit premature, but it also was exactly the right thing to do,’’ Trim says.
Winter Feast runs at Hobart’s Princes Wharf 1 from June 13-16 and June 20-23, 4pm-11pm. Tickets are online from noon on Tuesday April 16, and at the door. Entry is $10 on Thursdays, $15 Fridays, $20 Saturdays (all free after 9pm), Sundays are free. Season passes are $45. darkmofo.net.au
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