Pictured ~ Tuna Belly Bacon, Fermented Cherry Tomatoes, Aged Soy and Pea Blossom.
It all started back in 2004 I was in grade 10 and only 15 years old. I was a delinquent, didn't enjoy school, and was rebelling hard! The only class I excelled in was cooking, or known as hospitality. So my mum thought she would try the next best thing and get me a job. She had friends within the hospitality industry who owned restaurants and bars. She managed to wrangle me a position as dishy/prep chef at a small restaurant. The very first task I was given and I remember way too clearly to this very day, was to chop massive bunches of curly parsley. I chopped and chopped till I thought it would be suffice and it wasn't even close. It honestly took me hours to chop this parsley. I still remember looking out the back door of the kitchen watching the chefs sit on their ass laughing at me. Not the greatest start!
The same guy owned a resort and said I could go and try work there to see how it is. I can remember how sore my legs were literally standing up for 12 hours. The longest period of time i had ever spent on my feet at that point as a 15 year old. This didn't seem like it was going to work and It wasn't as fun as I had pictured.
I think few months went by and another opportunity popped up at a place called Sails Beach Restaurant. I started taking shifts there while I was still at school, and it got to a point where the head chef Paul basically said you either finish school or take an apprenticeship here at Sails. I'm pretty sure I jumped at the chance. Anything to get me out of class! Back then I think I started on around $4.20/hour as a 1st year apprentice. The shifts were long, the prep jobs weren't the best and the abuse certainly didn't help. But Sails taught me a lot and it's made me into the chef I am today. It was incredible fine dining food and the chefs were very talented there.
Pictured ~ Salted Carmel Ice Cream, Cinnamon Smoked with Caramel Popcorn and Banana.
The chef industry was wild back then. Swearing, yelling, abuse, physically and mentally. Today that shit wouldn't fly and we definitely weren't like the celebrity chefs you see today. We were kept literally underground below the restaurant and never to be seen by the customers. I lasted almost a year at Sails before a turn of events had me calling for my mum to get me out of there. First was being picked up by the scruff of the neck and dragged out the back by a chef who had had a big night out and a short fuse. The final thing that happened was getting held and branded on the arm by a chef with one of the big kitchen spoons that I had left on the gas. That was it for me, I needed a break and couldn't do it anymore. It all caught up and I really wasn't sure if this was what I wanted to do. I had a few months off cooking before being encouraged by my mum to get back into the industry and finish my apprenticeship. My neighbour Daniel mentioned they were looking for chefs at the restaurant he worked as a barman, called Cafe Le Monde.
Le Monde as we called it, wasn't anywhere near the standard of Sails. But the chefs were genuinely nice people and never treated me like shit. I felt like apart of a family here and I had made friends for life. This place taught me many things like moving my ass and having no one else to fall back on. It was a busy face paced restaurant that could easily do several hundred covers a night. The amount of produce being ordered and the scale of the prep being done was insane. Still blows my mind! This is still one of the few restaurants that has stood the test of time on the infamous Hastings Street known for restaurants coming and going.
After almost 4 years within the industry. I felt accomplished, I felt like all the shit I went through was for something, I wasn't sure what that something was until this happened..
Click HERE for how my chef career literally took me around the world!
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