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Editor’s Letter

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Editor’s Letter

Welcome to the Turf ‘N Surf issue where sport takes centre stage with the 2023 seasons of the National Rugby League (NRL), the Australian Football League (AFL) and Super Rugby well underway – that’s the turf covered.

 
 
And the surf? In this issue Mark Best shines a light on Flinders Island in Bass Strait and Myffy Rigby tours the Mornington Peninsula for What’s Good in the Hood.
 
Stadium food has well and truly levelled up in recent times with punters wanting more than just a lukewarm pie to sustain them as the beers, cheers and jeers flow freely. High profile chefs across the country are taking up the challenge of game day dining and Pat Nourse chats with Matt Moran, Victor Liong and Mike Eggert to get the score on stadium dining.
 
Australian Beef has entered its second year of sponsorship with the Brisbane Broncos – a partnership fueled by the nutritional powerhouse that is Australian Beef. Healthy, balanced beef meals provide vital nutrients that help athletes and every day Aussies alike perform at their best.
 
On the healthy beef train – we catch up with social media chef sensation Andy Hearnden (4M TikTok and 2.2M Instagram) and Humble on Duke chef/owner Stacey Conner on the Sunshine Coast to capture their interpretations of a healthy beef meal for Cut Two Ways.
 
Still on the Turf, we head to Brisbane where ALH – Australia’s largest hotel group – has introduced a Footy Fever dish to the menu of their Queensland based venues for the duration of the football season. Leveraging the momentum of national sporting leagues and events is a great way to drive incremental meal sales and the Broncos Steak, basted with a XXXX BBQ sauce is a tasty way to do so.
 
Mark Best heads to incredible Flinders Island where he meets with Jo Youl – an island powerhouse promoting the produce and attributes of this remote island off the coast of Tasmania in Bass Strait. From producing Angus beef on the island to running the Flinders Island Wharf Restaurant and its roster of renowned chefs; providing luxury farm stay accommodation and other tourism ventures, if anyone knows Flinders Island, it’s Jo.
 
Finally, Myffy Rigby heads for the Mornington Peninsula where wild surf coasts and calm ocean bays encase a stretch of turf populated with fine wineries and a wealth of delicious dining options – from tantalising Tedesca to the awe of Audrey’s, be sure to add the Mornington Peninsula to your travel plans.

 
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

 

Editor’s Letter

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Editor’s
Letter

 
 

Welcome to our Summer Issue – a season some consider the most wonderful time of the year, and I tend to agree.

 
 
Each January, Australian Lamb hits the spotlight with the release of the Summer Lamb campaign and the infamous Australian Lamb Ad – the tongue in cheek narrative plays on Australian culture with lamb as the centrepiece.
 
It’s more than just an ad, it’s a fully integrated marketing campaign that puts lamb front and centre in the hearts and minds of Australians over the Summer months – and provides a platform for foodservice businesses to leverage the increased awareness and desire for lamb with their own on menu lamb specials.
 
In this issue, Pat Nourse catches up with Jason Lui at Flower Drum, a Melbourne fine dining institution for 47 years where the quality of Australian lamb sees it appear multiple times on the menu – not a common occurrence in Cantonese cuisine.
 
Mark Best shares his love of lamb with three recipes that celebrate the quality and diversity of Australian lamb – there’s a Sichuan-style tartare, a beautifully blushing rack and a Christmas glazed long leg to give the ham a run for its money.
 
Myffy Rigby goes full Summer with a visit to the Gold Coast for What’s Good in the Hood – the Goldy is emerging as a destination as much for its food as for its golden stretches of sand and shimmering seas.
 
Our Young Gun this issue is the 2023 Good Food Guide Young Chef of the Year Tom Foster. Currently head chef at ELE by Federico and Karl, Tom has worked in the fine dining space for 10 years using modern techniques to showcase hyper seasonal produce.
 
Aligning with the Summer Lamb campaign, Lucas Restaurants have implemented special lamb dishes across several of their venues to celebrate Australian Lamb. We showcase two dishes from Benjamin Cooper at Chin Chin and Andrea Kok at Hawker Hall for our Summer Lamb Two Ways.
 
Finally, for our Big Business section we visit the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground where Australian Lamb has produced a Hat Trick with a dedicated lamb venue selling three lamb dishes kicking off on Boxing Day and continuing throughout 2023. Howzat?!
 
So sit back, relax and let the lamb do the talking.

 
 
 


 
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

 

People Places Plates

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For as long as people have taken the field or stepped into the arena to test themselves against each other, there have been spectators, and for as long as there have been spectators, there have been pies.

 
Well, not pies exactly, but something like a pie – something to eat while cheering (or indeed booing) the battle playing out before you. And while things have come a long way since the days of oiled Spartans duking it out in the original Olympics (everyone usually wears clothes now, for one thing), for most of our modern era in the West, the food served at stadiums hasn’t changed that much. Even as broadcasting, advertising, changing attention spans and the rise of the professional athlete have dramatically transformed the games themselves, food stayed basic.
 
Or at least it did until now. Restaurant chefs are getting in on the business of how we eat when we’re watching sport, and it is, as they say, a game changer.

The food eaten at games is more diverse than you might’ve thought. Bovril, the British beef tea, has been described in some quarters as being nearly as important to British football as the ball itself. Canada’s love of chips smothered in cheese reaches insane heights at Toronto FC’s home ground at BMO Field, the birthplace of the triple-pork poutine. In Istanbul it’s all about kofte sandwiches, while miles of sausages are eaten in arenas across eastern and northern Europe, not to mention Latin America, and a whole lotta biltong goes down in South Africa. Also: sunflower seeds. Lots of countries are really into sunflower seeds. Bear that in mind next time someone tells you they think Chiko rolls are out-there.
 
In ancient times, sporting events were often accompanied by feasts and banquets. In ancient Greece, athletes competing in the Olympics were fed a diet of meat, bread, and wine to ensure they were well-nourished for their competitions. In ancient Rome, gladiators were served a diet of barley, beans, and meats to keep them pushing their personal best. While the food served at these events may not have been the type of fare we associate with modern sporting events, the idea of feeding athletes and spectators alike has been around for thousands of years.
 
It was in the 19th century, though, that we began to see the emergence of foods that are more recognisable as stadium snacks. In the United States, baseball was hitting its straps, and there’s records of vendors selling peanuts and popcorn at games in the 1870s. These simple snacks were cheap, easy to prepare, and could be eaten on the go, making them the perfect food for a fast-paced sporting event. Also: good with a beer and easy to throw.

Australian Beef has entered its second year of sponsorship with the Brisbane Broncos - fueling athletes and every day Australians on and off the field

Australian Beef has entered its second year of sponsorship with the Brisbane Broncos – fueling athletes and every day Australians on and off the field

As stadiums and arenas became more established, food concessions were set up on the premises, with more varied menus and more comfortable seating. One of the earliest examples of stadium food was the hotdog – the first of them sold at a baseball game in New York City in 1893.
 
In the early 20th century, with the rise of organised sports leagues, the variety of food available at sporting events began to expand. In the US, hamburgers began to be sold at baseball games in the 1920s, while in the UK and Australia meat pies became a popular food served at football matches. As sporting events became more professionalised and commercialised, food vendors began to see the potential for selling a wider variety of foods to hungry spectators.
 
Take a look around today. At the FIFA World Cup in Doha last year, punters at Al Bayt Stadium had the option of potato chips, popcorn and (beef) hotdogs but also the more Qatari-leaning likes of faytayer, a triangular almost-pie, filled with minced meat and spinach, and luqaimat, a sweet flour dumpling drenched in sweet syrup spiced with cardamom. If you want to get really fancy, consider making a booking at Geranium, the fine-diner in Denmark named number one in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants in 2022. It’s located on the eighth floor of Parken, the home of Copenhagen FC – so you could conceivably nip in for a taste of the Spring Universe menu (for a crisp $800 AUD a head) and smash a bit of salted herring in crisp algae with dill stems and aquavit before a game. Not so much with the pies, though.
 
And in 2023, Australia is now well and truly in the game, following a string of high-profile announcements connecting restaurants and major sporting venues. Melbourne chefs Guy Grossi and Alejandro Saravia signed on with the hallowed ground of the MCG last year, and today, when members roll into the Long Room on a game day, Saravia offers them a buffet laden with the likes of leg of O’Connor beef, cooked over a wood fire and served with smoked chilli salsa and chimichurri. Grossi’s menus at the swank Committee Room, meanwhile, place duck and porcini tortellini with caramelised pear, and a rigatoni sauced with a spiced veal ragù and a healthy dusting of pecorino alongside King George whiting presented with a Sicilian-accented arrangement of breadcrumbs, pine nuts, sultanas, saffron and zucchini, and a serious herb-crumbed veal cutlet with bitter leaves dressed with lemon and capers.

Matt Moran is culinary ambassador across CommBank Stadium and Accor Stadium in Sydney - Photo: Steve Burn

Matt Moran is culinary ambassador across CommBank Stadium and Accor Stadium in Sydney – Photo: Steve Burn

Speaking of the MCG, next door in and around Rod Laver Arena, The Australian Open has done an incredible job putting Melbourne well ahead of its international Grand Slam brethren in the food stakes. This year’s talent included Jacqui Challinor offering a Nomad menu (hello mushroom and bone marrow empanadas) on the rooftop, Saint Peter chef Josh Niland with his fast-casual Charcoal Fish concept, plus full-service versions of Rockpool Bar & Grill, Supernormal and Stokehouse and a Penfolds restaurant powered by the team from Magill Estate, not to mention Tacos y Liquor and Ca Com, the casual offshoots from celebrated chefs Aaron Turner, of Igni, and Thi Le from Jeow.
 
It is, says Matt Moran, a sign of the times. The Aria chef reckons it’s tied up with sport being such a key place for corporate entertaining, and also just the general elevation of the food conversation in Australia.
 
 

“It’s all about good produce and just done well. People just want good food that hasn’t been sitting in bain-maries for God knows how long. You don’t have to serve five garnishes with it and trick it up, we just want to make it fresh and clean.”

 
 
Moran is now culinary ambassador across two large Sydney venues, CommBank Stadium in Parramatta and Accor Stadium at Sydney’s Olympic Park, and he says his mission is to put good produce first.
 
“If it’s going to be a chook, it’s going to be a really good roast chook with a good gravy. Slow-cooked lamb shoulder, he says, is the perfect thing in this context for chefs and punters alike. “You can do it in advance, and it’s so bloody easy to reheat in a Rational and put it on a platter and let people share it. That’s delicious.”

Moran Family Lamb Shoulder - not your average stadium snack - Photo: Travis Hayto

Moran Family Lamb Shoulder – not your average stadium snack – Photo: Travis Hayto

Where Moran grew up eating pies and barracking for the Dragons in the NRL, Lee Ho Fook’s Victor Liong’s memories of sporting fixtures growing up in southeast Asia were more about dirt-bike racing and martial arts – both things loved by his dad – and of the satay vendors.
 
The flavours of Asia carry the day at Liong’s new outlet of Lee Ho Fook at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne. That could mean Rangers Valley short-rib with fennel, mustard and baby cos, or Xinjiang-style cumin braised lamb and bullhorn peppers tossed through noodles, or even a milk pudding with coconut sorbet, lychee, raspberry and rose granita. The restaurant caters for large numbers of people in very small amounts of time – pre-game, half time and so on – so clean menu design and minimal movements for plate-up are key.
 
At the end of the day, Liong says, wherever you are in the world, fans are looking to be comfortable and not too bothered with the service style while watching the game. “It’s all about food that’s not too challenging and easy to eat.”

Victor Liong’s renowned Melbourne restaurant Lee Ho Fook now has an outlet at Marvel Stadium - Photo: TJ Edwards

Victor Liong’s renowned Melbourne restaurant Lee Ho Fook now has an outlet at Marvel Stadium – Photo: TJ Edwards

You might know Mike Eggert as the chef behind the smash-hit success of Totti’s, which has just spread its wings from its Sydney home base and opened in Lorne on the Victorian coastline. But he also answers to another label: lifelong cricket tragic. (He has fond memories of the sandwiches his nan would make for a test-match: chicken and lettuce with butter and white pepper.)
 
So when Merivale signed on to step up the food offering at the SCG and Allianz Stadium, bringing its exec chefs Jordan Toft, Dan Hong, Ben Greeno and Vincenzo Biondini into the mix, Eggert was ready to lead the charge. And while you can now get noodles and dumplings from Queen Chow and Ms G’s, “the elevated, coastal European stylings” of Bert’s, Coogee Pavilion, wraps from Jimmy’s and a pasta bar from Totti’s, it’s Eggert’s pie and a burger from Biondini that bring it on home for the crowd in the stands.
 
 

“We had a couple of parameters,” says Eggert of the signature SCG pie he developed with the team from Sonoma Bakery. “It needed to be a one-hander. None of this two-handed pie crap.” Structural integrity, as with all good sandwiches and pies, was paramount. “You have to be able to nurse both a beer and a pie.”

 
 
For the filling, braised beef was the starting point. “I didn’t want anything at all fancy. No red wine, mushrooms and stuff. I just wanted an elevated version of a classic beef pie.” The winning mix is simply seasoned with black pepper, “a micro-amount” of onion and garlic, and that’s pretty much it. No packet gravy-flavour, no veggie boosters or chicken booster or MSG. “Just a beefy, meaty, gravy flavour stuffed inside a pie.”

Merivale’s stadium burger - smashed dry aged beef patty, caramelised onions, pickles, cheese and sauce – Photo: Jiwon Kim

Merivale’s stadium burger – smashed dry aged beef patty, caramelised onions, pickles, cheese and sauce – Photo: Jiwon Kim

Then there’s the burger. It was inspired, appropriately enough, by a research trip to the Superbowl in Los Angeles with Merivale boss Justin Hemmes.
 
“When Vinnie got back from LA he started working with Haverick Meats to dry-age his cuts of beef and mince them with a much more open, coarse grind to do his smash patties.” Now the smash-patty burgers are available at the stadium across three kiosks, and Eggert reckons it’s a solid-gold ripper.
 
 

“I think it’s one of the best burgers you can get in Sydney – and I’m saying that with my Merivale hat off. It’s on a Big Marty sesame seed bun from Martin’s. Dry-aged beef, caramelised onions. Really delicious.”

 
 
In an age when we’re talking about serious money for seriously upscale restaurant-style food in a sporting context, it’s interesting to hear Eggert talking about keeping the value front and centre with the pie, and about not wanting it to be, in his words, too fancy.
 
“I’m all for variety in pie shops because if you’ve got an audience and you do it well, you should expand your repertoire. But we’ve got the guys and girls in the stadium for an hour, two hours, and they’re not looking to eat three types of pies – they just want to have a good beef pie with a little bit of salt and a little bit of pepper because it goes well with a beer. For me, if you make a really good gravy beef, that’s fancy enough. That’s a winner.”

Stadium snack favourites are still a-go with pies, sausage rolls, hot dogs and chippies available at multiple outlets across both SFS and SCG – Photo: Steven Woodburn

Stadium snack favourites are still a-go with pies, sausage rolls, hot dogs and chippies available at multiple outlets across both SFS and SCG – Photo: Steven Woodburn

 

People Places Plates

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It might give the appearance of being perfectly changeless, but for this landmark of Australian fine dining, evolution is constant and quiet innovation keeps it on top.

 
To the casual observer, Flower Drum is about as classical as it gets. The carpet is red, the tablecloths are white, the dining rooms divided by lacquered screens. Some of the waiters give the impression they might’ve been working the floor for all of the restaurant’s nearly 50 years in business.

Flower Drum opened in 1975, and, apart from a move in 1985 from the original Little Bourke Street site to the current Market Lane address, for that casual observer, it has been a story of constancy and changelessness, its place at the pinnacle of Chinese dining in Australia secured by fine cooking and courtly service from a tight-knit and long-serving staff.
 
But in truth, that constancy is achieved only by constant work. Pick your analogy here. There’s the way the harbour bridge in Sydney is being painted with a new coat on one side just as the last coat is being finished on the other bank. Or the way good hotels never stop renovating, room by room, wing by wing. Or, this being a Cantonese restaurant, perhaps it’s the image of the smooth, seemingly effortless way a duck makes its way through the water, legs working hard below the surface all the while. However you want to slice it, the message is that staying timeless in this way involves plenty of hard work and no small amount of innovation.

Jason and Anthony Lui at Flower Drum - a landmark of Australian fine dining

Jason and Anthony Lui at Flower Drum – a landmark of Australian fine dining

Just ask Jason Lui, the GM. He hasn’t been around quite since the very beginning in 1975, not being quite yet born then, but he almost literally grew up in the restaurant. His father, Anthony Lui, moved to Australia from Hong Kong to join the kitchen, and bought it from founder Gilbert Lau in 2000, having never worked a day in another restaurant in this country. Jason has worked right across the business, as a busboy, at the bar, as a cashier, absorbing the lessons of a master maître d’ and restaurateur at Lau’s side, and his vision for Flower Drum is perfectly clear.
 
 

“We’re a traditional Cantonese restaurant working with the best Aussie produce we can find,” he says. “Our menu is quite broad; after 47 years you pick up a lot of things along the way, and we’ve still got regulars from 30 or even 40 years ago who still order the same thing, even if it’s not on the menu anymore. We still keep skewers in the kitchen in case someone comes in asking for satay.”

 
 
Glance at the written menu today and there’s everything you’d expect at the highest of high-end restaurants in Hong Kong: delicate dumplings in translucent gossamer wrappings, noodles dancing with the breath of the wok, soups of exceptional depth and clarity. You can have your rock lobster stir-fried with XO sauce and dried scallop, or whipped with egg whites and cream into an airy omelette. The Peking duck is one of Australia’s finest examples, served tableside on featherlight pancakes, and fried rice, crisp-skinned chicken and barbecue pork are all present and correct.

Anthony Lui moved to Australia from Hong Kong in 1980 to work in the Flower Drum kitchen - where he continues to work to this day

Anthony Lui moved to Australia from Hong Kong in 1980 to work in the Flower Drum kitchen – where he continues to work to this day

But there’s also a double-boiled soup made with wallaby tail and red dates – not something you see every day in Kowloon or Wanchai – and preserved egg wrapped in deeply savoury minced quail, like a Cantonese Scotch egg. The meat of the pearl oyster – not the usual eating family Ostreidae, but the Pinctada maxima used to culture pearls off the coast of Broome – is served on its shimmering shell, its dense, almost abalone-like flesh dressed with ginger and spring onion.
 
Zoom in on the red-meat situation and that quiet edge of innovation becomes even more apparent. While beef is prized as a special treat, Cantonese diners – southern Chinese diners in general, in fact – are traditionally not big eaters of lamb or mutton. Or, as Irene Kuo puts it rather more bluntly in her 1977 landmark The Key to Chinese Cooking, “beef is scarce in China and lamb is disliked by most Chinese because of its strong odor”.
 
At Flower Drum circa 2023, though, it’s a different story. Cantonese cooking is, after all, about bringing out the best qualities of the best ingredients to hand, and in Australia, that means fine lamb and beef. “It’d be silly not to use it,” says Jason. In the lamb department, Anthony Lui favours saltbush lamb, and works with Bultarra, the certified organic producer that runs White Dorpers in northern South Australia, grazing them on the saltbush and native grasses of the Flinders Ranges.
 

Typhoon Shelter Lamb Cutlets - traditionally made with seafood, at Flower Drum the dish highlights the quality of Australian lamb

Typhoon Shelter Lamb Cutlets – traditionally made with seafood, at Flower Drum the dish highlights the quality of Australian lamb

One of the more unusual dishes that it appears in is typhoon-shelter lamb. The typhoon-shelter style comes from the fishing community of Hong Kong, the name referencing the refuge they’d take during heavy weather. It’s traditionally used for seafood, typically tiger prawns or mantis shrimp stir-fried with a vast quantity of fried garlic, ginger, black bean, spring onion and chilli. At the Drum it’s reimagined as a way of presenting lamb cutlets. They’re dusted and lightly fried together with a relatively restrained quantity of garlic chips and chilli: spicy, crunchy, delicious.
 
The claypots walk a more traditional path. “Again, it’s saltbush lamb, and we’re using brisket,” says Jason “We braise it on the bone for more flavour – after a couple of hours they just slide out – and it’s flavoured with red dates and ginger. There’s also some bean curd sheets with it that we fry first then braise with the meat so it gets nice and soft.” The finished dish is served with spinach leaves cooked in the sauce with the lamb, and a fermented bean curd that the kitchen breaks down into a sauce. “Very savoury, very pungent.”
 
Another dish takes its cues from Shanghai, working with bread pockets made with a semi-sweet white dough very similar to that you’d see used for barbecue pork buns, sprinkled here with sesame seeds. The kitchen stir-fries lamb cut from the rack with leek, miso bean-paste and ginger, which is then stuffed into the bread pockets like a sandwich.
 
Lamb spring rolls are a highlight, too. “This was actually born out of having some offcuts left from braising the claypot lamb,” says Jason. “We decided to make them into small parcels and serve them as spring rolls, so they have all the elements of the lamb claypot except for the beancurd sheets, plus spinach, ginger and water chestnut.”

Lamb Pockets - saute saltbush lamb from the rack served with sesame bread pockets

Lamb Pockets – saute saltbush lamb from the rack served with sesame bread pockets

“Southern Chinese people have a perception that lamb is very … lamby,” says Jason. “Aussie lamb is very good, though, so when we have travellers here and we can convince them to try it, they find that it’s very nice.”
 
One of the secret weapons of the Flower Drum kitchen in winning southern Chinese diners over to Team Lamb comes as something of a surprise. “We use fish stock,” says Jason. “Instead of chicken or beef or whatever, we use a stock made from all the pieces left from filleting all our fish, and we use that as the base to braise the lamb. My dad came across that because in Chinese somehow the word ‘lamb’ has the word water or sea in it, and thought he’d give it a try – it takes away some of that lambiness. We’ve been doing that for 10 years now, and it works for us. It sells.”
 
On the beef side of the ledger, short-ribs do the occasional cameo, braised then battered and fried, as does wagyu cheek, and Black Angus appears in the form of a fillet stir-fried with a superior-soy mix, stir-fried with mushrooms. Westlake beef soup is standard, bringing together chopped Black Angus, coriander and spring onion, all thickened with egg white, and there’s also a pao fan, a variation for the colder months, that’s like a loose congee made up of rice cooked in a clear broth with, coriander, not-quite minced beef and topped tableside with a crisp rice. “You mix it all together and have it as something to finish a meal, garnished with coriander and century egg.”

Braised Lamb Claypot - saltbush lamb brisket slow braised on the bone

Braised Lamb Claypot – saltbush lamb brisket slow braised on the bone

And then Jason throws another curve-ball. Flower Drum is famed for the breadth of its off-menu offering – most of the real regulars verbal their whole order without ever cracking the pages of the carte. But even so, learning that the Drum does a steak still comes as something of a shock. Will it be Black Angus eye fillet or Robbins Island wagyu porterhouse? “We do those with black pepper sauce or our Sichuan sauce,” Jason says. It’s more usual for these cuts to be sliced into strips before they’re cooked here, of course, as you would in any restaurant where chopsticks are the weapons of choice at the table, but the Drum also has guests who prefer it as a steak, and, this being a can-do sort of place, they’re always happy to serve them. “We’ve got seeded mustard here if you want it.”
 
So how does it work, this business of being both a timeless institution but at the same time constantly evolving?
 
 

“The techniques we use are still very traditional, they work for a reason,” Jason says, “but we have a bit of fun playing around with things and doing things differently with certain dishes. Even our spring onion cake we do with puff pastry rather than the usual pancake – you can’t just do the same thing all the time.”

 
 
Flower Drum is famed for the personal quality of its service. Jason Lui speaks fondly of Gilbert Lau’s total commitment to the job and his fastidious way of working, talking about him running his fingers under the chairs to check that they were clean all over, or drilling staff not just on the menu and the wine list but on the varieties of flowers arranged around the dining room.
 
“Above all it was him teaching us how to look after people, how to make them want to come back. Even if they’ve got to save for a year before they can come back, you overwhelm them with service and attention to detail, and the food is so wow – you make it so that they can’t not come back.”

Jason Lui says the key to return diners is to overwhelm them with service, attention to detail and exceptional food

Jason Lui says the key to return diners is to overwhelm them with service, attention to detail and exceptional food

What will Jason be doing this Lunar New Year? “I’ll be working. It’s the second-biggest week for us, after Cup week.” Menus for New Year at Flower Drum are months in the making, as is the wrangling of the tables because so many diners come from overseas and out of town for it. “There’s a bit going on.”
 
 

“New Year’s Eve is mostly Chinese diners, and it’s booked out a year in advance, and it’s the same families coming back year after year, booking 12 or 20 or 50 people. Every year it’s the same people. New Year’s Day is more of a mix, but it’s booking out well in advance now too.”

 
 
Flower Drum takes its name from a 20th-century Broadway musical, The Flower Drum. But that’s just its name in English. In Chinese, it’s quite different. “The best I can translate it,” says Jason Lui, “is Ten-Thousand Generation Palace.”

As we enter the Year of the Rabbit, as the restaurant eases closer to its own 50th year, what does Jason want the wider world to know the Flower Drum is all about?
 
“I’d say don’t be afraid to have a chat with us,” he says. “The menu can be daunting for some people but it’s just a snapshot of what we can do for you. Tell us what you like, tell us what you don’t like, and let us do something for you. That’s when most of my guests have the most fun. Do something different. You’ve made the booking and waited two months to come in – let’s go all in.”

 

Editor’s Letter

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Editor’s
Letter

 
 

When it comes to food, there’s always a reason to celebrate – and with this being our TWENTIETH ISSUE we are feeling particularly celebratory!

 


 
 
The festive season is snapping at our heels and it is always the busiest time of the year for foodservice with long lunches, work events, Christmas parties, New Year’s celebrations – any excuse really to indulge in some world-class hospitality at venues across the country.
 
In this issue I wanted to explore what celebrations looked like in a range of cultures and cuisines and one thing is clearly evident; food is almost always at the centre of celebrations – from the cooking through to the consumption, it is about coming together to share experiences and connect.
 
It’s memories of New Year’s Day in Mauritius that come to the fore when Pat Nourse chats with Nagesh Seethiah at his restaurant Manze in North Melbourne. Pat writes – “New Year’s day is big in Mauritius, bigger than Christmas Day, and a big celebration called for a goat or two, with the families making a day of it and everyone pitching in to cook every part of it.” Read more about Nagesh, Manze and celebrating Mauritian style in Pat’s People Places Plates section.
 
Meanwhile Mark Best explores The Taco-lypse – Australia has well and truly hit its stride in the taco-stakes, evolving from Old El Paso tex-mex to taqueria pop-ups in the Rocks from acclaimed Mexican American chef Claudette Zepeda. Mexican culture embraces celebration perhaps like no other, as Claudette says “Mexico is a nation of immigrants and their ingredients, and I think we are programmed to share and celebrate our similarities and differences.” There ain’t no party like a taco party and in this story Mark seeks out some of the best tacos in Sydney.
 
Auburn in Sydney’s inner west is a suburb quite unlike any other and Myffy Rigby explores its incredibly diverse cuisines with relish in this episode of What’s Good in the Hood. From Lebanese breakfast to Turkish mix plates; Uyghur meat pies to Afghani dumplings; East African platters to Peranakan curries – it’s a celebratory smorgasbord like no other.
 
Ross Magnaye tells me that to him, food has always been part of family and that the Filipino way of celebrating is always heavily centred around food. Magnaye is taking his Filipino heritage and sharing it with the world at Serai in Melbourne’s CBD – you can expect loud music, happy people, natural wines and modern Australian food with Filipino twists. If anyone can throw a party, it’s Ross Magnaye – read all about it in my Young Guns section.
 
Did you know October is Goatober? Well now you do. We teamed up with chefs Ibrahim Kasif, formerly of Turkish favourite Stanbuli and now head chef at Beau; and restaurateur and former Masterchef star Minoli De Silva of Ella in Darwin – for our Cut Two Ways section – and you guessed it, they are cooking goat. Be inspired to give goat a go with these two deliciously different dishes.
 
Until 2023 – be safe, be well and keep being inspired by Australian beef, lamb and goat.
 
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

 
 
 
 

Editor’s Letter

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Editor’s
Letter

 
 
 

 

Welcome to Issue 19 where we explore comfort food and its incredible ability to stir up feelings of sentimentality, warmth and happiness. Often associated with emotional stress, comfort food bounced back in a big way during the pandemic where we saw chefs cooking food inspired by their own notions of comfort and designing menus that appealed to their comfort seeking customers.
 
As we emerge from Covid’s clutches, the good news is, it seems comfort food is here to stay. Be it specific to an individual or a cultural classic; a childhood favourite (hello crumbed lamb cutlets) or a ‘treat yourself’ craving – the transformative power of nostalgia is informing menus across the country.
 
Pat Nourse catches up with chef Ben Russell at Rothewell’s Bar & Grill – Brisbane’s hottest new destination; an ode to the timelessness of the great bistros of the world and the comforting familiarity of menu classics. Here, it is the revival of the Beef Wellington that has taken diners by the hand and the heart – where the combination of time honoured technique is coupled with quality produce and meticulous preparation. The result is comfort at the highest level.
 
Mark Best reminisces on the warm feelings evoked on the coldest mornings when his mother served savoury mince on hot buttered toast. Around the world, mince has played a similar role in vastly different settings with dishes that transcend time and place, have a hold in history and are lovingly passed down, reinvented, and given new life. Mark explores memories of mince and the comfort dishes it conjures up for Palisa Anderson, Paul Farag, O’Tama Carey and Enrico Tomelleri.
 
I spend some cherished time at Baba’s Place where nostalgia drips down the walls and weaves its way into every part of the experience – where a menagerie of memories of growing up in Western Sydney are interpreted and elevated in every bite. Here, Jean-Paul El Tom, along with his mates Alex Kelly and James Bellos, are inviting you to experience their memories of food – while reminiscing on your own cherished experiences of food and family. Baba’s Place radiates warmth and familiarity – where you come to get fed and leave feeling part of something much bigger.
 
Myffy Rigby experiences the ultimate in Winter comfort with a trip to the balmy 32 degree days on offer in the Top End. What’s Good in Darwin uncovers a burgeoning food scene driven by a melting pot of cultures and hyper local produce. Underpinned by institutions like Jimmy Shu’s Hanuman and accelerated by the palette and passion of former Masterchef contestant Minoli de Silva at her first restaurant Ella – Darwin might just surprise you. If the sun setting into the Timor Sea while you indulge in an array of snacks from the Mindil Beach Sunset Market doesn’t fill you with a sense of happiness – I don’t know what will.
 
When you take dry aged mince, expertly prepared by Marcus Papadopoulo from Whole Beast Butchery, and put it into the hands of Barzaari’s Darryl Martin and Federico Zanelatto of LuMi, Leo, Ele and Lode – you know you’re going to be rewarded with some mince magic. The boys definitely passed the vibe check on the comfort brief and Cut Two Ways comes alive with Federico’s famed beef pithivier and Darryl’s take on kousa – stuffed Lebanese zucchini.
 
Finally – is there anyone more deserving of comfort than our loved ones in aged care homes around the country? Estia Health is shaking off the shackles of what we think generally constitutes aged care food with freshly prepared, culturally curated menus that provide residents with comfort and familiarity. Discover an uncompromising level of care for older Australians in this issue’s Big Business section.
 
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

 
 
 
 

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Welcome to Issue 18 where we explore a little slice of luxury – and what a journey it has taken us on.
 
It has been wonderful to be back on the road and in the sky, crossing state lines and visiting restaurants around the country. Some venues are reporting that diners seem to be making up for lost time with average check size up – they are opting for more premium wines, choosing supplementary options and splashing out on luxury steaks. In fact, Australians spent a record $4.465 billion in cafes, restaurants and takeaway shops for the month of February, an increase of 9.7 per cent on January and up more than $500 million on February 2020, just before the pandemic.
 
As Pat Nourse puts it – ‘rare is the delicacy that gets the mouth watering in quite the same way as a really good steak’ and I couldn’t agree more. In this issue Pat talks to some of the greats of the steak game – Lennox Hastie, Andrew McConnell, Ross Lusted and Corey Costelloe about what makes a great steak. From the producer to the preparation, the cut to the cooking, the salt to the service – it’s not a one size fits all scenario and we are more than happy to try them all on.
 
Mark Best pays a visit to the pioneer of luxury beef in Australia David Blackmore who, with his son Ben, produces premium Wagyu for some of the finest restaurants in Australia and around the world. David maintains that his customer is and always has been the person choosing to dine out once a year for a special occasion – a celebration where they forget the diet and forget the budget. It’s all about quality over quantity for the Blackmore family and we learn about their new venture into Rubia Gallega, the Northern Spanish cattle David Blackmore believes will be the best grass-fed beef in the world.
 
Myffy Rigby makes a run for the Nation’s Capital to discover what’s good – and there’s plenty to be excited about. Established favourites sit firm amongst vibrant newcomers – from fun fine dining and everything over fire; to the simple pleasures of pizzas and jaffles – there’s certainly something for everyone.
 
I take a trip to Adelaide where the buzz is all around young chef Jake Kellie’s first restaurant Arkhe – and it more than lives up to the hype. Kellie’s resume reads like every young chef’s dream career run and in a leafy suburb in Adelaide he’s making his boldest move yet. Arkhe is Kellie’s dream restaurant come to life – where produce is the winner and playing with fire is the game.
 
It’s wagyu with a view as we shoot Cut Two Ways from the lofty 55th floor setting of Vue de monde in Melbourne. Executive chef Hugh Allen and Donovan Cooke of Ryne give us their versions of luxury dishes using wagyu brisket.
 
With flights back in the air, we thought we’d pay a visit to dnata catering – Australia’s largest in flight caterer creating a mind blowing 64 million meals to be served on 250,000 flights a year. Now that is Big Business.
 
I hope you enjoy the luxury of Australian beef and lamb.
 
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

 
 
 
 

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Happy New Year – welcome to 2022 and Issue 17!
 
In this issue, we focus on the wonder that is Australian lamb as the nation patiently awaits the release of the annual Summer Lamb ad. More than just an ad, the Summer Lamb campaign is an integrative marketing campaign that drives consumption of Australian lamb from shopping trolleys to restaurant plates and celebrates Australia’s love of lamb.
 
Pat Nourse profiles chef Trevor Perkins of the aptly named Hogget Kitchen – hogget being a young adult sheep aged around 15-16 months between lamb and mutton. At Hogget, Trevor takes a nose to tail approach sourcing from a range of Gippsland lamb producers and takes diners on a journey of Gippsland’s finest.
 
Myffy Rigby heads for the hills for What’s Good in the Hood – the Blue Mountains edition. Just a stone’s throw from Sydney, the Blue Mountains is an incredible destination rich in history and spectacular scenery. It’s also sporting what Myffy thinks is one of NSW’s best new fine dining restaurants and a host of other epic places to eat.
 
Mark Best looks into the recent CSIRO study that labels Australian lamb as only one of two foods produced in Australia that is climate neutral – a good news story worth telling. He also delves into the world first Australian Sheep Sustainability Framework launched in 2021 and profiles one of Australia’s first organically certified farms – Cherry Tree Downs.
 
Cut Two Ways takes two chefs from the Seagrass stable, 6HEAD head chef Scott Greve and Meat & Wine Co-head chef Thomas Godfrey, and matches them with a dry-aged chump on lamb leg expertly prepared by Tony Mandaliti of Global Meats.
 
I profile talented young butcher Lachy Kerr who is progressing forwards by looking backwards and embracing the butchery of yesteryear. Kerr makes the effort to personally visit the farms of each of his suppliers, sourcing from independently owned NSW farms that align with his ethos. Whole carcase butchery that connects the customer with the origin of their purchases – Wollongong is in good hands.
 
Finally, our Big Business section looks at two hospitality groups leveraging the power of a nationwide summer lamb campaign with lamb menu specials for January.
 
I hope you enjoy the issue and share the love of Australian lamb on your menus this summer.
 
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

 
 
 
 

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Producing this entire issue from my living room was definitely not what I had in mind when planning our special PUB issue, but here we are!
 
The Aussie pub is a national pastime, a rite of passage, a place where the community congregates to share good food, good booze and good times. As the country slowly emerges from multiple lockdowns, it is set to be a red hot season of celebration and the local pub is primed to once again be the central meeting place for almost any occasion.
 
Pat Nourse takes it to Tassie to profile Tom Westcott from Tom McHugo’s in Hobart. This little corner pub punches well above its weight in all classes – the food, the booze and the people. It’s definitely one of my favourite pubs and I can’t wait to jump on a plane and visit Whitney, Tom and the team as soon as possible. In the meantime, sit back, relax and let Pat’s words wash over you as you imagine tucking into the haggis bao or hot house-made pastrami roll.
 
Fortunately we had the foresight to shoot an extra episode of What’s Good in the Hood way back in June before lockdown hit. This time it’s Newcastle that gets a dose of Myffy magic. Newcastle is booming and the food scene is an ‘edible adventure’ that you should be adding to your list. We’ve done the hard work for you – follow our lead and enjoy the ride.
 
Mark Best profiles the historic Royal Richmond in Sydney’s west – a hotel serving the local community for 173 years. After a complete refurbishment, the venue continues its local focus with a menu that showcases local produce including a unique relationship with Western Sydney University to provide beef and lamb produced on its Hawkesbury campus.
 
Our Young Gun is Michael Watson who has taken on his first bricks and mortar venue. If you have visited the Entertainment Quarter at Moore Park for a sporting match, concert or festival – it’s more than likely you’ve had a pre or post drink at the corner pub. Previously PJ O’Gallagher’s and before that The Fox and Lion, the old haunt was in need of some young blood. The sparkling new venue Watson’s is ready to roll when restrictions lift – the EQ has been waiting on a winner and Watson’s has arrived.
 
It’s Veal’s turn on the chopping block for Cut Two Ways and it is in the capable hands of two chefs at the helm of some of Sydney’s most well loved pubs. From a tricked up schnitzel to a glorious veal-chetta it’s the veal-deal by all accounts.
 
Finally, I am excited to introduce our new section BIG BUSINESS. Ever wondered how 5000+ hungry miners are fed at an isolated mine site in the Pilbara? Or what goes into catering some of the biggest events in the country? Big Business will tell the stories you don’t often get to hear. First up for our PUB issue we chat with Australian Venue Co – operating 170 venues Australia wide and using 40 tonnes of beef a month.
 
Here’s to pubs across the country – may your beers be frosty, your patrons thirsty and your menu enriched by Australian red meat.
 
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

 
 
 
 

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Australian Beef – the Official Team Partner of the Australian Olympic and Paralympic teams for Tokyo 2020. Hold on. Make that Tokyo 2021. Either way, Australian Beef will be feeding the greatness of our Aussie sporting heroes when they finally take on the world at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
 
And so in this issue, we explore the theme of greatness – from one of the all time greats of the Australian culinary scene to the emerging greatness of the 2020 Josephine Pignolet Young Chef of the Year. Innovative producers finding ways to hero their older cattle who have provided much greatness through their lives; and the everyday extraordinary greatness of Australian beef on the menu.
 
Pat Nourse profiles the great Karen Martini who has recently opened a high-profile new restaurant aptly named Hero. Pat writes “It’s not a sprint, they tell you, it’s a marathon. But in professional cooking it can be both. Starting work in restaurants when she was 15 years old, Martini was quick off the blocks, putting in the hours in one of the most demanding kitchens in Victoria, and leaping into her first head chef role at just 20. But these achievements were only the beginning of a career marked by sustained performance and a willingness to forge her own path.”
 
In our Young Guns section, I chat with Anna Ugarte, the humble 2020 recipient of the industry’s most coveted young chef award – an award that has recognised many of the greats in the cheffing community. Anna talks candidly about the challenges of her first head chef role and her journey working with some of the country’s, and the world’s, greatest chefs.
 
Mark Best delves into the emerging use of mature-aged beef. An age-old tradition in Europe and particularly the Basque region of Spain, Australian producers and chefs are beginning to see the potential of teaching an old cow new tricks.
 
Our Cut Two Ways showcases the greatness of oyster blade in the hands of Guy Turland and Tom Walton, two chefs passionately driven by the creation of wholesome, nutritious and delicious meals. The boys show us that a healthy balanced meal doesn’t have to be boring – especially when you’ve got Australian beef to play with.
 
Finally, Myffy Rigby, the fabulous food finding host of What’s Good in the Hood takes on Chatswood in a whirlwind day fueled by beef breakfast noodles, bulgogi beef banh mi, robot hot pot and much much more.
 
I hope this issue feeds your greatness with inspiration and ideas fueled by Australian beef from paddock to plate.
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

 
 
 
 

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MJ with the team from Emilio's Specialty Butcher in Rozelle.

MJ with the team from Emilio’s Specialty Butcher in Rozelle.


 
 
 

Welcome to Issue 14 in which we explore the theme of DIY – doing it yourself.
 
In People Places Plates, Pat Nourse profiles self taught cook and the king of food trucks in Australia, Raph Rashid. When Raph started his food truck business in 2009 he had no experience and in fact had never even driven a manual car, let alone a truck! Now with six food trucks and two venues, Raph’s story is one of determination, drive and doing it yourself.
 
Mark Best explores different paddock to plate models in his Spotlight On section – where the venues are located on-farm and utilise their own beef or lamb on the menu. The ultimate in DIY, the four venues discuss the challenges and opportunities of producing their own livestock for the menu.
 
This issue, What’s Good in the Hood does the NSW South Coast and despite the torrential, record-breaking rainfall, Myffy Rigby uncovers some absolute gems of coastal dining. There are lots of DIY inspired stories from a half eaten pie on a fence prompting a father and son to open their own pie shop in Ulladulla; to a Merimbula girl recognising the need for a decent watering hole in her hometown. Hit the road and discover some incredible dining along the beautiful NSW coastline.
 
Our Cut Two Ways for this issue is Goat – and it sure does shine in the hands of two of our favourite chefs Nick Stanton and Alex Prichard with goat from The Gourmet Goat Lady. Our featured butcher is Emilio’s Speciality Butcher – two butchers who decided to do it their own way by opening a butchery committed to ethical and sustainable meat.
 
Finally, Young Guns features one of the hottest young chef talents in the business – Rosheen Kaul from Etta in Melbourne. We talk to Rosheen about the challenges of her first head chef role and her DIY journey of developing her style of food through cultural and family connections, historians and anthropology.
 
The stories, photos and videos in this issue are brimming with inspiration, ideas and incredible people who have found a way to do it their way – and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
 
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

 
 
 
 

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Welcome to Issue 13 of Rare Medium where I am proud to share with you the stories of just some of the wonderful women that produce, prepare and plate Australian red meat.
 
8 March 2021 marks International Women’s Day and I wanted to dedicate this issue to some of the Aussie women paving careers and leaving their mark across the traditionally male-dominated red meat and foodservice industries.
 
Until 1994, Australian women could not legally claim to be ‘farmers’ – the law defined them as domestics, helpmates and farmer’s wives. Growing up on a mixed farming enterprise and witnessing first hand the aptitude, tenacity and sheer hard work my mum put in to managing our herd of Angus cattle – this fact baffles me. At least now we are on the right path.
 
According to Department of Agriculture ABARES figures, women now comprise an estimated 32 percent of workers in agriculture. Looking to our future, women now represent 55 percent of university students studying agricultural science. They say the future is female – and I say the future looks bright.
 
In this issue we feature women through the supply chain – from the paddock, to the butchery and on to the plate.
 
Mark Best visits Maria Roach and her mother Betty who have single handedly run their own cattle property near Adelong NSW for most of their lives. In the January 2020 bushfires they lost a few hundred head of cattle and since then Maria has rebuilt every fence on the farm. Their story is one of resilience, dedication and determination.
 
We feature two young female butchers – Elke De Belder who originates from Belgium and is now finding her feet in the world of Australian butchery, and former chef Bonnie Ewan who was named the 2020 Apprentice Butcher of the Year. These talented young women are carving their own paths in a career heavily dominated by men – it’s not easy but they wouldn’t have it any other way.
 
Pat Nourse delves into the inspiration, application and dedication behind the impressive career of Fred’s chef Danielle Alvarez. Danielle effortlessly emanates such a feeling of warmth and kindness despite leading one of Sydney’s busiest kitchens – she is a chef that other women want to work for and it’s not hard to see why.
 
Finally, two tremendous talents take on the tri tip in our Cut Two Ways feature. Trisha Greentree from 10 William St and Fratelli Paradiso; and Jemma Whiteman from Cafe Paci turn out some tasty snacks perfect for summer snacking.
 
It is my privilege to have worked on this issue and to now share it with you.

 
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

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In this issue we put some weight behind a word frequently aired but often difficult to define – and explore what sustainability looks, and tastes like, through the red meat supply chain.
 
In his People Places Plates section, Pat Nourse talks all things sustainability with Josh Lewis of Fleet, La Casita and Ethel Food Store in the picturesque Brunswick Heads – a chef and restaurateur walking his own path and shaping a sustainable model that works for him.
 
Mark Best takes sustainability to the taste buds in his Spotlight On section, speaking with various beef brands with a claim in the sustainability space – from carbon neutral to highest animal welfare – and asking the question, what does sustainability taste like?
 
We head to Orange in NSW for our second episode of What’s Good in the Hood with Myffy Rigby. A hop skip and a jump from Sydney, this regional food and wine hub is brimming with good times and exceptional local produce plated up by passionate people. Do yourself a favour and add Orange to your hit list.
 
Our Cut Two Ways shines a light on the lamb neck and it certainly glows in the capable hands of Rob Cockerill from Bennelong and Daniel Puskas from Sixpenny who turn this humble cut (from Grant Hilliard at Feather and Bone) into dishes that dazzle.
 
This issue’s Young Gun is farmer Tim Eyes. Based on the NSW central coast, Tim’s number one priority is the environment and this impressive young beef farmer is keen to connect people back to the farm and show that agriculture can mitigate climate change.
 
What does sustainability mean to you?
 
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

Editor’s Letter

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If 2020 has shown us anything it is that nothing is certain and whilst it is impossible to predict what will happen moving forward in relation to Covid-19, we can assume that the foodservice industry will continue to be impacted for the foreseeable future and beyond.
 
The foodservice community has demonstrated its resilience – your determination, your diligence and camaraderie are the true measures of hospitality. But if Covid-19 has taught the industry anything, it is that the model needs to adapt, offerings need to diversify and those with the ability to change will be the ones that survive.
 
The Australian red meat industry has itself faced a raft of challenges with foodservice shutdowns not only locally but around the world in every export market. Increased demand at a retail level somewhat softened the blow but demand for mince products led to carcase imbalances as premium cuts diverted from foodservice and into mince and sausages.
 
Moving back through the supply chain, livestock prices are at record highs as producers seek to restock herds and flocks after widespread rain brought some reprieve to long term drought conditions – meaning less livestock are available for processing.
 
The last few months have given me an opportunity to rethink what we bring you in our quarterly publication, to reconsider what matters and why. We have done some adapting of our own and this issue brings with it some exciting changes.
 
Firstly – I’m proud to welcome two incredible contributors to the Rare Medium family, each with their own dedicated sections. Pat Nourse, one of Australia’s most accomplished food journalists, takes on our new People | Places | Plates section – sharing the stories of chefs, venues and menus; while industry legend Mark Best brings us his Spotlight On section – an exploration of various components of the Australian red meat supply chain.
 
Our new What’s Good in the Hood section reflects the importance of community dining and celebrating neighbourhood favourites. First up we explore Sydney’s Inner West with the fabulous Myffy Rigby. If anyone is going to show us around town then it may as well be the editor of the Good Food Guide!
 
We also have a new Cut Two Ways section – featuring a different cut each time cooked by two different chefs and our Young Guns section that explores the stories of young professionals through the red meat supply chain.
 
The value of supply chain relationships has never been more apparent and I look forward to continuing to connect you with our wonderful Australian red meat producers, to grow and prosper together with whatever comes next.
 
Following your journeys over the last few months has at times been heartbreaking but more often than not it has been empowering. I hope that the stories of this issue inspire you as you have me – as together we come to terms with this strange new world.
 
 

Mary-Jane Morse
 
Meat & Livestock Australia
[email protected]
@_raremedium

 

Copyright: this publication is published by Meat & Livestock Australia Limited ABN 39 081 678 364 (MLA).

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SPOTLIGHT ON:

FLINDERS ISLAND

 
 

‘Farm to table’ is the aspirational aphorism used by many chefs to emphasise a direct relationship between a farm and their table. At its best, based on the distance between paddock and plate and the degree of commitment from chef and farmer, it can form an almost symbiotic relationship. At the same time, it remains an ideal fraught with tokenism, bureaucracy and logistical challenge.

 
On Flinders Island, where a roster of talented chefs take residence and for the first time in years a fully licensed on-island abattoir is operating – Jo and Tom Youl of Quoin Farm appear to have cracked the code.

 
 
 
Flinders Island, with a population of just 900, is the largest of the Furneaux Group amongst a cluster of about 100 islands in Bass Strait between Tasmania and Victoria. While mostly known for its rugged natural beauty, it is also growing a reputation for its grass-fed beef with Quoin Farm amongst those leading the way.
 
“My family has been running this farm since 1932, it’s really diverse and productive land with a lot of beach frontage. It was originally purchased by my great grandparents with Tom and I buying it from my uncle in 2014. We are the first people to live here full time, it’s a great property and we love our life here with our three young kids,” Jo said.
 
The original homestead block was first cleared as part of the soldier settlement program, a government scheme designed in 1916 to develop rural areas, encouraging returned servicemen to become property-owning farmers.
 
The first step in developing the property for beef production was to fence out native animals, whose numbers had soared to almost plague proportions in response to pasture improvement on the island.
 
 
 

Jo Youl on her family property Quoin Farm on Flinders Island

Jo Youl on her family property Quoin Farm on Flinders Island

“When we took over the property it was running about 50,000 wallabies and thousands of wombats. We started off running 100 cows but they just couldn’t compete,” Jo said.

Tom built exclusion fencing around the entire property over the course of three years which means they can now safely invest in pasture development – realising substantial gains in productivity and allowing the family to now run upwards of 1,000 Angus cows for breeding.
 
While the heifers are generally kept to build the breeding herd, Quoin Farm steers are shipped to Tasmania from Lady Barron. Most make their way into the Cape Grim brand while the remainder are grain finished at the Powranna feedlot for export to Japan.
 
“We sell most of our steers at 450-500kg which is optimal for Cape Grim. We recently had some older steers weigh in at 600kg which is a bit heavy and a few that got left behind because they were just too big at 850kg,” Jo said.

Quoin Farm is set on 2,400 acres where Tom and Jo are working constantly to improve pastures and grow their herd of Angus cattle

Quoin Farm is set on 2,400 acres where Tom and Jo are working constantly to improve pastures and grow their herd of Angus cattle

One of the ironies of farming life on the island is that up until recently, if you wanted to eat Quoin Farm beef, the island’s only supermarket had to fly it in from the Tasmanian mainland. Fortunately, an on-island abattoir means that cattle weighing in outside of brand or market specifications have somewhere to go – while offering the opportunity for Quoin Farm to finally close the island supply chain loop.
 
The Davis Family reopened the Lackrana Meat Works 12 months ago after it had sat dormant for over two years. Managing director Charlie Davis said it took six months to bring the site up to scratch.
 
 

“It’s been a battle but the help from the locals has been phenomenal so it’s finally worked out. When you’ve got things like the abattoir processing local meats, it adds to the attraction to get people here,” Charlie said.

 
 
Jo and Tom opened their front gate as part of a virtual farm tour for the 2021 Tasmanian Red Meat Updates conference, to give an insight into life and red meat production in the Bass Strait. The virtual experience has now morphed into the Youl family’s vertically integrated luxe farm stay brand ‘On Island Time’ consisting of accommodation, restaurant, and tourism ventures; as well as on-farm accommodation for those wanting to experience life on a working cattle farm.

Island produced beef and lamb at the recently reopened Lackrana Meat Works on Flinders Island

Island produced beef and lamb at the recently reopened Lackrana Meat Works on Flinders Island

“People really get to experience life on Quoin Farm with the cattle around the cabins and witnessing the amazing life that they have. We are also lucky that we’re so close to the beach, so people get the farm stay along with a private beach literally a kilometre away,” Jo said.
 
Flinders Island Wharf Restaurant is a pivotal part of the On Island Time brand and does the heavy lifting for locals and visiting tourists. Essential to the operation has been a roster of some of Australia’s best chefs in residence including David Moyle, Jo Barrett and Alanna Sapwell; with next season welcoming ex-Three Blue Ducks head chef Josh McMahon.
 
“The Wharf’s been running for about four years and we’re really lucky we have had some amazing chefs want to come here to experience island life and showcase our great produce,” Jo said.
Current incumbent Pip Sumbak has been running Pip’s Plate for almost 10 years. She took the long way round the fire pit via a Bachelor of Arts degree at Sydney Uni, a stint on MasterChef and then island-hopping using cooking as her ticket between France, Spain, Indonesia and Fiji. Known for her spectacular open fire catering, Pip has been treating the island to her craft for the past seven months.

Quoin Farm offers on-farm accommodation for tourists wanting the ‘farm stay’ experience

Quoin Farm offers on-farm accommodation for tourists wanting the ‘farm stay’ experience

“Initially my brief was to come in and create a very simple bar menu for locals and tourists to have a drink and relax – some oysters, olives, nuts, island smoked fish dips, things like that, and only utilising island produce.”
 
“The biggest thing was to somehow showcase the island and create the kind of event that would pull tourists and the locals – and so we ended up creating an open fire cooking experience that we now do weekly at our Friday Night BBQ,” Pip said.
 
Pip’s barbecue experience is an open fire trellis in the style of Argentine chef Francis Mallmann. Local producers supply eggs, greens from their gardens, floral arrangements and edible herbs and flowers; and on the afternoon of our visit, Craig the fisherman drops off six gummy sharks. Now Pip also has the advantage of the local abattoir where she directly sources island beef, lamb and wallaby to showcase over flames.

Flinders Island Wharf Restaurant has included a roster of Australia’s best chefs including David Moyle, Jo Barrett and Alanna Sapwell

Flinders Island Wharf Restaurant has included a roster of Australia’s best chefs including David Moyle, Jo Barrett and Alanna Sapwell

“People come here expecting a restaurant experience and what they get is this very kind of rustic trellis hung with Quoin Farm beef, seaweed, gummy sharks, and local wallaby,” Pip said.
Pip Sumbak prepares Quoin Farm beef for her Friday Night BBQ at Flinders Island Wharf

Pip Sumbak prepares Quoin Farm beef for her Friday Night BBQ at Flinders Island Wharf

I can assure you that, having experienced Pip’s Friday Night BBQ, what ensues is a feast of epic proportions and a stunning showcase of Flinders Island produce.
 
“I was always drawn to experience style cooking – I like people to experience real food, to know where it came from and I love the reaction that people have watching their food get cooked on the trellis.”
 
“My first activity when I arrived was to get off the plane and go straight to the abattoir to meet them and understand exactly what they do. Having this direct relationship means that I can ask for specific cuts and preparations so it’s easy for me to carve on the night.”

“Living on the island has reminded me how important provenance is; we know the abattoir, we know the farmers, and that’s really special. What I take from this experience is that knowing how your meat is raised and killed is important – and that it tastes a hell of a lot better when you know where it’s from,” Pip said.

Pip’s first point of call when arriving on the island was to visit the abattoir

Pip’s first point of call when arriving on the island was to visit the abattoir

On their plans for the future, Jo is characteristically ambitious and upbeat.
 
“Medium term we would like to renovate more ground, we’re 65% improved at the moment on this block and it would be great to put in another 100 hectares of improved pasture. We’d love to buy some more land and to build the herd to 1,500 – 2,000 breeding cows – our aim is to keep improving and growing our herd.”
 
“Ultimately, we’d love to establish our own beef brand. That’s the dream; establishing our own brand and overseeing the entire process – working with the chefs who are cooking it and seeing our beef on the plate. We think it’s a really premium product and that’s what I’m really passionate about,” Jo said.

Quoin Farm - a story that almost writes itself and a business primed to launch its own beef brand

Quoin Farm – a story that almost writes itself and a business primed to launch its own beef brand

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MARK BEST SHARES THE LAMB

Australian lamb is renowned for its quality

Australian lamb is renowned for its quality

My enduring memory of Sunday mornings as a kid was being woken by the crackle, pop and smell of a mutton roast in the Sunbeam frypan.

 
The spuds were added to the golden fat fairly early and were only distinguishable by texture and shape due to the amount of lamby goodness they had taken on board. It was a family tradition where the Sunday roast was big enough to go into heavy rotation for the remainder of the week as cold cuts and sandwiches of white bread and cauliflower pickles.
 
Sheep meat has always been part of the Australian appetite and if I had to choose one meat to describe our cultural diet – sheep meat would be it. According to the OECD the global average per capita consumption of sheep meat was 1.8kg, while the average Aussie’s was approximately 5.9kg and rising.
 

Australia has long had an affinity with sheep with the first settler’s relying on them for meat, primarily, and wool being the secondary product. John Macarthur changed that equation establishing the wool industry at Elizabeth Farm in NSW with such success that Australia ‘riding on the sheep's back’ was coined due to the degree of wealth generated by the wool clip.

Things have come full circle however with an industry shift from predominantly wool to an increased emphasis on meat production over the last three decades underpinned by lamb production and corresponding improvements in lambing rates, genetics and carcase weights.
 
Sheep meat’s position in consumer diets around the world varies greatly, subject to a range of cultural, economic, social and geographical factors. It is considered the preferred meat in many countries – especially those with predominantly Muslim populations. Surprisingly – at least to this chef – China has the world’s largest sheep flock with 95 percent of it being consumed locally.
 
In Australia, lamb enjoys strong awareness and preference from a long history of consumption. Immigration and our burgeoning multicultural mix have long been Australia’s strength and accounts for our increasing taste for sheep meat. While traditional mutton is on the decline, there is an increasing consumer demand for Australian lamb within large demographic segments where sheep meat has traditionally constituted a major part of the diet.

Australian White ewes at Tatty Keel – a purpose bred meat sheep

Australian White ewes at Tatty Keel – a purpose bred meat sheep

 
 
As consumers continue to dine out in increasing numbers, demand for sheep meat in foodservice is growing. The quality and diversity of Australian lamb means it is now often the first choice amongst a younger, cashed up dining public. A bonus is that lamb has no religious or cultural restrictions – a distinct advantage in a culturally diverse market. As a protein choice, lamb stands deliciously on its own as a simple grilling or roasting cut – or is a willing cipher for your creativity.
 
It is this broad ability that has me turning to lamb time and again, whether for family or function, there is nothing better than lamb for scalable deliciousness. Here are three of my favourite ways to prepare lamb – raw, roasted, and a wow-factor sub for the Christmas ham.

 

Sichuan-style lamb tartare with nori crisps

 

Serves 6

 
Cooking and eating in China gave me the taste for Pixian or Doubanjiang – otherwise known as Sichuan broad bean paste. Cooked until fragrant with the addition of Sichuan pepper, garlic, ginger, sesame oil and green shallots it makes the perfect, heady counterpoint to the richness of finely diced lamb leg as a Sichuan-style tartare.
 
Make sure to prepare and serve immediately with the nori sheets. On the rare occasion that there are leftovers – it makes an exceptional spicy burger patty.

Ingredients

 
600g boneless lamb leg
10ml cold pressed sesame oil
30g Sichuan broad bean paste (Pixian or Doubanjiang)
10g tomato paste
50g tomato ketchup
120g spring onions
30g chopped ginger
20g chopped garlic
10g Sichuan peppercorns
24 sheets Korean nori sheets
 

Method

 
Trim lamb of all sinew and finely dice. Heat the sesame oil and add Doubanjiang, tomato paste, garlic and ginger and cook quickly until fragrant. Add tomato ketchup. Allow to cool then add to meat. Add finely chopped spring onions (green and white parts) and add to the meat mix. Dry roast Sichuan peppercorns and grind finely then add to the meat. Mix well and adjust seasoning. Serve with nori sheets.

 

Lamb rack with fondue of sweet onions and medjool dates

 

Serves 6

 
For such an exceptional cut of lamb I served a fondue of small white onions finished with finely shredded mint and a compote of Aussie grown Medjool dates. It’s a dish I learned from the great Alain Passard at Arpége and cheekily used to audition for Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons.

Lamb Rack Ingredients

 
2 lamb racks
Salt flakes
Freshly ground black pepper
 

Method

 
Carefully remove skin from the fat cap and score fat at 1cm intervals diagonally and then repeat to achieve a fine crosshatch pattern. Don’t cut into the meat. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Roast fat side up at 170c for 40-45 minutes until 60c at the bone. Rest in a warm place for 15 minutes and carve.
 
 

Fondue Ingredients

 
1 bunch green onions
100g salted butter
3 sprigs mint
1 tsp salt
½ tsp freshly ground white pepper
100g Medjool dates
50ml orange juice
 

Method

 
Trim the onions and slice very thinly then add to a heavy based pan with the diced butter, salt and pepper. Cover with a cartouche and cook over a low heat until the onions are soft and emulsified with the butter. Thinly slice the mint and add to the onions. Deseed the dates and cut into quarters. Place in a small pan with the orange juice and cook slowly until soft. Serve the lamb with a spoonful of the fondue and date to the side.

Glazed Christmas lamb long leg with mint verde

 

Serves 6

 
I have long been a fan of the traditional long leg – from the H bone to the shank. Leaving the muscles attached means there is less shrinkage and the muscle fibres remain elongated, finer and more tender – just a pro hack chefs. This also presents exceptionally well.
 
This Christmas I will treat the long leg like a ham and score the fat in a traditional cross hatch pattern and stud with cloves. You can use your own glaze recipe or mine made by simmering homemade apricot jam [from dried apricots: if you know, you know] thinned with cider vinegar and spiced with star anise, cinnamon quills and fresh bay leaves. Brush glaze on as you roast the leg for some hours in a slow oven for a true festive delight.

Lamb Leg Ingredients

 
1 lamb long leg
2 tsp salt
1 sprig bay leaves
10g cloves
 

Method

 
Remove the skin from the lamb and score the fat in 2cm intervals. Preheat the oven to 160 Celsius. Stud the lamb with cloves at intervals and pin bay leaves. Place the lamb onto a baking tray and season well. Brush on the glaze and cook for 1.45 – 2 hours depending on your preferred doneness. Brush on the glaze every 15 minutes or so. Serve with roasted potatoes and the mint salsa verde.
 
 

Glaze Ingredients

 
100g apricot jam
6 star anise
1 tsp white peppercorns
2 cinnamon quills
50ml cider vinegar
20ml light soy
50ml water
 

Method

 
Bring all ingredients to a boil and then leave to infuse for at least an hour
 
 

Verde Ingredients

 
1 bunch mint
3 tbls tiny capers
1 tin anchovies
1 lemon juice and zest
100ml olive oil
 

Method

 
Pick the mint and then blend with remaining ingredients to a smooth paste.

 
 

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Nagesh Seethiah

Manzé

Nagesh Seethiah outside his restaurant Manze in North Melbourne.

Nagesh Seethiah outside his restaurant Manzé in North Melbourne

“I’ve been thinking about goat,” says Nagesh Seethiah. Specifically, he’s been thinking about New Year’s Day in Mauritius, when he was growing up.

 
The whole family would get together with several other families at his maternal grandmother’s place in Cottage, on the northern side of the island. New Year’s is big in Mauritius, bigger than Christmas, and a big celebration called for a goat or two, with the families making a day of it, everyone pitching in to cook every part of it.
 
“For lunch, you’d have all the cuts that are easy to cook quickly, including the offal, and then we’d break down and set aside the cuts that need longer cooking, like the legs and the shoulders, for dinner.” Seethiah’s mum, Canta, liked to take charge of lunch, the specialty being a dish called cari endan, or ‘inside curry’. “Each piece of offal would get sliced separately, the heart, the liver, marinated in lots of ginger and garlic, chillies, salt, and some of my grandma’s masala,” says Seethiah. “It’s quite a light, bright sort of masala, with cumin, turmeric, and cinnamon really prominent in it.”
 

Goat leg and liver at Manzé - Nagesh recalls New Year’s Day in Mauritius as a big celebration that called for a goat or two and cooking every part of it.

Goat leg and liver at Manzé – Nagesh recalls New Year’s Day in Mauritius as a big celebration that called for a goat or two and cooking every part of it

Let’s pause here for a moment for a word on Mauritius and its food. Mauritius is an island nation in the Indian Ocean off the coast of east Africa, 1,100km east of Madagascar. The island is small – about the size of Maui, or a 30th of the size of Tasmania – and when it was first discovered by Arab sailors around the year 975, it was uninhabited. The Dutch took possession in 1598, then the French took over in 1715, before losing it to the English in 1810, and it remained a primarily plantation-based colony of the United Kingdom until independence in 1968.
 
Under French rule the population was made up largely of enslaved peoples from Mozambique, Madagascar and Zanzibar, brought over to work the plantations, while British owners of sugarcane estates brought in indentured workers and soldiers from India. Today Mauritius is a developed democracy with a culturally diverse population. It’s the only country in Africa where Hinduism is the majority religion; school is taught in French and English, and most people speak Mauritian Creole at home.
 
In the kitchen, the influences of Indian, Creole, French and Hakka Chinese traditions come together. Rice and bread are staples, and daubes, patisserie, dim sum and spring rolls share space in the national cuisine with biryanis, curries, and other Indian and Tamil dishes. That daube has evolved in the centuries since French occupation to feature plenty of ginger and green chilli along with the thyme and tomatoes, and will more likely be made with lamb or chicken instead of the beef you’d see in Provence.
 

At Manzé, the restaurant and wine bar Seethiah opened in North Melbourne in 2021, the set menu might open with poutou, a fluffy steamed rice and coconut cake descended from southern India’s puttu, served here topped with a coconut chutney and pickled beetroot, alongside gram boulli, “boiled chickpeas” with chilli, and a golden fritter of sprouting broccoli with hot sauce.
 
“It’s about framing what’s available to us with Mauritian flavours,” says Seethiah. Filling a samosa with cauliflower, for example, rather than the traditional potato and pea curry, puréeing the stalks so it’s got that starchy base, and then putting raw romanesco through it.
 
 

“My food is really just pulling on those threads of flavour from our childhood and adapting them to the ingredients we have here.”

 
 
Seethiah makes a superb broth, coaxing worlds of flavour from the likes of Malabar spinach and ginger, or okra, choko and tomato – often using ingredients grown for Manzé. This might be followed by a daube of wild venison or a grilled fish. Lamb is a regular feature of his menus; blackened rump fragrant with masala, perhaps, showered with ribbons of sorrel.
 
“We’ve also grilled saddle of goat at Manzé, marinating it on the bone, treating it like lamb, and that was really good,” he says. A sear on the fire and then a slow smoke, and taking it to the same pinkness of lamb: delicious. “We’ve served goat cutlets at our pop-ups, too, with lots of pepper, and they taste very similar to lamb. Tastier, even.”

At Manzé, Nagesh frames local and seasonal produce with Mauritian flavours.

At Manzé, Nagesh frames local and seasonal produce with Mauritian flavours

The thing that perhaps keeps more people from cooking goat is its gaminess, Seethiah reckons, and that little bit of extra chew. “But I think for our application, where we can lean on strong marinades and spices, it works really well. I don’t find goat that far a step from lamb, really.”
 
Back on the island on New Year’s Day, meanwhile, the goat offal has been marinating in spices and aromats, and it’s time to cook. Nagesh’s mum stir-fries the offal over a wok burner in the outside kitchen. It’s a dry, quite spice-heavy stir-fry, south-Indian style, with plenty of onion.
 
“Everyone sits down to eat this lunch of quite spicy offal, and then we go pretty much straight into it from lunch, setting up again, breaking down the rest of the goat and setting things up for a longer cook – a braise, really saucy curries, and that’s where the neck and the shoulder and leg come into play.”

Goat at Manzé is prepared with strong marinades and spices - here goat leg is rubbed in Masala spices and cooked over coals.

Goat at Manzé is prepared with strong marinades and spices – here goat leg is rubbed in Masala spices and cooked over coals

There’s a salad of cucumber and chilli on the table with some green mango through it, and the day is peppered with little fried things and other snacks. “Chilli bites, which are almost like a falafel mix made of split peas, with fried chilli and spring onion through it. Someone will have gone fishing and there’ll be vindaye, which is something like fish pickled in turmeric and mustard.
 
Seethiah ran a play on the New Year celebration for one of the pop-ups he did at Rockwell and Sons in Collingwood, braising the leg and shoulder of a goat overnight, and then grilling the liver and the heart before folding them through the shredded meat and the sauce, all over a base of shallots, ginger, garlic, lots of little Thai chillies and curry leaves. “We cooked off the base fresh for each plate,” he says.
 
 

“That was probably one of the most intense nights of cooking I’ve ever had – so hot and spicy every time you’re facing the stove, but so delicious.”

 
 
This was quite a while ago – three or four years, perhaps – and it’s useful to understand that Manzé existed as an idea and a series of pop-ups long before it settled into a bricks-and-mortar site. Seethiah is only 29 – young, perhaps, to be a restaurant owner – yet his path to being a restaurateur and heading a kitchen of his own hasn’t been perfectly linear, and cooking food from Mauritius was by no means always part of the plan.

Goat offal is marinated in spices and aromats then cooked hot and fast.

Goat offal is marinated in spices and aromats then cooked hot and fast

Nagesh Seethiah was born in northern Mauritius. His parents, Ram and Canta, moved the family to New Zealand when he was eight, to a hobby farm in Coatesville, just outside Auckland. They ran a few sheep and cows on the property and lots of chickens, grew their own vegetables and did a home-kill of a beast once or twice a year.
 
Seethiah didn’t know what he wanted to do when he finished high school, other than take his BMX and do a tour of the South Island, but he had a cousin studying at the ANU, so, with his parents’ encouragement, he moved to Canberra to study law and art history.
 
Australia gave Seethiah his first taste of hospitality life. He worked at Lonsdale Street Roasters in Braddon and at Stand by Me in Lyons, where he made the move from front-of-house to the kitchen. At Bar Rochford he worked under Ian Poy, a Noma alumnus, and then with Louis Couttoupes, a former public servant fresh from a stint at Au Passage in Paris, studying all the while. “I went to my graduation that year, had lunch with my parents and my partner, Sabrina, and then went straight back to do service at Bar Rochford.”
 
At the time, by his own estimation, he had no idea what he was doing. “I shouldn’t have been put in charge of a kitchen in my second ever cooking job, but Nick, the owner, was very trusting,” he says “I’ve come to learn, running my own venue, that a lot of the time you’re making this stuff up as you go along.”
 
The next year Sabrina landed a great job in Melbourne, and she and Seethiah made the move to Victoria. “We moved here on a Friday and I was working on the floor at Belles Hot Chicken in Fitzroy on the Monday.” The two years he spent working the floor at Anchovy, Thi Le and Jia-Yen Lee’s restaurant in Richmond, was a key inspiration. “I learned a lot there,” he says. “About making things from scratch. About Thi’s approach to cooking the food of her heritage. The way she gives that food the same or more attention, care and detail that we’re expected to put into other cuisines.”

Smoked goat leg and Manzé house masala.

Smoked goat leg and Manzé house masala

Let’s pull focus here for a moment: what is it about the food of Mauritius, say, or Vietnam, that could make it seem less deserving of attention than Italian, for example, or French food? “In our cultures we treat food as sustenance, it’s something that’s done at home,” Seethiah says.
 
 

“We acknowledge that our mothers are good cooks, but we don’t place a lot of value on learning to cook that food, or on food having cultural value. It’s about spending time in our careers caring so much about other people’s food, and then flipping the script and treating our own food that way. Seeing that our food deserves as much attention and detail, with ingredients and a price-point to match.”

 
 
There’s challenges here. Even Seethiah’s parents aren’t entirely used to the idea of the food of Mauritius as restaurant cuisine. “They support it, but they don’t quite see the point.” Then there’s the Mauritian people who come into Manzé and tell him that what he’s cooking is too expensive and isn’t really Mauritian food. There’s also the guy on the internet who likes to say that what Seethiah is doing is inauthentic, a joke, and that he shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing – a curious charge to lay against a chef born and bred on the island.

Memories of Mauritius - goat gets the Nagesh touch at Manzé.

Memories of Mauritius – goat gets the Nagesh touch at Manzé

But there’s also the Mauritians who visit Manzé and delight in seeing the flavours they grew up with presented in a new light. “We had a couple come in a few weeks ago, maybe a bit older than I am, and they said, ‘we don’t know you, but we’re so proud of you, thank you for doing this’. That made me think, well, some people might not like it, but there is value in this.”
 
This is food Seethiah learned to cook from his mum and his dad, and from his grandmother. It’s a conversation in progress. “I’ll be on the phone to Mum on a Monday, saying, hey, I’m thinking of doing this. Mum will say, ‘that won’t work’, and then I’ll do it anyway, and then she’ll come in a few weeks later, try it, and say, ‘oh wow, that’s good’.

Stir fried goat liver with cumin and curry leaf at Manzé.

Stir fried goat liver with cumin and curry leaf at Manzé

For Nagesh Seethiah, the feeling that he’s on the right track comes most powerfully when he’s at the stove and suddenly feels transported from the restaurant kitchen in North Melbourne back to being eight years old again in Mauritius.
 
 

“I feel a really intense wave of nostalgia, and I suddenly feel really proud. I think, this is it: this is what we’re chasing. Scaling that up, and feeding 150 people a week with that feeling – that’s when it feels right.”

 
 

 

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Ben Russell

Rothwell’s Bar & Grill

 
 

When it comes down to it, a lot of comfort is about familiarity. Dad’s curry. Mum’s soup. The smell of something cooking away on the stove or in the oven at your nan’s house when you’re a kid, or the things you ordered at those first restaurants you visited with the family.

There’s certainly more than a few Australians today who get a bit misty-eyed thinking about the heyday of the prawn cocktail and the steak Diane because they were there for it, living in that time and place. But what about the familiarity of dishes that didn’t get cooked in your house, or the other places your family went to eat? How do you explain their hold on the public imagination?
 
The Beef Wellington at Rothwell’s Bar & Grill in Brisbane is a case in point. It’s a dish of British/French origin that has been around for at least a hundred years. Why exactly is it enjoying an unlikely renaissance right now at the hottest restaurant in the humid, subtropical climes of the Queensland capital?
 
For Ben Russell, there’s no mystery to its success: it’s about quality and it’s about deliciousness. A chef who has worked right across the spectrum of the familiar and the unfamiliar in his life in restaurant kitchens, Russell takes the view that the magic of dishes like Beef Wellington lies in taking combinations of ingredients and techniques that have stood the test of time, and honouring them with cooking that is all about quality produce and careful, honest preparation.

The Beef Wellington at Rothwell’s Bar & Grill, Brisbane.

The Beef Wellington at Rothwell’s Bar & Grill, Brisbane.

On his menu at Rothwell’s there’s a French onion dip among the appetisers, and an entrée that brings together prawn, avocado, lettuce, and cocktail sauce. There’s Caesar salad blessedly free of grilled chicken. There’s Martinis and Bloody Marys at the bar, there’s a seafood platter to share, and there’s trifle and madelines for dessert. But it’s about timeless elegance and not a retro trip.
 
 
 

“It’s not about trickery here,” says Russell, “you know what you’re in for.” There’s no side-eye, no riff or remix – the bat is played straight, and the result is dishes that surprise and delight with their freshness and immediacy.

 
 
 
A beautifully lit room, with lots of marble, big chandeliers, dark-green leather booths and well-chosen jazz, makes for a fitting backdrop. With Dan Clark, the operator behind 1889 Enoteca and one of Australia’s savviest wine importers, backing the place, the food is complemented by a list rich in treasures – 18-year-old Krug and JJ Prum riesling on by the glass, magnums and jeroboams of Gravner and Cornelissen, and a sea of Burgundy.
 
The thing about classics is that they’re classics for a reason. “They may not always be prepared in the best possible way from the finest possible ingredients but it’s easy to understand their appeal,” write Simon Hopkinson and Lindsay Bareham in their book, The Prawn Cocktail Years. “If one bothers to prepare these and other dishes that predate the whim of fashion in food then it is a revelation how good they can be.”

Rothwell’s Dining Room: a big-city restaurant replete with marble, chandeliers, dark green leather and jazz on the stereo.

Rothwell’s Dining Room: a big-city restaurant replete with marble, chandeliers, dark green leather and jazz on the stereo.

Which brings us, of course, to Ben Russell’s Beef Wellington. Here’s how he does it.
 
First, the beef fillet. Russell goes grain-fed because he thinks it’s firmer and holds up a little better in the way it cooks in the Wellington, which essentially steams inside the pastry. He sears the beef in a hot pan, brushing it liberally with Dijon mustard.
 
Next comes the mushroom duxelles – rather than slicing and pan-frying the mushrooms in batches, Russell roasts them off whole in a pot to cook all the water out of them and to intensify their flavour, then blends them and presses them for a couple of hours to squeeze out any remaining moisture.
 
Then the crêpes: flour, eggs, milk and a little bit of beurre noisette. He lays a crêpe out on the bench, layers on about a centimetre of the mushrooms, then the beef fillet. It’s rolled, wrapped in clingfilm and goes into the fridge for a couple of hours to set before he wraps it in a layer of butter puff pastry, egg-washes it, and then adds another layer of lattice pastry, and more egg wash.
 
Then it goes into the Rational at 200 degrees till it hits an internal temperature of 35 degrees. Wrapped as it is in pastry, the meat comes up to a nice medium rare as it rests. The thickness of the pastry is the tricky part, Russell says: if it’s too thick, it won’t cook through before the beef is done.

It’s served with a red wine sauce – red wine and port reduced with lots of shallots and thyme on a veal-stock base.
 
 

“We carve it in half in the kitchen, and it goes out on a large oval plate looking very decadent with an antique silver jug of the sauce on the side – it smells rich and warm with the puff pastry and the mushrooms and the red wine sauce.”

 
 
“When you’re eating it, even though that layer of Dijon is just brushed on, it’s something that I think is a pleasant surprise. Fillet steak, mushrooms and pastry are not necessarily hero ingredients on their own but together they’re sensational. It’s an experience to savour. It’s a good time.”
 
To drink? Dan Clark imports some pretty radical wines but he says he likes to pour classics with classics. “Top-end Yarra Valley and Margaret River cabernet work really well with the Wellington. Cullen, Moss Wood, Wantirna. Or brighter shiraz – Dune in McLaren Vale and Izway from the Barossa Valley do the job nicely as well.”
 
To game it out even further, Russell suggests Martinis at the bar beforehand, then settling into a booth for some raw seafood and oysters or a crab salad, maybe the tagliatelle with sea urchin, then your Wellington and sides to share, maybe a tarte tatin or a crème brulée afterwards. “And then we have an Armagnac trolley, so if you want to get really comfortable, we’ve got bottles there dating back to the 1920s. And that’s your Rothwell’s experience.”

Ben Russell grew up in Burnie in the northwest of Tasmania. His first cooking job was at 18 at the fabled Jimmy Watson’s on Lygon Street in Melbourne, a third-generation business with a focus on wine. It was his next job, though, that made him the chef he is today.
 
Run by British chef Donovan Cooke and Melbourne chef Philippa Sibley, Est Est Est was famously uncompromising. Cooke was a protégé of Marco Pierre White, and he and Sibley shared a vision for a restaurant that hewed firmly to the traditions of the French restaurants where they’d worked in Europe.
 
They made pot-au-feu of beef, oxtail terrines with root vegetables and grain mustard. There was always a pigeon dish on the menu, alongside stuffed and braised pig’s trotters à la Pierre Koffmann, and Pithiviers of quail and foie gras, and every scrap of it was made by hand, from the puff pastry down.
 
“Six double shifts a week was our roster, so 14 hours a day, six days a week,” says Russell. The kitchen was not well equipped – at first it didn’t even have a coolroom. “We’d buy in everything every day, get there in the morning and crack on, making everything fresh every day from scratch, no room for error. If something went wrong, there was no back-up plan.” As intense as it was, he says, it was also what he’d been searching for.
 
 
 

“I was looking for something that was all-consuming. There was no time for anything outside that job.” It was unbelievably gruelling, but, looking back, he says, it crammed 10 years’ worth of learning into just three years.
Ben Russell at Rothwell’s Bar & Grill.

Ben Russell at Rothwell’s Bar & Grill.

After he left Melbourne, Russell bought a one-way ticket to Paris. He went south, immersing himself in the culture of southern France, and cooking on yachts on the Mediterranean. Here he reacquainted himself with daylight, joined the dots with the produce he saw in the markets, and cured himself of the urge to push everything through a chinois.
 
Coming back to Australia three years later, Russell approached Matt Moran for a role at Aria in Sydney. At Aria, he found scope, support and structure. A place with both coolrooms and back-up plans, and somewhere a young chef could learn about the business of running restaurants beyond the knives-and-fire side of the operation. He flourished under Moran’s mentorship, and Moran in turn tapped him to lead the company’s expansion into Queensland, with Russell opening Aria Brisbane for them in 2009.
 
Under his care, the restaurant ran for 10 successful years, and signalled a watershed moment in Brisbane for finer dining. It also gave Russell the opportunity to find his own sound. Having opened leaning heavily on the dishes for which Matt Moran was known – confit pork belly with apples, Peking duck consommé – it shifted over the years to less butter and more tomatoes and olive oil, an affinity with the flavours of the Mediterranean that can be seen in Russell’s cooking to this day.

Classics for a reason - the steak tartare at Rothwell’s Bar & Grill.

Classics for a reason – the steak tartare at Rothwell’s Bar & Grill.

Our times shape our restaurants. For Ben Russell and Dan Clark, the Rothwell’s conversation began during the pandemic, and this shaped its direction. “Dan and I have both been in the game long enough that we wanted to make sure we were going to be commercially viable in the long term,” Russell says. They were talking about a big-city restaurant, and about longevity. All the places they shared as points of reference – The Savoy Grill and The Wolseley in London, Balthazar in Manhattan among them – had all been running for many years.
 
Then there was the site. Thomas Rothwell hung out his shingle as a tailor here on Edward Street in the heart of Brisbane in 1885. When Clark and Russell looked to register “Rothwell’s” as the name of the restaurant, they found it was already registered by another business. Just adding “Bar & Grill” to get it over the line, Russell says, brought a lot of what he and Clark had been discussing into crisper focus, and the menu and wine list followed suit.
 
 
 

“We wanted the food offering to be really classic, to focus on execution, and on having dishes that people recognise,” Russell says.

 
 
 
He’s not really the sort of chef who looks to cut corners, so while he’s not looking to reinvent the wheel with the menu, he still puts in an awful lot of work under the hood making sure everything’s as good as it can be, whether it’s enriching the ragù for his rigatoni with beef cheeks or sourcing rolled saddles from Margra for the roast lamb served with braised peas with bacon and shallot.
 
On the grill, Russell prefers anything dry-aged to be grass-fed and on the bone. When he buys wagyu from 2GR or Westholme he likes the less obvious cuts – chuck tail flap, tri-tip. “And those cuts sell,” he says. “I think sometimes people make the mistake of underestimating customers in Brisbane and what they want, somehow thinking all we want to eat up here is a fillet steak with a lobster on it or something.”
 
After cooking in Queensland for more than a decade, he says it’s just not how things are. “We sell a really good cross-section from the grill of everything from the high-marble wagyu to the dry-aged grass-fed meat.”

Roast lamb with braised peas, bacon and shallot at Rothwell’s Bar & Grill.

Roast lamb with braised peas, bacon and shallot at Rothwell’s Bar & Grill.

And the runaway success of the Beef Wellington? “It’s ended up more of a feature than we initially intended,” Russell laughs. “I certainly didn’t think I’d be making Wellingtons all day every day, but it’s strangely a dish that everyone seems familiar with.” Familiar, and comforting, he says, even though it’s not a dish common to home kitchens or even that many other restaurants. He estimates that half the people walking through the door ordering a Beef Wellington at Rothwell’s have never tried one before.
 
It’s a situation that Russell finds rewarding. Taking the focus on reinvention, he says, allows him to put the execution and delivery of the food first. “I’m really happy that everything we do is classical; maybe 15 years ago I wouldn’t have been. But for me at this point in my cooking career and my life, I really like doing this – it’s very satisfying.”
 
The pleasure and pride in the kitchen at Rothwell’s are felt in the dining room. If the first Beef Wellington of your life is here, with Ben Russell running things chances are it won’t be your last. And hey: the Wellington you order today might end up your go-to comfort dish of tomorrow.

 

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Beef, salt and fire: the making of a modern masterpiece.

 
 

The luxuries of the table are many and varied, but rare is the delicacy that gets the mouth watering in quite the same way as a really good steak. It’s a dish suited to celebration like few others: it makes a grand statement as it’s borne to the table, it looks good, it smells good, and is eminently suitable for sharing. It’s also a dish that is seldom better than with a really great bottle (or two) of red wine. And, on the flipside, a really great bottle of red wine (or two) more or less demands a great steak.

Beef, salt and fire: the making of a modern masterpiece at Woodcut.

Beef, salt and fire: the making of a modern masterpiece at Woodcut.

It’s a dish that’s revered as the bistecca Fiorentina in the hills of Chianti, the Chateaubriand of Paris and the prime rib of the great steakhouses of Chicago and New York. It’s celebrated by the gauchos on the pampas, with a braai on the veld, in yakiniku in Tokyo, the gogigui of Seoul.
 
It runs the full spectrum of popular culture from Fred Flintstone’s dinosaur rib-eye to being the capper of the menu at the world’s third highest-ranked restaurant on the 50 Best list, Asador Extebarri, a grill in the Basque Country where chef Bittor Arguinzoniz takes decade-old cattle and turns them into what are widely recognised as some of the very finest steaks of the world. Yabba dabba doo is right.
 
And Australia, as a producer of top-drawer beef, more than holds its own when it comes to the matter of steaks to be reckoned with. There have been periods in restaurants when chefs in the pointy end of the business were ambivalent about the place of the big steak, but right now that steak holds pride of place, often boxed out on the menu to stand alone, a special event served to share, or the pinnacle of a degustation.
 
Right now you’d be hard-pressed to improve on the steaks served at Rockpool Bar & Grill, Firedoor, Gimlet, Cutler & Co and Woodcut. How do they do it? We spoke to the people in charge to find out.

Ross Lusted

– Woodcut, Sydney

 
 
When Ross Lusted set out to open Woodcut, in the new Crown casino in Sydney, he didn’t want it to be known as a steakhouse, but he knew he needed to serve a steak that was world class. “It had to be exceptional,” he says. So he started talking with Anthony Puharich, of Vic’s Premium Quality Meats, about a program for Woodcut that focussed on flavoursome beef, sourced largely from New South Wales.
 
For the T-bone that’s now the flagship of that part of the menu, Rangers Valley Black Market Premium, Lusted says, ticked all the boxes: a local producer, Black Angus stock, raised on pasture and finished on grain for no fewer than 270 days, producing a five-plus marble-score product and aged for six weeks.

Ross Lusted with Woodcut’s flagship T-bone - Rangers Valley Black Market Premium.

Ross Lusted with Woodcut’s flagship T-bone – Rangers Valley Black Market Premium.

For the cooking, Lusted is typically precise. The wood? Hardwood that burns slow, smokeless and very hot. The salt? Olsson’s Marine Mineral Fine Grey, which tastes like the ocean. Oil? Not on meat that is this well-marbled – it doesn’t need it, he says, and the oil can just burn and taste acrid. What’s the meat cooking on? A fine rack set about 10cm over the coals, so the meat gets a crust without the burnt, carbonised taste that could be left by heavier grilling bars.
 
Cooking the beef on the bone preserves the meat’s “sweet natural flavour”, and Lusted starts the room-temperature steaks over coals of ironbark standing on the bone, which allows the heat to move through it and into the centre of the cut. He then grills the wider sides fast over intense heat to form a crust before resting the meat above the grill in the smoke, allowing the residual heat to finish cooking it to medium rare.

Lusted cooks the steak standing on the bone allowing heat to move though it into the centre of the cut before grilling the sides fast over intense heat.

Lusted cooks the steak standing on the bone allowing heat to move though it into the centre of the cut before grilling the sides fast over intense heat.

“A well-rested steak will carve easily and have a consistent colour from the crust to the bone,” he says. He’s appalled at the idea of resting hot meat on a cold plate, even at home. If you don’t have a rack, he says, let the steak sit uncovered on two or three forks so the air can circulate around it.

 
 
And a final word of advice: now that you’ve done the work, don’t ruin it. “The best thing about the steak is the steak,” so with all this good flavour and texture, don’t do anything else to the steak other than lay in some good side dishes as support. At Woodcut that’ll be their burnt-tomato ketchup, tomato salad and baby lettuce, seeded and hot mustard, horseradish cream, whipped bearnaise and veal jus, and maybe the macaroni and cheese made with Berkelo bakery’s Khorasan pasta if you want to really go for it.
 
“There’s always a wow when that steak arrives.”

Lusted says “the best thing about the steak is the steak”.

Lusted says “the best thing about the steak is the steak”.

Corey Costelloe

– Rockpool Bar & Grill, Sydney

 
 
They call it the ballet at Rockpool Bar & Grill. It’s the special dance that a chef new to the grill finds themselves doing as they try to simultaneously pull dozens of steaks from their storage drawers, while keeping the steaks already on the grill moving, and feeding the fire so the whole thing doesn’t come to a halt in the middle of a roaring service.
 
The new person on the grill has put six or seven steaks on in one call, says chef Corey Costelloe, but there’s 20 different steaks on the menu and they’re all in different drawers, and you’ve got 250 in for lunch. “And when you first start you forget which one is where, and you’re spinning around going through them, meanwhile thinking, ‘shit, have I left something on the grill too long,’ so you turn around to check your steaks and then you turn around back to your drawer and then there’s another steak coming in, and you end up spinning, spinning doing the ballet.”

Corey Costelloe prepares a David Blackmore Mishima steak - Mishima are extremely rare and only available at Rockpool Bar & Grill and Burnt Ends in Singapore.

Corey Costelloe prepares a David Blackmore Mishima steak – Mishima are extremely rare and only available at Rockpool Bar & Grill and Burnt Ends in Singapore.

It’s a dance he has long since mastered, but when he first started at Rockpool Bar & Grill, it was all new. “I’d come from a seafood restaurant, I was all about fish.” The learning curve was steep. Looking back now, from his position as the chef across three locations of Rockpool Bar & Grill in Melbourne, Perth and his home city of Sydney, a brand that is completely synonymous with ultra-premium beef, Costelloe has a pretty good idea of what a top-quality steak looks like in Australia.
 
 

“Our absolute baller right now is David Blackmore’s Mishima.” Mishima, he says, is a tiny little island in the south of Japan, a dot on the map, and their animals were never bred with the British breeds, so they’re some of the oldest Japanese breeds you’ll find. “When we do a 650-gram Mishima wagyu steak on the bone, that’s the $350 steak that makes people say ‘wow’.”
Two cuts in one - the David Blackmore Mishima Chuck Roll at Rockpool consisting of the denver and chuck eye cuts.

Two cuts in one – the David Blackmore Mishima Chuck Roll at Rockpool consisting of the denver and chuck eye cuts.

But with a list of steaks sometimes 20 cuts deep on the Bar & Grill menu, there are other paths to ecstasy.
 
 

“Take a look at the grass-fed rib-eyes from southern Australia, from Tasmania, the Victorian hinterlands,” says Costelloe. “Somewhere where they’ve got plenty of grass to eat and plenty of sunshine throughout the day – there’s not much that’s better than one of those. I can’t afford to eat a $350 steak, but I’ll sit in the bar at night and smash a Cape Grim rib-eye – they’re just delicious.”

 
 
This kind of intimate familiarity with the very best meat in the country can make ordering a steak elsewhere a challenge. “There was a period there where it was very hard to get a well-cooked steak in a restaurant; I think that’s why the steakhouse has triumphed these last 10 years.”

David Blackmore Mishima at Rockpool - a dance with decadence.

David Blackmore Mishima at Rockpool – a dance with decadence.

Lennox Hastie

– Firedoor, Sydney

 
 
Not everyone welcomes crying in their restaurants, but at Firedoor they’re used to it (in a good way). Their signature steak has brought more than a few diners to tears, Massimo Bottura among them. After the Italian chef wept with joy eating his steak, Lennox Hastie smuggled one back to him when he went to Modena to visit.

Hastie believes steak reaches its full potential through the passage of time - at Firedoor beef is aged anywhere between 150 - 300 days.

Hastie believes steak reaches its full potential through the passage of time – at Firedoor beef is aged anywhere between 150 – 300 days.

You might have seen Hastie on Chef’s Table talking about the work he put into developing a program for ageing his meat for unusually long periods of time. The drought plus the pandemic knocked the whole thing for six, though, and for the first time in seven years he found himself starting from scratch. He now sources beef across a few different producers including Rangers Valley, O’Connor, Coppertree Farms, and David Blackmore.
 
 
 

“Right now, we’re running 260-day dry-aged Black Market Rangers Valley as well as a 150-day dry-aged retired dairy cow,” Hastie says, “but last month we had 300-day aged full-blood wagyu which was a completely different experience – rich and buttery but with a complex sour cherry and spice flavour that I find more redolent in wine.”

 
 
 
And like wine, all this beef can be enjoyed young, Hastie says, but it’s through the passage of time that it really achieves its full potential. He chooses the rib-sets for ageing himself, grading them on appearance, taste, touch and smell, picking out well-marbled sets before testing their pH to confirm their suitability for extended ageing. His exactitude is serious. “Depending on the producer, kills are only occurring every fortnight or month and we only find the top three percent of each batch suitable for ageing.”

Steaks at Firedoor are cut to order on the bandsaw and grilled over grape vines or spent wine barrels.

Steaks at Firedoor are cut to order on the bandsaw and grilled over grape vines or spent wine barrels.

Hastie then dries the sides for two weeks, renders the fat down from the animal and then paints the sides with that rendered fat, sealing any exposed meat, preparing them to age for anywhere between 150 and 300 days, depending on the size of the animal and how it ripens.
 
In service they’re cut to order and grilled over gnarled 80-year-old grape vines. A Spanish flor de sal is the only addition to the meat. “The rich flavour and texture is intrinsic to the animal, the ageing process, and grilling over an open wood fire,” Hastie says. “Each aged rib-set has its own unique flavour, ranging from hazelnuts, toasted popcorn, and aged sherry through to black truffle, foie gras, and parmesan.” The flavour even varies from one end of the steak to the other, much like a cheese. “The flavour is so complex that we serve it unadorned with just a fresh salad or some charred greens on the side to clean the palate. We don’t offer any condiments or sauces as accompaniments.”
 
The fat is too precious to waste, and the trimmings, which are rendered slowly in the wood oven, are deployed in roasting vegetables (“potatoes and cauliflower are particularly good”), and in washing a whisky to make the Tallowed Roy, a Rob Roy with a Firedoor twist.

260 day dry aged Ranger’s Valley Black Market Rib Eye - the steak that brought Massimo Bottura to tears.

260 day dry aged Ranger’s Valley Black Market Rib Eye – the steak that brought Massimo Bottura to tears.

Andrew McConnell

– Cutler & Co and Gimlet, Melbourne

 
 
Trends have come and gone over the 13 years that Cutler & Co has enjoyed a place as one of Victoria’s finest diners, but the rib-eye has been a constant. “From day one at Cutler & Co we’ve offered the same 1.2 kilo dry-aged large-format steak,” says owner and chef Andrew McConnell. “And it’s the only thing that has stayed on the menu that whole time.”

Andrew McConnell says the 1.2kg dry aged rib eye at Cutler & Co is the only thing that has stayed on the menu in the restaurant’s 13 year history.

Andrew McConnell says the 1.2kg dry aged rib eye at Cutler & Co is the only thing that has stayed on the menu in the restaurant’s 13 year history.

When McConnell opened Cutler & Co back in 2009, he says he wasn’t cooking a lot of steak at home and it wasn’t that easy to find one that was perfectly aged and cooked over wood with skill in a restaurant. “When I go out, as much as I love multiple courses and trying new things, sometimes I just want something that’s benchmark, something that’s simple and delicious. It’s also nice to offer a dish in this environment that’s not intimidating, something you can roll up your sleeves for and share.”
 
So it was when he came to Gimlet, the smash-hit restaurant he opened in the Melbourne CBD in 2020. “Gimlet was designed to be a big-city restaurant with a great dining room and a great cocktail bar, and a grown-up big-city restaurant needs that big steak. It’s something classic on the menu that really signifies quality.”

Gimlet’s T-bone is roasted at 400-500 degrees over coals in the wood-fire oven McConnell designed himself.

Gimlet’s T-bone is roasted at 400-500 degrees over coals in the wood-fire oven McConnell designed himself.

A steak making a statement was written into Gimlet’s DNA – and into its blueprints. Working with the kitchen designer, McConnell designed a wood-fired oven with a stone base and a pit in the base that his chefs can brush the coals into, with a rack set over it. “So we’re roasting our T-bones over coals in a wood-fired oven. It’s really cool.” Acting a bit like a Josper, sitting at 400 or 500 degrees, the intense heat creating a crust quickly. It’s pretty special, and it adds another layer of flavour.
 
As impressive as the oven may be, the other big advantage McConnell enjoys today in the steak stakes is in sourcing his meat. In 2015, he opened Meatsmith, a speciality butchery on Smith Street in Collingwood, and today he and his business partner Troy Wheeler run four branches across Melbourne, which gives him enviable choice for his restaurants. “Working with Troy, we’ve been able to develop a great program for meat at Gimlet,” he says.

Beef farmer Matt O’Connor hand selects 20 rib sets a week for Gimlet which are then dry aged at Meatsmith for six weeks before being sliced into T-bones and delivered to the restaurant.

Beef farmer Matt O’Connor hand selects 20 rib sets a week for Gimlet which are then dry aged at Meatsmith for six weeks before being sliced into T-bones and delivered to the restaurant.

Cattle farmer Matt O’Connor selects about 20 rib sets a week for Gimlet from pasture-fed animals, primarily Angus and Hereford, with a marble score of six-plus. “That’s quite high for pasture-fed beef,” says McConnell. “I think about one in 100 come through like that.” These go into Wheeler’s care for six weeks of dry-ageing before they’re cut into the T-bones delivered to the restaurant kitchen.
 
 
 

“It’s about provenance, it’s about how it’s selected in the abattoir, it’s about how it’s butchered, it’s how it’s aged. It’s a process,” says McConnell.

 
 
 
The amount of thought and work put into these epic steaks suggests that the perfect piece of meat, cooked with confidence, is as much a measure of the worth of a restaurant as anything else on the menu. “Eating in fine-dining restaurants isn’t always about technique and small plates. It should be about quality.”

Other Epic Steaks of Australia

 

Bistecca, Sydney

Bistecca alla Fiorentina, Riverine T-bone, $160/kilo
 

Icebergs Dining Room & Bar, Sydney

150-day grain-fed 500g rib-eye, crusted in Olsson’s sea salt, market price
 

Gaucho’s, Adelaide

650g grain-fed T-bone, dry-aged 28 days with char-grilled lemon, smoked salt, and olive oil, $80
 

A Hereford Beefstow

1.5kg 200 day grain-fed tomahawk steak carved at table $160′
 

Rosetta, Sydney and Melbourne

Cape Grim 36-month T-bone 21-day dry-aged, $165
 

Rothwell’s, Brisbane

800g T-Bone, dry-aged 4-6 weeks, $140
 

Porteño, Sydney

750g bistecca ‘ethically farmed Tasmanian pasture fed’ T-bone, $105
 

Society, Melbourne

Smoked Wagyu prime rib with wasabi and crème fraîche butter, sweet onion and shoyu koji jus, Japanese pickled cucumber, $245
 

Victor Churchill, Melbourne

1.2kg dry-aged Rangers Valley Black Market bistecca $185

 

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Trevor Perkins

Hogget Kitchen

Trevor Perkins at Hogget Kitchen in West Gippsland.

Trevor Perkins at Hogget Kitchen in West Gippsland.

You wouldn’t call the concept for Hogget Kitchen tricky. The way Trevor Perkins tells it, it was as simple as a conversation he had with his mates Pat Sullivan and Bill Downie, winemakers both, over a meal of local, very fresh produce and local, very drinkable wines, and saying “why can’t we just do something like this, but as a restaurant?”

 
 
Hogget is the result, a place where a casual, friendly air on the floor is balanced by some real rigour and passion in the kitchen. It could well be the very picture of country dining in Australia right now.
 
The restaurant is set on a building leased from Wild Dog Winery, perhaps the oldest winery in the Gippsland region, overlooking a valley planted with riesling, gewürztraminer, merlot and a variety of other grapes. In a paddock just past the carpark graze alpacas, woolly and serene. The big deck of the restaurant is stacked with neat cordons of chardonnay and shiraz cuttings bound for a variety of barbecue rigs, many of them welded up by Perkins himself.
 
We’re five minutes out of the West Gippsland town of Warragul, and about 100 clicks east of the Melbourne CBD. The land is lush, the soils volcanic, the rainfall high – almost certainly some of the richest agricultural land in Victoria. Farming around here is typically sheep and cattle, the sheep a mix of merino wool and prime lamb, with lamb being the majority.
 
Hogget Kitchen takes its name from the word used to describe an animal that is older than a lamb – between about nine and 18 months – that doesn’t yet have the two teeth that would mark it as a mature ewe or ram, and its meat as mutton. But it isn’t a restaurant concerned solely with the meat of sheep. A meal here might trip open with a fine little shortcrust tartlet of roe from trout up the road at Noojee, or a creamy dollop of Gippsland rabbit pâté paired with a chutney made of medlars, everyone’s favourite strange medieval fruit. This is a restaurant that follows the rhythm of the local seasons and supply.

Hogget Kitchen overlooks the vineyards of Wild Dog Winery.

Hogget Kitchen overlooks the vineyards of Wild Dog Winery.

Perkins takes Monkery and Chamela, two ripe, fresh cow’s milk cheeses made by Rachel Needoba at the nearby Butterfly Factory micro-dairy, and dresses them with celery oil and herbs picked wild around the shire. The flowers of borage, pea, pineapple sage and society garlic, the feathery tops of fennel, leaves of nasturtium, sharp wood sorrel, sweet basil and the perfume of lemon balm. Fillets of the superb garfish that Bruce Collis catches at Corner Inlet, meanwhile, appear delicately grilled and accented with lemon myrtle from the property’s small orchard of natives, and slivers of loquat from Perkins’ mum’s tree. It’s confident cooking, considered and with a light touch that’s easy to like.
 
But there is no better example of what Perkins is about as a chef and what Hogget is about as a restaurant than how they handle lamb. “Since we opened in 2017, we’ve never used boxed meat,” Perkins says. His dad, Graham, was a butcher, and the ability to break a lamb down and then put all of those pieces of meat, all those bones and organs, to good use in the kitchen are the skills he wants to preserve and pass on. “Teaching our next generation of chefs technique and respect to the whole animal,” he says.
 
Whether it’s East Friesians from Guendulain Farm at Yarragon, Rylands from Seaview Park Farm at Mountain View, the White Dorpers Tim Wilson runs at Lardner, Wiltshire Horns from Drouin, or any of the Dorpers, Suffolks, Poll Dorsets or other lamb, hogget or mutton he sources from his mates at Radford’s Abattoir 10 minutes away at Warragul, the approach Perkins takes is the same: a hand-saw and a boning knife.

Gippsland lambs hanging in the cool room - Hogget Kitchen has never used boxed meat.

Gippsland lambs hanging in the cool room – Hogget Kitchen has never used boxed meat.

The carcases hang for a week before they’re boned, and the team will bone as many as four at a time depending on how busy things are at the restaurant. “We break the lamb into thirds on the rail then process the cuts on the benchtop,” Perkins says. “We remove the fillets and kidneys first then split the forequarter from the third rib closest to the neck. We cut just below the hip joint to remove the barrel from the legs.”
Trevor breaking down a lamb carcase at the restaurant.

Trevor breaking down a lamb carcase at the restaurant.

A typical breakdown might be bone-in shoulder, square-cut forequarter (with the shank, neck and brisket bone removed), the eight-point racks (chine off, cap on, “but not Frenched!”), backstrap, rump and fillet (all cap on), belly and short-cut hind legs (shank off). The bones – chine, H-bone and brisket among them – go into stocks and sauces, the trim gets pickled and boiled, and the sweetbreads, kidneys and liver get looked after as the precious jewels that they are. “The offal really speaks to the quality of the animal you’re dealing with,” Perkins says. “You can tell a lot from its flavour.”
 
Smoking and grilling are Perkins’ weapons of choice for lamb, the Kamado Joe in the kitchen and the grills outside getting a good workout. But while Perkins cut his teeth as a country cook, growing up nearby in Moe and doing his apprenticeship at Da Nunzio’s, he also worked with Philippe Mouchel at Langton’s in Melbourne, so there’s more going on here than turn-and-burn. A glance at the shelves loaded with cookbooks in the private dining room, reveals the breadth of his interest. There’s plenty on butchery, charcuterie, meat, and cooking with fire, but also Ducasse, Escoffier and Guérard, and next to them, volumes from David Thompson, Christine Manfield and Sean Brock, as well as plenty on the food of Mexico.

Trevor preparing lamb crepinette using diced leg, kidney and liver.

Trevor preparing lamb crepinette using diced leg, kidney and liver.

Black beans and Oaxacan cheese go into a golden empanada served at one end of the meal at Hogget, alongside a round of an American-style blood sausage, fried off and topped with quail egg sunny-side up, while at the other end of the menu the dessert is built around limoncello, the sour-sweet pudding plated with citrus curd, macadamia-nut praline and an ice-cream flavoured with clementines.
 
Buying lambs whole calls for planning in the kitchen. The lamb necks and shanks get saved up for ragù for pasta, for navarins, for shepherd’s pies, or other braises. Briskets are scored and seasoned and given six or eight hours in the smoker. Sometimes the menu will name a particular cut – lamb shoulder braised and served with artichokes, for example, or sweetbreads put into pithiviers and teamed with salsa verde – but more often than not it’s simply listed as “Gippsland lamb”, which gives the team maximum flexibility on the cuts they choose on a given day, whether they’re going to be deployed as barbacoa to be stuffed into tortillas at one of the occasional “Fiestas de Trevo”, or simply grilled and served with brassicas.

A ‘Gippsland Lamb’ dish featuring rump, backstrap, a lamb crepinette of leg, kidney and liver, and crumbed brain.

A ‘Gippsland Lamb’ dish featuring rump, backstrap, a lamb crepinette of leg, kidney and liver, and crumbed brain.

 
 
 

The highlight of lunch for a diner lucky enough to visit in the spring might well be grass-fed Gippsland lamb spread across a platter to share: juicy loin and tender braised shoulder complemented by the dense flavour and texture of shank, with a golden garnish of airy puffs of deep-fried brains. Garden-fresh peas, asparagus and broad beans provide the green top notes, while crépinette, rich in the flavour of kidneys, and a jus made with lamb’s fry bring the bass notes. It’s a bravura performance.

 
 
 

Trevor’s dad’s butchery tools on display at Hogget.

Trevor’s dad’s butchery tools on display at Hogget.

It’s tempting to say something like “what Trevor Perkins doesn’t know about lamb isn’t worth knowing”, but he’s far too modest a guy to go for that. And he’s also very quick to say that the lamb he knows is Gippsland lamb. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had lamb from anywhere else.”
 
As timeless as Hogget Kitchen’s setting seems, the valley isn’t cut off from the trends and realities of the wider world. Take the price of a whole lamb. When Hogget opened back in 2017, Perkins was paying around $7.60 a kilo for a carcase; today it’s more like $12 a kilo – an increase of nearly 60 per cent in under five years. When a body coming in at Perkins’ preferred weight of around 22 kilos now costs $260, the ability to make every gram of that animal count in the kitchen and on the plate becomes that much more vital.
 

 
 
 

Why 22 kilos? Between 22 and 24 is the sweet spot, as far as Perkins is concerned, for fat cover, flavour and tenderness in a Gippsland lamb. This is not a stance struck by a chef being difficult – Perkins is not going to send a carcase back because it comes in at 25 kilos – it’s just an observation made by a guy who has cut up a lot of lambs, who pays attention, and who knows what he’s doing.

 
 
 

And maybe that’s what Trevor Perkins is all about, at the end of the day. He’s a doer. He’s not cooking over fire because he saw it on Netflix or Instagram, he’s doing it because he’s on a property that generates tonnes of vine clippings, because he likes building barbecues, and because it’s a great way to cook lamb. He’s not on a DIY trip making things from scratch because it’s trendy – it’s in his blood.
 
He grew up, camping with his parents nearly every weekend, chasing trout in the hills and trapping rabbits, and fishing for gummy shark, flathead and Australian salmon with his grandfather, Richard, at Ninety Mile Beach, always cooking over open fires. As he got older, he’d go out shooting, or taking a bow to stalk deer. Jenny, his mum, has always grown fruit and vegetables at home, and Perkins’ partner, Kylie, runs Hereford cattle, some of which end up in the Cleaver dry-ageing cabinet at the end of Hogget’s bar. He’s a doer, but he’s also clearly someone who understands that it takes a whole lot of people working together to make food great, whether it’s the people who make the wine, or the people who grow the food, the people that he’s learned from, or the people that he teaches.

Beef dry ageing onsite including Hereford produced by Trevor’s partner Kylie.

Beef dry ageing onsite including Hereford produced by Trevor’s partner Kylie.

The blackboard by the open kitchen is chalked with dozens of names of the people and properties that supply Hogget. Holy Goat and Gippsland Jersey among the dairies, the Chapmans, Jones and Jim’s Spud Shed for potatoes, and shout-outs to the growers of everything from the blueberries and the figs to the quails and the rabbits. One corner is just marked “Friends”. You quickly realise that what you’re looking at isn’t a supply chain, but a rich web of relationships, of season, landscape, weather and friendships.
 
“Baw Baw Shire here is amazing, and the access to good food that I have here gives me such a huge platform to showcase what we can do,” Perkins says. “It’s taken me a long time to find my identity and figure out what we do here. But with the help of a lot of other people, I’ve seen that in pockets of the country you find groups of people coming together to express what their region is all about.”