Tag / Coriole

by brandsa2018

Brilliant new batch of SA chefs rising

A new league of star chefs is making a big impression on South Australia’s dining scene. They are driving restaurant kitchens with aplomb and flair, even though many have taken the top job in kitchens for the first time, and their inventive menus are enticing a steady stream of curious diners.

Annual festival Tasting Australia has helped shine a light on this activity. In celebrating the nation’s best culinary experiences, the festival’s series of special banquets and dining events have put rising SA chefs in the spotlight, celebrating the flair and talent at work in our top restaurants.

Daniel Murphy is making a significant fine dining statement since taking over the stoves at Appellation restaurant, at The Louise resort in the Barossa, although his rise comes as no surprise to Barossa locals.

Daniel has cooked in the region at Fino Seppeltsfield, Saltram’s and was recently head chef at St Hugo Restaurant (ironically working beside executive chef Mark McNamara, who established the Appellation kitchen 12 years ago). Daniel’s first opportunity to construct his own menu has resulted in bold presentations of the finest regional fare.

Daniel Murphy of Appellation restaurant at The Louise resort in the Barossa Valley.

Max Sharrad recently moved from his head chef role at innovative pan-Asian hotspot Shobosho to now drive the stoves at Nido in Hyde Park. This new attraction, one of restaurateur Simon Kardachi’s popular suite of hip eateries, was beloved by locals through 20 years when it was called The Pot, before a recent refurbishment and change in style to an informal Italian-accented menu.

Max, who cut his teeth in the kitchen brigade at Orana, won the national Young Chef of the Year at the 2018 Appetite for Excellence Awards.

Oliver Edwards came to The Summertown Aristologist in the Adelaide Hills after leaving chic Melbourne dining den Cumulus Inc. He was inspired to dig for his own fresh vegetables on a nearby farm, then find inventive ways to present them as the primary attractions in his ever-changing Aristologist menu.

His hands-on commitment to producing all dishes from scratch extends to milling his own wheat (for house-baked sourdough bread) and corn, making cheeses, vinegars, preserves and smallgoods.

Oliver Edwards of Adelaide Hills establishment The Summertown Aristologist.

Such incisive thinking about food informs striking authenticity and integrity on the plate, capturing supreme freshness and vitality in a range of dishes that change almost weekly, in accordance with what Oliver harvests from the farm.

Tom Tilbury has made sustainability his signature, taking a serious view of the paddock-to-plate philosophy that ensures his menus at Gather @ Coriole in McLaren Vale embrace flavour from the ground up.

Foraging formed an integral part of the kitchen output at his previous restaurant – the tiny Gather Food and Wine in Robe – and has remained important to him since moving to the bountiful Coriole Vineyards estate last year. Tom’s close relationship with local farmers brings maximum freshness to his seasonal dishes.

Quentin Whittle at Herringbone is no stranger to Adelaide diners, although this is the first time that he has an ownership stake in a restaurant. He has a wealth of impressive cooking experience, from The Melting Pot, through The Stranded Store at Colonel Light Gardens, to Stone’s Throw at Norwood.

Quentin Whittle of Adelaide restaurant Herringbone.

All through this progress, Quentin delivers great generosity as he embraces many different cultures on every plate, finding delicious harmony between Middle Eastern, South-East Asian and southern European influences.

Flying under the radar of many diners is Janghoon Choi, the Korean-born chef and proprietor from +82 Pocha, a new Korean restaurant in Grenfell Street, Adelaide. Modest and highly skilled, Janghoon came to Australia in 2005 to study cookery and hotel management at Le Cordon Bleu campuses in Sydney and Adelaide.

“I want to be a cultural ambassador with my food,” he says. “Not many people know very much about Korean food apart from kimchi, but I aim to show that there is so much more to enjoy.”

The deliciousness of Janghoon’s food has caught the attention of Orana chef and Tasting Australia programming director Jock Zonfrillo, who included Janghoon in the festival’s elite Glasshouse dinners program.

“He’s a rising star,” says Jock. “He’s very talented, and as he gets more experienced, we’ll see some awesome things from him.”

Janghoon Choi of new CBD Korean restaurant +82 Pocha.

A rising generation of female chefs is also making an impression in leading Adelaide kitchen brigades and will be worth keeping an eye on as they progress.

This includes quiet achiever Hayley Goodrick, who is now head chef at SC Pannell winery restaurant at McLaren Vale, and Amelia Hussey, who has joined ambitious new North Adelaide restaurant L’Italy (which has superseded Walter Ventura’s Spaghetti Crab and Spaghetti Meatballs pop-up eateries).

Tasting Australia ambassador and Salopian Inn proprietor Karena Armstrong, respected among Adelaide’s most assured chefs and kitchen leaders, is fostering a great talent in Alisha Shurville – first employed casually as a 14-year-old student and now a permanent part of the Salopian team after having recently qualified as a chef, while scooping the award pool at trade school.

“If she stays focused,” says Karena, “I bet she will run her own restaurant one day.”

Feature image is Max Sharrad who is now driving the stoves at Nido in Hyde Park.

Visit I Choose SA to meet the people building business and industry in SA, and to find out how your choices make a difference to our state.

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by brandsa2018

Meet the chefs leading SA’s food waste movement

Banana peels, vegetable skins and corn husks aren’t ingredients typically associated with fine dining but local chef Kane Pollard is on a mission to change the way we think about food waste. He’s the head chef and owner of Topiary, a restaurant that’s nestled amongst towering gum trees in Tea Tree Gully.

He’s worked there for nine years and owned it for seven, successfully transitioning it from a cafe that sold sandwiches and scones to an award-winning restaurant that’s leading the charge when it comes to the South Australian food waste movement.

The Topiary’s housemade halloumi and its ricotta, semi-dried tomatoes and garden basil.

Everything you eat at Topiary is made on the premises – the butter, cheese, cured meats and fish, sour cream, yoghurt, all the breads, mustard – but Kane doesn’t stop there. Everything that’s bound for landfill is given a new purpose: corn husks become a malty corn bisque soup, excess sourdough starter is turned into a flaky tart shell, the stones from fruit are used to infuse oils and vinegars, and whole bananas are roasted in their skins and turned into a banoffee parfait.

“A good example is the cheese making process, during which you separate the curds from the whey,” says Kane. “It’s a long process and to discard three quarters of the total volume seemed nuts.” Kane and his team experimented with reducing the whey down and turning it into a caramel, and also using it in place of water to brine meats.

“Now, we add milk and draw the ricotta out of it, and serve it alongside the cheese that it came from,” he says. “So on the menu we serve ‘halloumi and its ricotta’, and the combination of the fried, salty, chewy cheese and the light, fluffy, sweet ricotta is incredible. It still blows my mind that they come from the same pot.”

The Topiary’s whole grilled eggplant, cultured buttermilk, cured yolk, and society garlic.

Kane’s not the only SA chef who’s putting waste on their menu. Tom Tilbury at Coriole restaurant Gather aims to operate a zero waste kitchen, with a stringent ban on single-use plastics and an expanding menu of dishes that use the whole animal and vegetable.

“All of our pork offcuts that don’t get used are cooked down, shredded and turned into a creamy pork rillette,” says Tom. “It’s served on a puffed bread cracker that’s made out of the odds and ends of sourdough. We soak it down, puree it and then deep fry until it puffs up. Absolutely no bread in our kitchen goes to waste.”

That mindset is echoed by a growing number of restaurants in the CBD, including regional Thai restaurant Soi38, South African BBQ hotspot Africola and Asian grillhouse Shobosho, who repurpose ingredient waste from Maybe Mae and the Shobosho kitchen into their cocktail list.

Coriole Gather’s pork rillettes, apple, savoy cabbage, sourdough crackers.

“There’s no such thing as waste – it’s just another ingredient,” says Africola’s head chef Duncan Weldemoed. Take their much-loved cauliflower steak: all trim goes in a pot, is cooked down and turned into a puree used to dress the steak. Their romesco pepper and barbecued carrot dishes are also marinated using trimmings that would otherwise end up in compost.

For Soi38 owners Terry Intrarakhamhaeng and Daisy Miller, the obsession with using waste started with mushrooms. “We use a lot of mushrooms in our curries and stir frys, and had all these stalks leftover,” says Daisy. “So we cook them down with peanuts and pickled sweet radish and turn them into dumplings.”

Africola’s head chef Duncan Weldemoed.

SA isn’t just leading the war on waste in the kitchen; the state is also home to a new national research centre created to combat Australia’s $20 billion food waste bill. Dr Steven Lapidge, CEO of the Fight Food Waste Co-operative Research Centre (CRC), says SA was the “natural home” for the centre.

“From container recycling to banning plastic bags, SA’s been a leader in sustainability for a long time. We also have the lowest food waste per capita,” he says.

Steven says dozens of initiatives are already taking place across the state: at the University of Adelaide, the 40% of potatoes that are graded out for cosmetic reasons are being turned into products like puree, dairy-free ice cream and vodka.

“SARDI (South Australian Research and Development Institute) is working a lot with the seafood industry,” says Dr Lavidge, “particularly with lobster waste, which they’re turning into lobster oil and powder for other foods.”

Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development Tim Whetstone, left, Interim Dean of Waite Campus Associate Professor Chris Ford, Dr Steven Lapidge and Food SA CEO Catherine Sayer at the Waite Campus for the State Government’s announcement of the Fight Food Waste CRC.

CRC’s mission is to grow these initiatives by identifying businesses with troublesome waste streams and assigning them dedicated research resources to help find ways to stop food ending up in landfill.

For waste to be taken seriously by diners, aesthetics plays a big part, says Kane of Topiary.

“We want waste to be the key ingredient, rather than just making sure it gets used,” he says. “That means the dish needs to not only taste exceptional but also look beautiful. We want to change perceptions.”

Join Kane for a five-course dinner that showcases his zero-waste approach at his Tasting Australia event, Waste Not Want Not. $60, 6.30pm, Topiary. Tickets on sale now.

Main image features Topiary head chef and owner Kane Pollard.

Visit I Choose SA to meet the people building business and industry in SA, and to find out how your choices make a difference to our state.

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