My father was a butcher, he was also a mad keen fisherman and a gardener so produce was my life growing up and I think that's influenced me as a chef every minute that I've been cooking. My purpose or my responsibility as a chef is to display the ingredients in the best way possible. I always want to create food that is like people have never seen before. I guess the big thing that really drives me is nature and nature's diversity. When you see something exceptional you think what can I do with that particular beautiful vegetable, how will I cook it, what will bring out its best characteristics, what will I pair it with to make it work.
We're gonna invite the top food critics and chefs from around the world and create a truly exceptional Australian menu that really shatters that shrimp on the Barbie concept that people have of Australian food. The people coming to this dinner are very well travelled, very experienced eaters, diners, critics and chefs, and I think to really tell an Australian story, you need to use something that's unique to this land. It's a great opportunity to say this is what we can do and this is the produce we get to work with. To show appreciation to a culture is to show appreciation to its food, to its history. For me, you know, we talk about this young country, well it's an ancient country. We have these amazing ancient ingredients. It's like we don't even know ourselves if we don't understand these ingredients. In Australia, we have a modern multicultural society that makes for quite a creative, exciting cuisine. I hope people understand provenance, understand what farmers and fisherman go through to bring us great ingredients and to understand that a restaurant is more than just food it's an entire experience.
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