The conversation always starts with the ingredient, the producers, and the traditional custodians of knowledge. Travelling beyond Western Australia’s borders, I’ll be asked about our food scene. In these moments, I talk about the bounty of our vast state, on land and from the ocean, grown, gathered and caught. The vastness is hard for some to fathom: from the tropical northern coast to the wild Southern Ocean it’s 2400km. The diversity of produce here is a chef’s dream and I think that for those of us who live here, from time to time, it’s worth reminding ourselves of what we have.
Seasonality, I’ll point out, is manifold. During a winter in the south west, kale and cabbage might be on a grower’s mind, whereas sub-tropical Carnarvon is pumping out tomatoes, chillies and capsicum. In the south we’ll predominantly talk about four seasons, in the far north it might be wet and dry, and for our First Nations people it varies in number between language groups. In the south west, the Noongar nation observes six seasons that change with environmental factors, not dates. Something that I’ve always thought to be intuitive, a constant connection to the world around us, which many of us have lost.
When I have these conversations, eyes will be wide. Food is woven through that First Nations seasonality. Kangaroo (yonga) and emu (waitch) are eaten when they’re fat and healthy, whereas animals in their breeding cycles would be avoided, with a regard for maintaining an ecosystem. Move to the north and amongst language groups there may be between three and seven seasons. I’ll point out that this is scratching the surface, that I’m in no way an expert, and that if they really want their minds blown, they should book a flight.
As I tell these stories, it’s a further reminder to me of the extraordinary people that I’ve met. I’m not from here, but I believe that there’s no place like it, and nowhere better if you love to cook and to eat well. While in London recently, I interviewed Australian-born chef Matt Abé, who, on opening Bonheur in Mayfair last November, achieved two Michelin stars within three months. You might know him for his tenure at three-star Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, where he was Chef de Cuisine from 2013 and Chef Patron from 2020. What I’m saying is, he’s pretty good on the tools. Abé is heading to Pair’d in November, and is excited by the prospect of being back on these shores, albeit he was brought up in Sydney and plied his trade early on at Aria and then Vue de Monde in Melbourne. When I asked him what he was most looking forward to cooking when he’s here, his answer was definitive yet tentative.
“I hope I can get my hands on some marron,” he told me, describing our endemic freshwater crustacean to his colleagues and looking to me to gauge whether I thought that would be possible. It’s worth mentioning that Abé moved to London in 2007, so those formative memories of marron really stuck. I smiled and may have laughed, explaining that if there’s one thing that there’s no shortage of in the south west, it’s marron. It struck me as a good example of how we can sometimes become a little blasé about what we have here. To someone in the south west, marron can simply be an abundant source of food in their own dam or something they trade with neighbours. To an elite chef sat in his Mayfair restaurant, it can be the most exotic of ingredients.
It would surely blow the mind of those from outside of the state, and even the south west, to know that down here it wouldn’t be uncommon to hear a farmer tell a chef how to cook a marron, for a crayfish freshly plucked from the ocean to be slid onto the table at a Bush Fire Brigade buffet, or for your local plumber to ask for your preferred way to cook abalone. All things that have happened to me at least once.
Each June, I’ll have the same conversations with Australian chefs and food lovers, who love black truffle and the ability to go super simple over eggs or to book into one of our higher-end restaurants to see it showcased. On the flipside, there are the naysayers. We’re all entitled to our personal tastes, and these conversations are thankfully in single figures each year, but there will be at least one person who, first harvest barely out of the ground, will try to call the season: “oh, they’re not as good this year” will come the line, which causes me to clench my jaw.
Over a decade ago, I got involved with Truffle Kerfuffle, the Manjimup-based celebration of not just truffle but the wider region’s wine and food production. It’s fair to say that over four years, I got to know the ins and outs of the season, used the adage “what grows together goes together” too many times (though it’s absolutely true), and ate more black truffle than I dare calculate the value of (for fear of some ATO ruling on perks). This is why throwaway lines don’t sit well with me. Coming from a grower or a chef who has been using black truffle for decades, I’ll listen, but I do also have an older Frenchman in my head during these conversations.
On that recent trip to London, I lunched with Pierre and Claire Koffmann (shameless name drop). Food media loves hyperbole, but Pierre is nothing short of a culinary legend who had a hand in training an extraordinary generation of chefs (Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay, Tom Aikens, Jason Atherton amongst those ranks). As we ate at Sabor, they talked to the table about Western Australia, regaling them with meals they’ve had, restaurants they love, and talk of the produce. I duly emailed a handful of restaurateurs and growers to comment that it’s, shall we say, a moment, when someone like Pierre is singing the praises of the place you love and the people you most admire.
At the table, I recalled the time I asked Pierre what his opinion of black truffles was. I expected a Frenchman to maybe caveat his answer around the superiority of black truffle from Périgord or at least Europe, but he simply told me that truffle from the Southern Forests is the best in the world. I pushed back, ensuring that this was what he meant to say, and he told me he has a sharp olfactory memory, and that was indeed his answer. I didn’t ask a third time. So, when the naysayers chirp, I’ll mention that there are peaks and troughs within a truffle season, a variation in their power from early season to the last days, that there’s always variation between producers, and remind myself that Pierre and a host of other chefs are unanimous in their love of what we do here.
My fascination with ingredients in general, and especially our premium products like black truffle, ocean-grown abalone, oysters, and wagyu, isn’t price, as sometimes seems to be the hook for media; it’s the industry, culture and culinary possibilities. None of these producers have it easy. As with most forms of agriculture, it’s labour-intensive, there’s science, good horticultural practice, and ethical animal husbandry at play. When you put boots on the ground or the deck of a boat, you see all this.
As we head into a new review season, my attention is, of course, on the mechanics of a great meal, the execution of a hospitality vision. But I am also eager to get a read of what chefs are using, individual ingredients that seem to be trending, others that have endured, and where they come from. Each year, I learn about producers that I wasn’t aware of or am prompted to dig deeper into ones I know. The pleasure in our restaurant scene starts with those ingredients, much like the conversation.