KINGS OF THE KITCHEN DVD:4

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MELBOURNE

I rode my motor bike from Crizot for about 5 hours, went around the back and walked straight into the kitchen with 22 cooks looking at me wearing a motor bike helmet and asked to see the Chef. Chef Jacque Picard took me to one side and asks what I want. I say I want to come and work here. There is a big silence in the kitchen and everyone starts to laugh. He says ' No one has ever done what you have done, and I will give you a chance. You can start next week'.

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MELBOURNE

My biggest surprise was that people in Australia are interested in what you do. They sit all night , really want to be entertained and question the food. In London, there can be 3-4 sittings in one night, nobody questions what is in the food, or how you do it.

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SYDNEY

There are some absolutely mind opening experiences that one has in restaurants if you are interested in it. Some people just go along and go 'munch, munch, munch'. I go along and weep.

The brilliant guys, like Guy Savoy in particular, have the ability - there is a lovely Ducasse saying,"to take something that is already really good and turn it in to something beautiful". I think one of the reasons why the great French chefs and the Japanese get on so well is that they recongise in the food that is on the plate, the relationship to seasons, to agriculture and to the history of the culture.

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MELBOURNE

It wasn't that long ago where most restaurants were French/Italian. The preparation of the food was done earlier in the day and basically the chefs rock up, cook and serve it.

The difference with leaning towards Asian Style which has become more and more dominant in Australia is that you are always cooking. There are 3 to 5 steps of putting together a dish . For example, a scallop dish that we serve," steamed scallops with a peanut man juis and Thai salad", you have got to mortar and pestal your paste to order, you taste your paste, you season your paste, you steam your scallops, and it all comes together and it is taste checked, taste checked, taste checked.

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MELBOURNE

He [Pierre Marco White] was like a rockstar chef and he showed us that anyone could make it happen. I didn't think that he was a particularly good cook, but he had about 6 or 7 dishes that he knew how to do really well and he used to change them all around. We used to have a joke in the kitchen when Marco would say "Oh Michael I want to have a menu meeting with you". I used to get a piece of paper and cut it up into six things and write Red Mullet , Beef in Red Wine etc , put it all in a hat and ask myself "What we are going to do today for the new menu?, o.k. we are going to do Beef, with deep fried leeks and that is how we would come up with our new menu.

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MUNICH

Good food is important for your well being, it is important for your health, your day and gives you energy to be able to do things. My dishes are the transfer of my creative energy and the energy of my kitchen staff, to the customer. This food must give the customer the visual of my ideas and creativity and must taste good as well, light and not heavy.

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SYDNEY

Three years into my apprenticeship thre was a revolution in cooking called Nouvelle Cuisine, Leo Scoffield started writing about Tony Bilson and I read a couple of articles and I thought I better go and try this out. So we went for dinner, I took Beverley for her birthday, in 1976 or 77, and it was just mindblowing. I just knew I had to go to France and find out for myself.

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MELBOURNE

This tyranny of distance and this isolation that we have breeds this special kind of character that Australians have, that you need to suck the marrow of every chance you have to go to London or New York. To have a great desire for knowledge, a great desire for travel, and the feeling that we have to go and search for it ourselves, it is not just going to come to us.

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SYDNEY

People today actually fullfill their sort of skillless life with food by watching someone else preparing it. It is like you are sitting there and watching this happen and you think 'I am hungry now, I can eat'. You feel like you have done something because you actually participated in a food programme.

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MELBOURNE

I was bored in London, to be honest. I felt like I needed to learn something else. I was infused by Thailand, and just Asian food in general so I felt that Australia would be a great sort of starting point.

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NEW YORK

New York in 1962 was very different. At the time we didn't have the produce that we have available now. Now you are able to find anything you want, any type of mushroom, truffles, creams, vegetables, fish, it is a very big, big change.

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