TEN years ago Newcastle-raised Brett Graham opened his London restaurant The Ledbury. Praised for its "refined yet gutsy food", the restaurant has gone on to earn two coveted Michelin stars and ranks at No.20 in the world's Best Restaurants list.
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But that doesn't mean Graham has forgotten his Australian culinary roots. This week Graham makes a whirlwind return to his homeland through a guest appearance on Channel 10's hit cooking competition MasterChef.
Graham spoke to Food & Wine about long days at The Ledbury and his ongoing passion for the Notting Hill restaurant, fostering Newcastle's culinary talent through his eponymous scholarship and finally giving in to MasterChef judge and food critic Matt Preston's pleas to feature on the TV show.
Williamtown-raised Graham began his career as a teen at Scratchleys on the Wharf while studying at Hunter TAFE. He later moved to Sydney for a three-year stint under Liam Tomlin at Banc restaurant where he won the highly prestigious Josephine Pignolet Award. The win included a trip to the UK where Graham worked under Philip Howard at The Square. More awards followed including the 2002 Young Chef of the Year.
After working in London kitchens for a number of years, in 2005 Graham opened London's The Ledbury, which has since earned two Michelin stars and ranks No.20 in Restaurant magazine's 2015 World's 50 Best Restaurants list.
Awards and accolades aside, Graham's passion for food remains at the heart of everything he does. He admitted he still works "massive days" and is on The Ledbury's roster along with the rest of the kitchen and front of house staff.
"I still work as any normal cook in the restaurant. At the heart of what I do - I'm not a restaurateur - I'm a chef, I'm a cook. I'm on the roster, I'm still involved in the day-to-day running 100 per cent," Graham told Food & Wine. "I still do the kitchen meeting at 9am with all the boys once we've done an hour or so of prep starting from 8. I run all those. I work a minimum five days a week. I live and breathe The Ledbury."
The acclaimed chef said discipline was key to both the success of - and his passion for - The Ledbury.
"By discipline I mean I'm not the most disciplined person, but I mean setting yourself expectations of what you expect from yourself and what your staff should expect from what you do. I think when you get into problems if you run your own restaurants is if you write yourself out of the roster and you aren't expected to turn up to work," he said.
"Once you're not expected to turn up to work to be part of your team, that's when I think problems start. I've always kept myself on the roster and always kept focused on what I have to do and that's kept me in good stead - and it helps keep standards rising at The Ledbury."
Those high standards are just what Graham expects of MasterChef contestants. On his appearance on Thursday night, Graham sets the competitors a daunting pressure test based on a mackerel dish which has long been served at The Ledbury.
"It's probably the longest serving dish on the menu. The reason I set it [as the test on MasterChef] was I knew it would be a fish that the contestants would be unfamiliar with cooking and it would test them a little bit," he said.
Test indeed. The dish includes a number of techniques which the contestants might not have used before and includes a vinaigrette which takes 45 minutes to make. Graham's passion for sustainability in the kitchen also comes through in the dish.
‘‘I still work as any normal cook in the restaurant. At the heart of what I do – I’m not a restaurateur – I’m a chef, I’m a cook. I’m still involved in the day-to-day running 100per cent.’’
- BRETT GRAHAM
"There was zero wastage [of the fish], I was trying to show them ways of using the whole fillet of fish and techniques that they probably weren't familiar with that if they panicked and rushed the dish it would be ruined."
Despite his familiarity with the dish, Graham even admitted it could pose a challenge to even the best of chefs: "Cooking's not easy, not every piece of fish cooks exactly the same."
Given Graham's demands at The Ledbury, leaving the seven-day-a-week operation to travel to Australia to film his pressure test, was no mean feat. Not only did it mean stepping away from the pans of his beloved restaurant for a few weeks, but he celebrated the restaurant's 10-year anniversary somewhere in the air between Dubai and Australia.
But the chef was adamant when he did make the jump to feature on a TV show that it would be in Australia.
"I'd been asked quite a few times to do MasterChef and I'd always said, 'No, no, no, no, no'. I think it's probably been four years since I did my last bit of filming because it's not something that is high on my list of priorities, along with running the restaurant and being there as much as I can be and balancing my life a bit," Graham said.
"MasterChef is massive, it is probably the biggest cookery program on the planet at the moment, it has the most amount of people that watch it. Matt Preston had asked me a few times and I said no, and then he asked me in Copenhagen at a food event I went to and I thought, 'You know what, if I'm going to do a food program, I need to do it with the best people with the best production people and the professionals'.
"In terms of production and content, these guys really are the best. You get customers at The Ledbury who are from places like Italy and Holland talking about the Australian MasterChef which is something you don't expect. You think they're going to say the English one, but it's the Australian one."
Newcastle also remains close to the chef's heart. Not only does his family live here, but generations of culinary talent are looking to him for inspiration as the Newy boy who has propelled himself into the heights of the international culinary world.
Each year the cream of Newcastle's up-and-coming chefs is awarded with the prestigious Brett Graham Scholarship.
A partnership between Hunter TAFE and Hunter Culinary Association, the scholarship has been running for a decade, with past recipients including the likes of Troy Rhoades-Brown, of Pokolbin's two-hatted Muse Restaurant, and Chris Thornton, of Newcastle's one-hatted Restaurant Mason.
"The real reason we got the scholarship moving is to try and help improve the standards in Newcastle and try and carry on in the progression that's already happening there," Graham said.
"It's about these young guys coming out to England or going to another country and believing they can do it and coming back and making a difference. If you look at a couple of the winners already - Rhoades-Brown and Chris Thornton are fabulous cooks and have hugely successful restaurants. A lot of that - it's obviously down to them - but a lot of the encouragement and support to do that has come from that scholarship. Now they're inspiring people to work for them to do the same thing."
The scholarship winners are given the opportunity to work in London with Graham and his team at The Ledbury. Many stay in Europe, just as Graham did, to gain further experience. Graham hopes they will then bring those skills back to Newcastle's culinary scene.
"Our job is just to inspire these guys to be better and to return to Newcastle to further develop the food culture there which has come a long way in the last 10 years - and I'd like to think the scholarship was a part of that."
