Mark Best – The Final Table, Bistro by Mark Best, Marque
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry
Release Date: 05/25/2019
Kerby Craig – Ume
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry
In memory of Kerby Craig, here's the podcast I recorded with him in 2014. I listened back to this episode after I heard about Kerby being gone and it made me re-remember all these great things from that day, so I thought I should share these stories again, in tribute to Kerby and his enthusiasm for cooking, Japanese food culture and hospitality … As a 15 year old, was fascinated by the world of restaurants – seeing a chef breakdancing in the middle of service (!) confirmed for him that this was the industry that he wanted to work in. By accident, he ended up at the original Tetsuya’s as...
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Billy Wong – Golden Century, XOPP
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry
The best dish in the world, according to chef David Chang, could be found at Golden Century – the Sydney institution that Billy Wong's family ran in Chinatown for more than three decades. There was more to Golden Century than the XO pipis, though (despite Chang's major endorsement of the dish). The restaurant's fan base included shift workers taking advantage of the restaurant's famous 4am closing time, as well as massive stars like Rihanna and Lady Gaga, royalty from Tonga and Morocco, and even Chinese presidents who made special requests: Xi Jinping had his order sent straight to his...
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Paul Carmichael – Momofuku Seiobo
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry
“I literally got here and the first two weeks, everybody quit." Despite this challenging start to becoming Paul Carmichael has since scored many awards (both and Time Out named him Chef of the Year) and he's been called one of the world's greatest chefs by his boss, David Chang. The restaurant has received glowing in The New York Times and been ranked as one of the best places to eat in the world by Paul isn't about basking in the acclaim, though. "You’ve got to become comfortable with failing,” Paul says. "We’d make something, it’d be shit." Then, after a lot of work, it...
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Joanna Hunkin – Gourmet Traveller
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry
Reporting from murder scenes and interviewing Lorde live at the Grammys – that's what did before she became editor at . Enduring these high-pressure situations meant she wasn't too shaken by her first year at the magazine – which has been incredibly eventful and challenging, and involved her relocating from Auckland to take up the role. On her very first day on the job, at the Restaurant Awards at Bennelong last year, she was handing out honours to chefs Ben Shewry and Kylie Kwong. Then, as the pandemic hit, she found herself having to produce a magazine under lockdown – a tricky feat,...
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Topher Boehm – Wildflower
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry
They're not obvious candidates for making beer: wattle, strawberry gum and leftover sourdough from Ester. Topher Boehm turns to flower cuttings and other NSW-only ingredients to create wild ales for , the Sydney brewery he runs with brother-in-law Chris Allen. They've named beers after their children – including the wild-raspberry-flavoured St Phoebe, which was selected to be named Australia's best beverage. And his curiosity with fermenting has led to Topher brewing 200 litres of soy sauce in a barrel, just for fun. Maybe his revved-up creativity shouldn't be a surprise – Topher once had...
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Natalie Paull – Beatrix and "Beatrix Bakes"
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry
Natalie Paull once pointed a brûlée torch flame in the wrong direction – and accidentally set a whole docket rail of dessert orders on fire. She's endured brownie explosions and baking disasters, too. But people rightly associate Natalie with oven-baked triumphs – like the brilliant sweets from her popular in Melbourne. Think passionfruit cloud chiffon cakes, Tart-A-Misu, Moroccan Snickers tarts, cinnamon-glazed apple fry pies (without the fryer’s remorse!) and more. Her sugar-laced cakes have a transformative power – even for people who've undergone heartbreak and tragedy....
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Shinobu Namae – L’Effervescence, Bricolage Bread & Co.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry
Shinobu Namae runs one of Tokyo's best restaurants: L'Effervescence. It has two Michelin stars and is known for its sustainable focus (nearly everything served to diners comes from Japan, even the cheese) and the menu is inspired by everything from McDonald's fried apple pie to world peace. Even the dish names are memorable (you can order something called 'Hurrah')! Namae-san has worked for Michel Bras in Hokkaido (the story behind this proves that overeating in New York is always a good thing to do) and he was Heston Blumenthal's sous-chef at The Fat Duck. Even though Namae-san grew up with...
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Charlotte Ree – "Just Desserts"
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry
once ate 30 different kinds of croissants during a trip to France – then got a croissant tattoo afterwards. She's so dedicated to pastries that she'll stay up until 5:30am to finish a baking marathon. Pulling 120 cakes out of the oven during the hours people reserve for sleeping – and then going to work the next day, as communications manager for (the publisher of 's cookbooks) – well, that's just a normal whirlwind day for Charlotte. Charlotte's love of all things sweet is clear on every page of , her latest cookbook. It features recipes for Nutella thumbprint cookies, peach and...
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Angie Prendergast-Sceats – Angie's Food, Two Good
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry
once was an olive oil judge, where she had to watch out for vintages that tasted like "rancid feet" and "baby vomit" (such references really did appear on the flavour chart that's deployed in these contests). But for the last three years, she's been the culinary director and head chef of , which used recipes by top chefs (Peter Gilmore, Christine Manfield, ) to create soups and salads that would be sent to women in domestic violence shelters. You'd order two soups: keep one and the other would be donated to someone in a refuge. The food was cooked by women from shelters, who were paid...
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Monty Koludrovic – The Dolphin, Icebergs Dining Room and Bar
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry
“I was the guy who had the cream gun explode, trying to top the iced coffee.” early days in hospitality were "pretty calamitous", but one triumph was ending up in the kitchen of The Boathouse at Blackwattle Bay. It was a meal there, at age 12 (that he can still recap with incredible accuracy), that inspired him to pursue a career in restaurants. Since 2014, Monty Koludrovic has overseen dishes at and he later became executive chef of Maurice Terzini's other venues: The Dolphin, Scout, Bondi Beach Public Bar and Ciccia Bella. Besides introducing excellent dishes (like the Tokyo 7/11...
info_outlineImagine being a 16-year-old working in a Western Australian gold mine. This was Mark Best's life, straight after high school. It was a tough way to earn money as an electrician, so he eventually left. “I arrived in Sydney and found myself unqualified for above-ground work.”
He ended up even deeper underground, claustrophobic and covered in fibreglass and varnish, trying to install battery packs on submarines at Cockatoo Island. “I literally will die if I don’t do something with my life,” he told himself.
So he decided to cook professionally.
Not long after this career path detour, he won the Josephine Pignolet Young Chef of the Year award. In 1999, he opened Marque, where he maintained three chef’s hats for 10 consecutive years and was honoured with a Breakthrough Award by The World’s 50 Best Restaurants. By the time of Marque's final dinner in 2016, many impressive people had worked in Mark's kitchen: Isaac McHale (now running The Clove Club in London) and Mette Søberg (current research chef at Copenhagen's Noma) spent formative periods there. Of the talented locals (Victor Liong, Daniel Pepperell, Brent Savage, Adam Wolfers, Pasi Petanen, Hanz Gueco, to name a few), three would win the Young Chef of the Year award: Dan Hong, Daniel Puskas and Lauren Eldridge.
We talk about "The Pesto Years" of the 1990s, how travelling throughout France inspired Marque's beginning, the history of his calamari risotto dish, trying times in the kitchen ("I may have held a sausage to someone’s head"), the memorable last dinner at Marque and why he chose to close the restaurant.
We also cover: his current role as a World Restaurant Awards judge, what it's like developing menus for cruiseships (which he does for his Bistro by Mark Best business) and his appearance on The Final Table, Netflix's cooking contest. After getting hate mail from doctors while on Masterchef, he decided to take a different onscreen approach on The Final Table (SPOILER WARNING: we talk about that show's ending, from 53:15 to 58:12 on the podcast). It was also surreal to discover his fellow competitors owned his cookbooks. (Turns out he's quite qualified for above-ground work after all.)