Vive The Revolutionary Cooks

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday August 19, 1991

Sian Powell

IT HAS taken three years and a lot of tact to compile 21 Great Chefs of Australia. It's a glossy hardcover, with artistic black-and-white photographs of the chefs, potted biographies and signature recipes.

Sue Jenkins, who masterminded the project, is the proprietor of Accoutrement - a well-known Sydney cooking school where numbers of restaurant chefs have been guest teaching for some 13 years. Jenkins is careful to point out that all the chefs featured in the book are people with whom she has worked.

"That's why we called it Great Chefs, rather than Greatest Chefs," Jenkins says. "Of course, there are a lot of excellent chefs with whom I've had no association."

Even now, Jenkins goes to a lot of trouble to make sure that noses stay in joint. She has been practising the art of tact for quite some time.

"It's been three years of mediation," Jenkins sighs. "We've had stand-off scenes where the chef refused point blank to have his food photographed any other way. One pair of chefs nearly came to blows when we were taking their photographs. The politics, I can't tell you ... "

If temperament parallels talent, Jenkins must have had a hard time indeed. The contents page of Great Chefs reads like a Who's Who of cooking. Neil Perry from the Rockpool, Mark Armstrong from Armstrong's, Damien Pignolet from Claude's, Tony Bilson from Fine Bouche, Gay Bilson and Janni Kyritsis from Berowra Waters Inn. Serge Dansereau from The Regent, Phillip Searle from Oasis Seros, Stefano Manfredi from The Restaurant, Tony Papas from the Bayswater Brasserie, Anne Taylor from Taylor's. And lots, as the promotions people would say, more.

Jenkins first became interested in the idea of a book on Australian chefs a few years ago. Someone had pointed out that she was in a unique position to oversee a book, simply because she worked with the best chefs in the country all the time.

"I wanted to make it a tribute to the chefs I've worked with," Jenkins says.

Unfortunately, the firm Jenkins originally approached to publish Great Chefs changed hands, and the new owners weren't interested in the book. So Jenkins took it to Simon & Schuster. The publisher there liked the idea but reduced Jenkins's 30 or so chefs to 21. From this sprang the subtitle: The Coming of Age of Australian Cuisine.

And Jenkins believes our cuisine really has come of age. "Fifteen or so years ago, if you went out to dinner in Sydney, you'd get a prawn cocktail, steak Diane and a creme caramel," she says. "If you were lucky you'd get a salad with a twist of orange and a bit of radish. No dressing, of course. They didn't put oil on anything in those days. It's extraordinary how quickly it's changed."

According to Jenkins, our gourmet revolution was prodded along by the influx of emigres in the past couple of decades. But, she adds, it is important not to undervalue the influence a few chefs have had on our national cuisine.

Asked to name those few people who have most changed the course of our culinary history, Jenkins hesitates.

"Tony Pappas; he had the first bistro," she says, finally. "Damien Pignolet; he has always pursued excellence. Gay Bilson has had an enormous influence - she started the overseas push. And Serge Dansereau; he's had the money to support growers."

That aspect was, and is, very important. Once, all produce was aimed at the mass market, and usually size was a very important factor. Enormous watery cucumbers and huge tasteless cabbages were everywhere.

But, Jenkins points out, if a restaurateur wants baby carrots, and is prepared to pay a premium for baby carrots, the whole market changes. Baby carrots are suddenly available to the amateur cook.

Now, of course, we are all a bit blase about the range of exotic fruits and vegetables available in Sydney. Credit for the blossoming of vegetable selection must go to those celebrity chefs, now in their 40s, who started the marrow rolling.

Most of them have had no formal training. "Gay Bilson, Neil Perry, Phillip Searle, Mark Armstrong ... it would be easier to make a list of those who have had training," Jenkins says.

She sees a correlation between our best chefs' lack of training and their imagination, creativity and zeal. "If you haven't been bound by a strict teaching code, it's easier to break the rules."

It seems that it also makes it easier to avoid the ingrained secrecy and competitiveness that is rife in the great restaurants of Europe.

"The great thing here is the communication between chefs," Jenkins says. "They share producers, have lunch with each other. Neil Perry has even had Steve Manfredi's lasagne on the Rockpool menu, with a credit. You'd never get that in Europe."

21 Great Chefs of Australia compiled by Sue Jenkins, published by Simon and Schuster, $39.95.