Young chefs making their mark on menus across Sydney
/This issue Foodservice Rep profiles three up and coming young chefs working in contrasting venues across Sydney – Italian-inspired Cricca restaurant in Sydney’s west, The William Inglis Hotel’s Newmarket Room overlooking famed Warwick Farm Racecourse in the south, and back to the inner city for a trip to the local, in this case ‘The Erko’ Erskineville Hotel.
Confident and comfortable
Giles Gabutina
Giles Gabutina began his foodservice career as a pastry apprentice at Shangri-La Sydney before moving on to Tetsuya’s. His win of the 2017 Proud to Be a Chef Culinary Scholarship took him to Maaemo in Oslo, before he returned to Sydney to work at Quay. From there he went to Chef’s Secret in Berowra Waters, a restaurant owned by the father of his best mate and childhood friend Alessio Nogarotto, followed by a stint as pastry chef at The Bentley. When Covid hit, he moved to neighbourhood patisserie/café Saga in Enmore working for Andy Bowdy. Finally the opportunity arose to work again with Alessio in opening their own restaurant, Cricca in Windsor.
“It was Alessio’s brainchild more than mine, but considering we’d worked together previously at Chef’s Secret and Bentley as well we figured it was kind of cool,” Giles says. “We’ve been friends since we were 13, and his family had bought the site and finally we decided the time was right to do something together.”
Giles and Alessio
Cricca has been a hatted restaurant for the past two years and Giles describes the food as “Italian influenced, but we base it on whatever we like. We have a massive woodfired oven and grill which is a great cooking technique, so we try to utilise every aspect of it that we can – whether it’s direct cooking or slow cooking overnight. We do woodfired bread, fresh handmade pasta – Alessio’s heritage is part Filipino and part Italian, so it makes sense for us to lean into that style.
“We kind of bounce ideas off each other”
“It’s a fairly intimate space – the dining room seats 22 and we also have four kitchen counter seats and an outside table. We open four days a week, Wednesday through Saturday and we have people visiting us from all over Sydney, which is fantastic.”
As Alessio is also a chef, he and Giles work on the menus together. “Honestly it’s just based on what we think might be a good idea or an ingredient we want to work with – we kind of bounce ideas off each other. I feel our style is very much its own individual identity, and there’s not anything else like it in the local area. We have a smoked dry-aged duck which has been on the menu since day one and we’re well known for that, along with our pastas and we have a great steak offering too. Because we’re such a small venue, we have intimate relationships with our suppliers – we can get on the phone, see what they’ve got on offer, and they’ll run things by us and vice versa which makes the menu very flexible.”
Giles says he still draws on his early training as a pastry chef in his current role. “I think coming from that background lends itself well to all aspects of working in a commercial kitchen – things like patience, attention to detail, just the way I approach the work as a whole. When I look back on the past decade, I think I’m in a very good position – if you’d asked me 10 years ago, I honestly wouldn’t have thought I’d be where I am now. I’m in a place where I’m confident and comfortable and that’s all you can ask for. I get tired but it’s a good tired!”
A goal worth aiming for
Jack Basoff
Jack Basoff is a self-described “high school discontinuate”, having left at the end of year 10. At TAFE he decided to learn either spray painting cars or hospitality – “I caught myself enjoying the cooking, and although the spray painting was cool I found it very boring!” Like Giles, he undertook his apprenticeship at Shangri-La Sydney.
“I was very blessed with my bosses – Bo Sorenson was the executive sous chef, he really taught me everything I know and has always been a big, big support – along with Steve Krasicki the executive chef and F&B director, plus I was working alongside Anna Polyviou who was the reigning pastry queen at the time, and of course Giles. We all worked closely together and built an empire of five star standard – being part of that team was definitely a career hop and something I would never change.
“We’re trying to find a happy medium between superfine urban dining and country”
“After I finished up I thought I was the next Marco Pierre White, which I clearly wasn’t – and I went somewhere where I didn’t gel too well with the team, it wasn’t the right fit. I decided I wanted to get into fine dining so I spent two years at Cottage Point Inn waterfront restaurant, working under Peter Gilmore who was very talented – we got our first chef’s hat, then we were chasing the second. It was a small restaurant with very supportive owners and a 10 course degustation menu, and it was great to be working to that level of finesse.”
Unfortunately this ended with an infamous seaplane crash in December 2017 that claimed the lives of the pilot and all five passengers on board, who’d just departed the restaurant after complimenting the staff on their meals. “A lot of the team struggled to come back after that and it kind of ended the era – after something so traumatic it was very difficult for us all to regroup,” Jack says.
Following this tragedy, Jack went back into hotels, working at Novotel Manly for a year and a half. Eventually he joined Sam Prince Hospitality Group, working first at INDU Dining, then Mejico Sydney. Fast forward several years post-Covid, he was approached by Sam Prince group executive chef/F&B director Amanda Fuller to take on the Chef de Cuisine role at The William Inglis Hotel in Warwick Farm.
JACK WITH THE TEAM AT THE NEWMARKET ROOM
“It’s the only five star hotel in Southwest Sydney and the restaurant is called The Newmarket Room and overlooks Warwick Farm Racecourse. We’re trying to create a space that is truly Australian and showcases the best produce the country has to offer,” Jack says proudly. “We can seat around 120 and the team is about 35 large – the challenge for me has been learning to do 90 covers on a Monday or Tuesday night for guests from all over Sydney – plus you get the country folk in whenever the racehorse sales are on. We’re trying to find a happy medium between superfine urban dining and country which is not the easiest thing, but if we can be the best in Southwest Sydney that’s a goal worth aiming for.”
Instilling the right kitchen culture
Christianna Bernarte
Christianna Bernarte emigrated from the Philippines at 21. “I had been thinking of going into law or medicine because this is what you do in the Philippines, but I was always drawn to food so I decided to study nutrition,” she recalls. “I loved the idea of learning about the biochemistry of food, but the application of that was quite medical, so I tried to work instead as a dietitian/nutritionist in a hospital, but after a month of that I decided to move abroad. I had family in Sydney so I came over and never left!”
Looking for a study pathway locally, Christi found commercial cookery was the closest match so didn’t think twice. “I was quite lucky in that I started my career at The Star Casino – my school placed me there for training because I didn’t have any experience, and it drove me to where I wanted to be. The Casino was more of a commissary kitchen, it didn’t fit my idea of chefs doing service, so I was encouraged to move into restaurants and I went to Hunter and Barrel Steakhouse in Darling Harbour for a year and a half. I was so driven and ambitious that I wanted to know everything – I remember going into the kitchen and everyone else was male, and they had me doing salads and I thought ‘why can’t I learn how to do pans or grill like the boys?’ so that made me determined to show them!”
“I was so driven and ambitious that I wanted to know everything”
EXEC CHEF AMANDA FULLER (L) WITH CHRISTI
Having set herself the goal of being a sous chef by 24, Christi was encouraged when she met executive chef Amanda Fuller. “Until then I had barely seen any female head chefs, but she was an executive chef at 27, highly knowledgeable and clearly the captain of her ship with all these chefs following her, and that was an inspiration to me. She took me under her wing and became one of my biggest mentors to date.”
Working at various places, including as sous chef at Mejico Sydney, eventually led Christi to her current job of head chef at The Erko (Erskineville Hotel in inner city Sydney). “I wanted to be head chef at 27 like Amanda, which I missed but I made it by 28! I came on board at the same time as a new GM and we agreed we needed to take the vibe back to being a neighbourhood pub – they had been focusing on families, but there’s a lot of diversity in the local area, including young singles and older people, and everyone wants to feel welcome so we’re trying to cater for a broader demographic. People might say ‘it’s just a pub’ but it depends on how you run it, the standard you uphold. I make sure the chefs are following the recipes and I check the quality of the food – the standard you need to follow is that of food you’d serve to your mum or your family.”
About to turn 30, Christi says she still has a lot to learn and is continuing to hone her skills. “I’ve definitely recognised the importance of instilling the right kitchen culture – because you only get productivity out of people who are feeling happy and safe in the workplace. I don’t want to ever meet a female chef who tells me they felt unsafe or bullied, so one of my biggest goals is to make sure the next generation of female chefs will feel more encouraged to speak up when something’s wrong. No one did that for me in the early days of my career and that’s just sad.”
