In this issue’s Australian Culinary Federation column we hear from Martin Bouchier, President of the ACF’s Northern Territory chapter, Executive Chef at Hot Tamale in Darwin and a finalist for 2018’s Australian Chef of the Year. Martin embraces the “pay it forward” philosophy with regard to imparting knowledge and as such has acted as a mentor to many young chefs. 

View from the Top End

When I got up to Darwin in about 2008, nobody really knew what the Australian Culinary Federation was or what it did – today that’s changed and we try to do a lot not only to promote the industry generally, but to promote the whole idea of culinary tourism for the region.

Foodservice is not huge in the top end – Darwin has around 350 restaurants, and we are a fairly transient chef’s brigade up here. Not everyone is cut out for the heat, humidity and tropical climate! But it’s a terrific tourist area – we have some lovely restaurants on the waterfront. It’s certainly matured in the last decade – it used to be basically steak and schnitzel with a little bit of Asian, there wasn’t much variety in the restaurant fare. But now a little Melbourne influence has come up here – we’ve got more people interested in provenance and ingredients. There are some great producers up here – we have grass fed beef specifically bred for our climate from Eva Valley, Humpty Do Barramundi has gone from strength to strength, there are some wonderful vegetables. The climate is perfect for Asian style vegies and tropical fruits and so we keep our food miles down.

Size-wise, the NT ACF chapter has around 50 active members, but we also have a lot of supporters and people who come in and do things to help us along the way. We had Matt Moran visit a couple of weeks ago, Manu Feildel the esteemed French chef came up for Territory Taste and we did some promotional activities with him – anything that’s food and hospitality related, we try to get involved with.

We have some local universities – the International College of Advanced Education and Charles Darwin University, with a new education precinct that’s setting up – and we engage with them along with the local high schools, including those in remote areas. We want to make sure that the young people growing up here consider cooking as a career choice and have the opportunity to be exposed to the potential it offers. Just speaking for myself, cooking has taken me all around the world and given me the opportunity to try many new things. So we go and talk to the students and make them understand that you can make a good career out of it – it’s not just a life of taking a schnitzel out of a box and throwing it into a fryer!

There’s more and more students taking up cooking in the schools here - I was involved in the Department of Trade Training awards a few weeks ago and we were talking about the future of the industry and how unless we push for the changes that need to be made to improve training packages, our industry could fizzle away. I see that as one of the major roles of the ACF – to bring the youth into the industry so there is still an industry next year and the one after that, so that in a half century from now we haven’t all been replaced by robots!

Of course we are involved in the major competitions – the National Apprenticeships Competition, a high school competition which is just coming up and Nestlé Golden Chef’s Hat, and some in-house competitions which we organise along with online activities including inter-restaurant challenges. 

We’re in the wet season right now which is our quieter time and the good news is Virgin and Jetstar have made it cheaper to fly in to Darwin, and that’s going to build tourism. Right now we’re concentrating on International Chef’s Day which is the 20th October and looking to celebrate it with our members and sponsors. I’m also planning a Chef’s Table which we hold fairly regularly to raise funds for our young chefs to compete here there and everywhere. We normally get between one and two hundred people attending and raise a couple of thousand dollars and that gets invested in helping the young chefs to compete on a national and international stage. Everything costs money and our chefs don’t have bottomless pockets, so our sponsors and supporters make a big difference and as such are much appreciated.

MARTIN BOUCHIER
NT Chapter President