Experience: An apprentice chef in two restaurants.

The 1st one was at Hotel Commodore in North Sydney for a couple of months straight from my HSC the head chef will never get a mention from me as he doesn't deserve it, the only thing he taught me was to smoke to get a break.

The 2nd was my favourite at The Tearoom, located in the Queen Victoria Building at the time. Ed Fullon was the head chef and he was British or as he would say ”a proud pom”. He has heavily influenced my cooking style and as as far as head chefs go was pretty chill (but still very highly strung and perfectionistic). He adored my cooking technique, and when he went on holiday said I would be sous chef, which was a huge honour but made me very unpopular with the other apprentices as I was the newbie. Nevertheless being sous chef was fun. I got to run the pastry section of the kitchen unsupervised! The Tearooms speciality was the ”High Tea” which was made exclusively by the pastry chef. I took immense pride that my Sister and Mum tried one! Another one of my claim to fames is while I was sous chef prepared along with the head chef (Christie) hors doeveres and entrees for the then PM John Howard and his party.