Nine of the 10 chefs selected for the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Pacific final represent Australia. Their signature dishes draw on migration, family, native ingredients, whole-animal use and the food they grew up eating
Nine of the 10 chefs selected for the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Pacific Regional Final represent Australia.
They work across Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and the Gold Coast, and will cook in Sydney on 12 October alongside New Zealand finalist Arinut Sachdeva.
The dishes are very different, but several ideas keep returning: migration, family, native ingredients, whole-animal use and the food these chefs grew up eating.
Food from home
Aarush Baba Rijal of Icebergs Dining Room and Bar is cooking charred wild boar neck with Malate second-flush jus, fermented pumpkin and bitter citrus.
The dish follows his move from Nepal to Australia and draws on flavours he associates with childhood, including mustard oil, timur, tea, fermentation and smoke.
Ratish Mehrotra of The Charles Brasserie & Bar takes nalli nihari as the starting point for a Wellington of lamb leg, served with globe artichokes and a croquette with apricot and macadamia chutney.
For Ratish, the dish connects the slow-cooked food of Lucknow with the classical technique he has developed through his restaurant career.
Khathawut Srichanklat of Industry Beans in Fitzroy is taking a broader view with The Abundance of Australia, bringing Australian Angus beef and squid together with Thai larb flavours, Chinese taro, Vietnamese rice-roll references and Mediterranean ingredients.
Rather than choosing one influence, the dish is built around the mix of cultures Khathawut sees in contemporary Australia.
Sustainability through cooking
For several finalists, sustainability appears inside the cooking rather than as a separate statement.
Dian Sheng of The Sanderson in Sydney is cooking Tide & Grain: confit coral trout, fish-wrapped ravioli, coastal greens and a rice-broth emulsion.
Dian grew up in a coastal village and has built the dish around a family principle of harvesting with enough restraint for nature to continue its cycle. Whole-fish utilisation sits alongside Australian coastal ingredients and the Asian flavours that shaped his cooking before he arrived here.
Nic Kearney of Mimi's in Coogee is also working with whole-use ideas in a roulade of lobster and abalone with sauce Américaine. Shells feed the sauce and abalone liver is used in an XO-style preparation.
Jackson Mehlhopt, who works with Andy Cooks in Sydney, is taking Tails From The River, a dish built around guardianship of rivers and oceans, abundant Australian ingredients and zero-waste technique.
Kimberly Tang of Anchovy in Richmond makes the idea explicit in the title of her dish: Before Sustainability Was a Trend.
Her approach looks to Asian food cultures where preservation, seasonality and whole-ingredient use have long been normal kitchen practice.
Australian ingredients, different backgrounds
Jamie Musgrave of Restaurant Botanic in Adelaide is cooking West Australian shellfish, a trip home.
The dish connects Jamie with his regional West Australian roots while using shellfish to carry lesser-known native botanicals.
Jacob Aomarere Poole of Palette Restaurant on the Gold Coast is working with steak, 'miso soup' beurre monté and a seasonal vegetable tofu tart.
His starting point is the idea that humble ingredients can be transformed through technique without losing where they came from.
Across the nine Australian finalists, that tension appears repeatedly. The dishes may use restaurant technique, but the stories behind them begin with family kitchens, coastlines, migration and ingredients that carry a sense of place.
What the shortlist tells us
The Pacific Regional Final will be held on Monday 12 October at Sydney Seafood School, with the awards dinner at The Calyx in the Royal Botanic Gardens.
The local jury is Alanna Sapwell, Analiese Gregory, Daniel Hong, Clinton McIver, James Cole Bowen, Karen Martini and Ross Lusted.
The regional S.Pellegrino Young Chef Award winner will progress towards the 2027 Grand Finale.
Before the judging begins, the shortlist already says something useful about the chefs coming through.
Family, migration, native produce, resource use and cultural identity are not being treated as material around the dish. For many of these chefs, they are becoming the reason for the dish in the first place.
