Marriages

October 1999

Is a terrific book.

Filled with energy and excitement and the promise of great food just like the Cookes' restaurant est est est. And its great to hear that it has already been honoured with a major design award. It's particularly important to get these accolades when you stop to do a book like this. Because running a restaurant is one of the most demanding jobs you can find. And when you decide to stop you wonder how and why you did it all. And I really wonder how Donovan and Philippa managed to do this book - I think it must have been a year of sacrificing their Sundays.

There's a great deal of work in the book, getting those recipes right takes time. It's one thing to cook dishes every day, and another to be able to put down the method on paper for others. Cooking is such an ephemereal art and the pleasures it gives can be so transitory. Because of the constraints of running a restaurant creating that art is incredibly difficult.

A chef can choose and assemble ingredients as a painter prepares a palette of colours. She or he can try and test their blending and conceptualise the finished work of art. But, with most dishes, you can't start and then put it aside and think about it for days. Certainly not in a restaurant kitchen.

In theory you can be perfectly prepared to create a masterpiece. You can have spent months or years of research and thought, had endless arguments with suppliers about getting the right ingredients; you can have shown your staff again and again how to cook something. Everything is in place for a perfect dish.

Problem is the diners. In a restaurant you have to wait for the orders to come in, you can't just cook as you want to. You might have trialled something endless times for one - but you have to cook it for 6 and at the same time have 8 different dishes for half a dozen tables to start, watch, check, adjust seasoning etc. And you're not working on your own. There is a team to be co-ordinated, watched and checked.

However, this is all documented in the book, so I won't go on about it now. But it is really interesting to think about how much creative effort goes into a plate of food. The concept of the dish, its planning, its testing and then its execution. Then its gone - its not left hanging on the wall to be admired for posterity.

So why do these cookes do it? That's the sort of question - if you need to ask, then you don't really want to know the answer. Because it's all about commitment and a passion for what you do that is frightingly strong, so strong that if you are part of it, you can't stop to think about it. And if you don't share the vision, then you wouldn't want to get in the road. It's too hard and fast a path.

I first met Donovana and Philippa in 1995 when they came to work at Mietta's, I talked to them about what they had been doing, which chefs and restaurants they admired. What they like to cook, to eat. Then I tasted some of their food and that spoke even more eloquently about why they are so committed. I've worked with a number of chefs and tasted the food of many. There's a strength and a clarity in the palate of the Cookes food which is very rare. With those gifts and the determination to work as hard as was needed to do great food, it was clear there would be no stopping them.

We are very lucky to have them working here in Australia. To produce food at the quality they want to do and can achieve, they need the continuing support of the dining public, and keep on doing what they do best.

They are totally committed to taste and their lives revolve round getting it right. It's not work, it's a way of life. You can't do it, if you count the hours or worry about the cuts, burns, callouses and corns you get, and you can't do it without inspiration.

I know that Donovan received a lot of that from Michel Roux at the Waterside Inn, Bray in the U.K. There he learnt not only about cooking techniques but also about loving food. And, I believe that the books published by Michel and his brother Albert, have helped him, as they have many other cooks.

And now, I think that Marriages, the book, will play the same role of inspiring cooks, young and old. It tells them what is really involved in cooking in a restaurant.

And we must not forget the other man on the cover of the book, Frank Heaney. Because on its own great cooking does not make for a great restaurant. It's about the marriage of ambience, food and service,

Like the book it's a marriage to be proud of.

I hope that it will give them as much pleasure as their readers and diners in their restaurants. But I hope that it will give them more than that too. Because like marriages, great restaurants - are very much a labour of love.

Now I feel very proud to have the honour of launching Marriages for all our pleasure.

Spoken at the Food &Wine Writers Festival, Tasting Australia, Adelaide, 7/10/99