Gwenael Lesle

In Australia some aspects of being a chef are much easier than in Europe.

The path to career advancement here can be very quick though when you get there, you may find back up support hard to find. Witness Gwenael Lesle, born in France 37 years ago, now Executive Chef of Friends Restaurant in Perth. Australia gave him the opportunity to run a kitchen at the age of 23.

It would have taken him another 6-10 years to reach this position in France.

After growing up and training in Brittany on the north west coast of France, he spent two years in Paris before a period in America, then some work in the provinces back in France. He was then invited out to Australia in 1986 by a friend for the opening of Observation City in Scarborough. The young Frenchman was put in charge of the fine dining restaurant in the hotel.

They were exciting times then in Perth, just before the America's Cup and Gwenael couldn't believe his luck.

" It's what every young cook dreams of . . . in France you wouldn't get that position for years and years unless your family were in the business or very wealthy."

There is a strict hierarchy in kitchens in France with an expected pattern of promotion - from apprentice to commis chef, to demi-chef and then to chef de partie working roughly from cold to hot - from cold larder to fish cook up to that of chef saucier, then to sous-chef, to chef to executive sous-chef to Executive Chef

In coming to his position in Perth, Gwenael effectively jumped about 4 rungs in the traditional French kitchen ladder .

Although he loved the life style and did well at the Scarborough hotel, Gwenael felt that he needed to go back to the challenge and demands of a French kitchen. From chef in charge in Australia he went back several stages to work in a hotel in Paris as a chef de partie. With wages and responsibilities that much less, he found it very hard to readjust. Added to that the high cost of living in Paris, and the young Gwenael wondered why he had left Perth.

So he came back, travelled around Australia but decided to settle in Perth where he married and has two young daughters.

Since returning to Perth he worked at several of the leading restaurants before deciding to join Clyde and Lesley Bevan at Friends restaurant.

It's an elaborately set up dining room with plush carpet, paintings, large bar with couch and armchair area and the finest of glass-ware and linen on the tables. All appropriate to the excellence of the wine list and the complexity of the menu. But the real surprise is to see how well the dishes are executed given the level of kitchen staff.

Aside from Gwenael, there is one other fully trained chef, his sous chef, then three first year apprentices

The menu is changed almost completely every three months, an enormous task, given the small and inexperienced staff.

But this chef seems to relish challenges and gets bored doing the same dishes, "each time you do new dishes, you learn and that's what I enjoy."

The challenge is not only for himself, but for his team and for his customers -

" I think that each dish is good for a time, but after a while you have to change and move on. Customers who like those dishes have to try something else."

In true French form, Gwenael has a 'proper' reason for this rationale, "it's really only appropriate for a bistro to have standard dishes (and he gave the example of the classics which Bistro Moncur in Sydney does)."

But perhaps this is a function of time, when we spoke Friends had only been open just over a year and perhaps had not yet established enough regularity of clientele

There was heaps on offer then, the full a la carte menu; lunch specials; a 'Grazing Menu' and a 'Decadent Grazing Dinner' available for tables of 8. The latter is a stunning tasting menu complete with very expensive and rare wines such as Dom Perignon, Coutet, Romanee Conti, Latour, Grange and cognacs.

With those wines and the standard of Gwenael's dishes, you could pretend you were in France. But the reality would cost you a great deal more.

A review of Friends

Gwynale Lesle's Recipes

Celeriac and Kervella goat cheese profiteroles topped with chive glaze and fresh tomato coulis
Baked tournedos of Tasmanian salmon with a ginger and shallot confit, crisp bone marrow pancake and a parsley oil
Peppered pineapple with vanilla icecream