Antony Scholtemeyer

Antony Scholtmeyer has a muse. It is his Japanese wife, Michiyo. Through her, and his time spent in Japan, he is developing combinations of flavours and marriages of textures previously unseen. He is not claiming these are new, after all what is new in cooking? As Auguste Escoffier said in 1907, "the number of alimentary substances is comparatively small, the number of their combinations is not infinite, and the amount of raw material placed either by art or by nature at the disposal of a cook does not grow in proportion to the whims of the public." Things get rediscovered, we learn about bush food for example, but it is hardly a new means of eating and cooking.

Cooking, as with all art, is a matter of individual perspective and the cunning and creative ways chefs use substances and their combinations. And for this Melbourne-born chef now cooking at Jameson’s in Brisbane, the framework of his art has come by learning European method, travelling, and the vision into another culture provided by his wife. It is the last which he is determined to develop. At Jameson’s (*closed in late 2001) he has the rare luck to have an owner, Jamie Brotherstone, who does not mind, who in fact seems to relish being different. So as head chef, Antony is able to work at his French-Japanese combinations, and persist in the difficult, time-consuming and not always appreciated process of giving diners challenging taste combinations.

Antony’s basis is still classic European technique but he has been studying, practising and eating in Japan (where he lived in 1992, and has recently spent more time) to try and learn Japanese technique. There are some Japanese ingredients which can be incorporated into French dishes – he likes the addition of pickled ginger and of miso to a beurre blanc, for example. But some things have to be kept quite separate. Japanese stocks have to be fresh, they can’t be reduced and intensified as you do with the French. He now has some dishes on the menu at Jameson’s which are entirely Japanese in conception and ingredients, and others which combine the two cuisines. There are still traditional dishes since customers are not as adventurous as Antony would like. He finds that people still prefer to stick with what they know. But despite some lack of understanding of what he is trying to do, he won’t give up, he has set himself on this course and will pursue it, possibly going back to Japan again to work.

Interesting that he has reached this point in his career after 16 years, he was in fact aged 16 when he started an apprenticeship with his father at Katie’s Tavern in Melbourne. His family had always been in restaurants but he had not really thought of cooking until the family moved out of the city. It was difficult to get Antony into a school in Cockatoo and his father suggested that he join him as an apprentice. "I never liked school much, so I thought ‘Why not?’" After two years with his father, he worked at Trio bistro and then at Brophy’s, Slattery’s, Rogalsky’s and Quarter Sessions. It was an intensive learning period, he particularly remembers what he learnt from Gunter Meitmeyer and Laurent Rospars (now at Rospars). Then the young qualified chef had the opportunity to go to Europe where he worked in several UK hotels. He returned to Australia in 1992 to some good offers of work in Melbourne. However he accepted a position in Japan (chosen from amongst 100 applicants) at the Harvest Restaurant in Hokkaido. Chef there was Michael Mangan (now executive chef in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur). It was here that he met his wife Michiyo and though cooking French food at the restaurant, began tasting and learning about Japanese food. After a year he returned to Australia, worked in Melbourne and Sydney briefly, and then moved to Brisbane.

When he started at Jameson’s at the end of 1996 his menus were within the French-Mediterranean style. At a time when sauces and the making of proper stocks was being rejected and purees and salsas were ubiquitous, Antony was serving his rack of lamb with a well-made and flavoured sauce. There was always an attention to cooking detail. This seemed to go unrecognised in Brisbane. However, he has been allowed to go beyond the norm (and is enormously grateful to Jamie for this), and over the past 18 months the menu has been developing very differently. And this year, after returning to Japan for a month, he has come back even more determined to pursue this direction.

"Writing menus used to be so easy, when I was working within the Mediterranean-Italian repertoire, now it takes me so long." Antony finds the process of developing dishes requires a lot of thought and a lot of work. It has also meant sourcing suppliers of the less known ingredients. He is delighted that he has found some growers on the Gold Coast who can supply certain Japanese herbs, such as shisho and mitsuba, which he needs for the new dishes.

For Antony, an important part of being chef in a restaurant is to source ingredients and to do dishes which his customers cannot find elsewhere. Both he and Jamie have been determined to make Jameson’s nationally renowned as a foodies’ destination. But there’s always so much happening at Jameson’s. The downstairs bar is popular and noisy, possibly too noisy for diners upstairs. And the building is the forum for a range of other activities: readings, shows and wine and food tastings; the street front is a shop. Antony certainly finds it hard to work out food percentages with price variations between the three outlets. However, he feels very proud of the level he achieves with eight in the kitchen working very hard to produce all the foodstuffs – the bread, pasta, ice cream. And within all that trying to focus on creating his new dishes. Interesting to watch which force emerges strongest in his work — the creative or the commercial.

Antony Scholtemeyer's Recipes

Chilled egg tofu with yabbies and mitsuba
Sansho peppered Kangaroo Island chicken with poached vegetables shitake mushrooms and foie gras veloute
Pineapple and Thai basil risotto with curry roasted pears and cardomon ice cream