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What I've Learnt - Samantha Gowing · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Sam Gowing put food as medicine on the map in Australia by using her unique blend of nutrition, fine dining, and business expertise.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Before it was the zeitgeist to heal through food, Sam worked for nearly 20 years with people all over the world on improving their health and well-being as Australia's leading spa chef and an award-winning clinical nutritionist.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: She's renowned for her nutritional wisdom and for being a powerful influencer among healthy lifestyle audiences.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Her Byron Bay Cooking School and global wellness company, Gowings Food Health Wealth, create culinary programs for luxury hotels, bars and health retreats worldwide.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: FHW offers dynamic wellness business solutions that help food and health entrepreneurs create successful and sustainable businesses and has paved the way for the new genre of wellness enthusiasts since 1999.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Sam's a former hotelier and chef hat-winning restaurateur who loved life at the helm of legendary Gowing's Grace Darling Hotel in Collingwood before turning her heart and mind to food as medicine to become a clinical nutritionist, executive chef, keynote speaker, and wellness authority.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: So we're very excited to have Sam join us on the What I've Learned podcast.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: How are you, Sam?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: And welcome aboard.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Deb.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm great.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's good to you.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: The sun's out, the wind has calm down here in the wild northern rivers, and um every day's a bit different, but we take what we can get.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's exactly right.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, you are in the sunnier side of um the street, so to speak.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um so actually, we met uh quite a few years ago, actually, at your culinary masterclass week at Gwingana, which my medical student daughter and I loved so much.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: We learned so much about.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: You remember you spoke about, in fact, the focus was seaweed.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: I I never looked at seaweed the same again after that.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: It was really on a play.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you what, it was just great.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you focused a lot on the power of nature in food, as I mentioned, particularly seaweed.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: When did you first discover food as medicine?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me a little bit about that.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So in the 90s, um, I transitioned from hotelier to um beginning to be a clinical nutritionist.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I was studying, I thought I'll just go and study one subject of nutrition, I'll know everything.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'd already been in the food trade for 15 years.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: So what else could I possibly know?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And there was um a marvellous lecture, a gorgeous, inspiring woman teaching food as medicine.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And within I think the first half hour of that lecture for semester one, I was just blown away because she took me so much deeper behind the scenes of what I knew about produce and really talked essentially what I would talk about now, but you know, the the power of the bioflavonoids and the phytochemicals within plants and uh just the how food synergy is greater than the individual parts.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it really struck me, it really was like, oh my goodness, this is this is what I want to be when I grow up.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you certainly have opened a lot of, particularly when you do those bespoke masterclasses.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: It really is very educational.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, I mean, yes, you you prepare and you cook and it's very entertaining, but you, you know, I found it really informative, and clearly you have to be very educated about all of the layering of food and what it offers as medicine.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's like being a scientist of sorts.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, food science, of course, is an element of that because there is that biochemistry component and chemistry.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So in my undergraduate in nutrition, you have to study those elements.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I failed math three or whatever it was at Geelong Grammar, so I could barely count.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's amazing I became a hotelier.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was a better punter, I think, in the beginning.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: I became a great hotelier.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: So to go back and study science, I went, oh, how am I going to do this?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: How am I going to learn?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then I realized that of course, all cooking is science.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about pH and it's all about heat and acid and cool and so forth.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I could kind of translate my cooking head into my newfound chemistry love, it kind of married.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I was failing all along, flunking all along, first semester chemistry.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, by midterm, I think I'd spoken to the lecturer and he said, Sammy, you know, just look at it this way.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I did, and it changed everything.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I became really passionate about the biochemical reactions in the body and how food resonates with us, not just visually, but on digestion as well.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it is a science.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's a bit of fun.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a bit of fun.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, you certainly, you know, watching you and seeing how you do educate.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that is actually a really good point, though, because when science or maths has a purpose or a place, and as you've just outlined, and it's similar to when you actually do your classes, you listen more intently when it has a relevance to what you're trying to understand.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's not esoteric.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, oh, now I get it.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: So sounds like that.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And also now there is a huge movement in that direction.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's not like uh rocket science in the sense that people are not going, what?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's become very zeitgeist, but you were ahead of the game on that early.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, What are you doing?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: You've been in the restaurant business, you know.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why do you want to go and do that peace and brown rice and lentils business?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I just knew, and I've said this many, many times, but I knew that my experience as a restaurateur and my love for hospitality and industry and cooking, obviously, that healthy food had to rise up at some stage to meet that because you know, healthy food above and beyond is produce-driven.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And restaurants strive for produce-driven meat, or chefs do anyway, for produce-driven menus.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so at some stage I knew that kind of the twain had to meet and it did meet, and it's integrated now.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And even I teach a course in in food trends, you know, with Le Cordon Bleu, because it's become so integrated that I help people debunk those myths, you know, around that and and how to disprove certain superfoods that are touted on social media and throughout the mainstream as well.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So now I've gone full circle with that.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose the challenge is you've got the high-end culinary cordon bleu.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: The image is of sumptuous, you know, very luxe, uh delicious French food is what you envisage when you, you know, obviously it's diverse.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: But so the balance of delicious tasting food and healthy food, as you say, they've integrated, but it's something that people still struggle with to understand how it can be delicious and healthy.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: But that's something that's becoming a discussion.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to know, you know, if you know the fundamentals or the elements of good cooking and you're interested in health and you understand flavor profiles and flavor balancing, then you can kind of unpick that tapestry and then rework it with different ingredients and understand that honey and maple syrup don't caramelize like sugar, or it doesn't set a cake like sugar.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you kind of have to know your sugars and your salts and different other ingredient groups and look at the chemistry of how they will work together.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's, you know, there was a lot of hit and miss, I can assure you, in the early 2000s.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, why doesn't that work?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why doesn't that set?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: But you just, you know, I'm I'm not a trained chef.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: I have a master's degree, but I'm certainly not trained.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm self-taught and I was taught by my family.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I make a lot of mistakes along the way, and that's show business, isn't it?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And and tell me, I do, I mean, you're obviously from, you know, your Mel, your family were Melbourne stalwarts and uh of the culinary industry.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us a little bit about growing up because I love those stories.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, you spoke spoke about growing up with food everywhere, and and I'd be really interested to hear a little bit about what you learned during that time from family.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, sure.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I grew up, I like to say under the restaurant table, and I always joked them still under the restaurant table sometimes.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was a car dealer in Melbourne.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: He was Kevin Dennis in the uh his business was Kevin Dennis in the late 60s into the 70s, and during that time, you know, he had a great love of entertaining because he had to entertain, you know, he to proceed that he arrived in Australia as a 10-pound pal.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: He was an orphan and came out and sort of made his steak, made his fortune, cooked his steak.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And after the car business kind of went into the restaurant business and fine art and horse racing as well, and he set up a restaurant called Jackson's in Turak Village with Lloyd Williams of all people, and uh that opened in 1978, 77, 78.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And very iconic, yeah.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think you know, because he wanted to entertain his his clients and his European, uh, American visiting Holden dealers and so forth.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Back then, there weren't a lot of restaurants where he could do that to the way that he wanted to do that.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: So he kind of built his own.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you build it, they will come.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that was his first restaurant.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he was extremely he had ads on television, he was very well known.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: He was, everybody knew Kevin Dennis at the time.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, really I love it because it's a really beautiful Melbourne story, isn't it?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: The way, and I didn't actually know he was an orphan, so it was interesting.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: So he came really somewhat fresh with not a lot of history himself that he was obviously aware of, I'm gathering.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And a very traumatic experience, you know, set of experiences from orphanage to orphanage and so forth.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, to actually make it to Australia and then actually make it, you know, in in the trade, so to speak, is um is a tremendous achievement.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: He was a remarkable man.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really difficult in the current era to actually manifest, but he was a great manifester.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: We just never called it that.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: But in hindsight and all the work that I have grown to do, you know, really what he would do was go and manifest.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: He'd say, Oh, Sam, well, I've got to go and get my mind right.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he'd disappear for weeks on end or days on end, you know, and drive and go down to his property in Malacuta and uh come back and bang, bang, bang.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, he manifested winning the Melbourne Cup with his horse.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: What a nuisance, you know, what a story.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Such a great story.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that is just an incredible and and from your perspective growing up, it really, I mean, you're you know, you're entrenched in this very iconic and respected family that everybody pretty much knew in some form, as you talked about.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, having a horse, winning the Melbourne Cup, etc.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: But from uh the actual pub itself, or Jackson's, you then tell me a little bit about what your experience was with food and how you by osmosis, I'm assuming somewhat.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was 11 then, I think, and I'd gone off to boarding school by then.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so we would visit, you know, every few weeks and so forth, and have great meals, obviously, um, in the restaurant.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: But also, Dad was a pretty good cook, you know, he'd try his hand at anything.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And my maternal grandmother was a wonderful cook, and my stepmother, who was with my dad for some time, was a brilliant cook.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so through yeah, osmosis, I guess I picked up that, but I always knew I wanted to cook.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't actually want it to be a chef per se, but I would look at the old Le Coron Bleu magazines and I'd look at the Gourmet Traveller when it first arrived and Vogue Entertaining, and and I would read cookbooks prolifically.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And even now I'm writing hundreds of recipes for a new platform, and I still write you will need, just as happened in just as was published in my kids' cookbooks.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you will need this and a whisk and so forth.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I love that.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every time I write those three words, it's not something I do all the time, but it is from my childhood, and so I guess I always knew I would cook, and it was just a natural component for me.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was never a brilliant cook.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I just, you know, I love to do it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's about passion and purpose.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the other thing from what I'm I'm gleaning is that, you know, a dedication to whatever craft it is that you're passionate about, that's something that you certainly understood from an early age, watching your dad.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: You've applied it to your own journey and you've found a way to, whether it's reading cookbooks, you know, to inform and educate yourself, you've shown that that's actually a really important thing to do if you want to be a cook, if you want to have a culinary journey.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Look, anything is possible.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you just have to put your mind to it.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And in the mentoring programs that I've run many years, I just ask those mentees, you know, what do you really want to do?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: What do you really, really want to do?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes they think they want to do something, but they actually, you know, we nut it out and they find that that's what they really want to do.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: They've just been telling a different story.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, I've been um, I guess lucky is probably the right word, or I'm certainly grateful that I kind of always knew what I wanted to do.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I became enamored with the restaurant business, which was the hospitality industry, you know, since the 70s and 80s, and even at boarding school, I would find the age and read Epicure on a Tuesday and read all the ads for the restaurants, and then with the age good food guide in the early days.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, I began to know um one of the co-editors, you know, very, very well.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: But those early food guides, you know, that was in the glory days of actual restaurant criticism where, or restaurant critique, I should say, and it's kind of changed a lot, but the industry, you know, has always um captivated me.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so how much has the conversation changed since you started out, like in in that sense, because now everybody, you know, it's just particularly in Melbourne, although at the moment that's another story which we'll touch on, but I've you know, I interview a lot of people who have really embraced and and completely it's become an ongoing discussion, which it was growing up, I don't, because you and I are similar genre, um, it really the conversation is now what are you eating, where are you going?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um who's opening a new restaurant, whether it's Chris Lucas or whoever.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So to put it into context for you, when I left school, uh actually probably a bit later, by the mid 80s, we'd go out to nightclubs after restaurant service.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I only had two other mates that I knew in our social circle who also worked in the restaurant business.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we would, you know, meet them at one o'clock in the morning and they'd be, you know, fresh faced as I would be, and our other mates would be completely trashed because they'd been out all night on a Saturday night and we were just catching up, you know.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that was let's say the mid 80s, and it wasn't very fashionable to work in restaurants because everyone else was either at uni or they were maybe just plates in order to get through university.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: But when I started out, you know, to work in a restaurant was a real trade, it was a real craft.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I was trained by the European waiters and uh formal professional wait staff in a restaurant that my father had accumulated since Jackson's and right through to his other restaurants, and they taught me the fine art of restaurant service and table service.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And these days it's not taught so much, it's not there's not a training, and there's not, I'm not saying that there's not wonderful tapes and so forth, but there's not kind of a um front-of-house formal training the way that I had, and I was immersed in it.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, the European waiters, of course, would fly to Australia, they'd immigrate in order to continue their trade in the hospitality industry.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of changed, you know, that canvas is um has a different paint on it now.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that it's bad, it's just different.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh with the decline in fine dining in the late 80s with after the recession, what we saw was a rise in kind of more bistro dining, and so that became a little bit more mainstream, and there was something for everyone, you know.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: A Caesar salad was once an exotic restaurant dish, and all of a sudden it turned up on a plate on a Sunday brunch.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, it's still there for many, many restaurants in usual circumstances.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So the bistrofying of Australian cuisine really happened at the end of the 80s when people couldn't afford those$38, you know, Gowings Restaurant East Melbourne two hat dishes.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they weren't that expensive then.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: So they were delicious, yeah.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And everything kind of stabilised and it's still very much there.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, fine dining, also due to the MasterChef effect, has really um increased as well.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the number of three hat restaurants in Australia have increased, whereas a few years ago they were decreasing, give or take the pandemic, which is a really difficult display.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And on that note, I think that's a really good point.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, we've been having quite a few discussions around that, because you've sort of had this um, and you referred to that notion of the fine dining.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it used to be, and when you and I were growing up, and I'm assuming it was similar, except that obviously you had a restaurant you could go to every night, but it was much more a special event, a milestone event to go out.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's been this complete shift into you go out three nights a week if you want, you know, it doesn't have to be super expensive, but you know, oh, there's a new restaurant in Brunswick, or there's a new restaurant.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's very, very Melbourne and very Sydney, and in fact, all over Australia.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: So then it's slammed by this pandemic, and as well as, and we will touch on that, the effect on hospitality workers, which is another, you know, travesty in itself.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: You've now got people thinking about it, thinking, do I really need to go to that restaurant?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's there's a whole shift happening.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: People are thinking about saving money in a different way.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: People I interview and speak to, it's really a question of how is this going to be restored, you know, and and whether it will shift to somewhere in between what it was when we grew up and what it became in the last, let's say, decade.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think we'll see, you know, the post-pandemic menus will reflect like they always have, menus have always reflected economic status.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll see probably a leniency, but a consolidation of what's available at least for a year or so on post-pandemic plates, you know, nationwide.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I won't talk about the rest of the world because I'm not as versed as I am in Australia.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, things will rise up again.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I remember when I left school and I bombed out of art school, and my father threw me into a job at the ONI Breakfast Cafe in South Yarrow or that side of the river, and it was called Middons.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, give her a job, you know.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: She understands restaurants.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I didn't know a thing.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And here I am, microwaving croissants and you know, taking orange juice out.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like 17.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, man, who's gonna come out for brunch and breakfast?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't they have a home?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And look what happened with brunch, you know.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, and brunch, massive sector and day parting, as we call it.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we've seen that cash flow that comes for restaurants, that those that serve brunch, you know.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can pay$28 for smashed avocado in Byron Bay, let me assure you, you know, plus a Sunday serve charge.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll see, you know, where the margin has to rise.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And most restaurateurs, and I'm I'm sure whoever you you know discuss it with in the future will tell you that, you know, on many restaurants there's about 5% profit margin.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why, you know, I mean, that's on a good day.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it'll be really dependent on how the um wholesale market stabilizes with primary from a primary producer perspective, to the cost of goods, of course, and how um other associated costs are for French wine and French cheese, for example.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're currently uh uncertain about the um French Australian trade uh um opportunities, I should say.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that could well inflate the price of you know champagne, which would be a travesty for us all.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's right.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's and that's a whole other, you know, uh lens as well.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, what you're really saying is it will recalibrate in some form.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it will recalibrate, as you say, to the like, I mean, obviously there will be a sector that will say, can't wait to go out and have my$28 Avo brunch, but there's a there's a whole other sector will go, wait, maybe like I can tell you, even the 20 mid-20-year-olds that I know are very much we just make it at home because it's affordable and we've taught ourselves how.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a big push, coming back to your point, um, for healthy, informed, nutritional eating.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that sector, I mean, you and I at 27, I can tell you we probably did not eat as healthy as those kids.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just in awe.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: They've got green, they add green to everything, seaweed to everything that they're very a lot of them.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not a it's not even an economic only discussion.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's really about they're very informed and nutrition matters to them big time, which Instagram is also driven too.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's another question.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, social media is of course the massive influence, but I think people really have understood, particularly um younger kids, your children's age, and so forth, they kind of get it.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they get that the greens give them more energy and they get that they love Japanese food.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Japanese food has a lot of seaweed and has a lot of, you know, weird ingredients.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're weird to me when I was.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: About six when I started eating Japanese food.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: So they kind of understand that, but they're very everyone's very sensory at the moment.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So they're kind of tuned in to what makes them feel better and how they can prepare that at home.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: But also, there are people like me after cooking all my life who just want to receive, you know, stick me in a restaurant, give me a bowl of something and a spoon, and you know, pour me something and tell me a story and put a linen napkin on my lap and I'll be your friend forever.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: I love that description.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I so relate to that, especially having been that is an that is also another important reflection.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's about nurture, you know.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's we've run out of self-nurture, unfortunately, at this time.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's only so much dopamine we can build up ourselves at home, you know, whether it's from your knitting or, you know, making your own coffee or whatever.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: And particularly for my you know, beloved friends and family in Melbourne who can't get out and roam into the mountains and so forth.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to kind of give ourselves enough self-care and so forth.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: But there's only so much, you know, self-love and self-gratification.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we just want to go to a restaurant.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: What's that?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually not so you have actually completely, I feel like you're in my head.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: They totally resonate with what you're saying.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that is true.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: The the the nurturing side of being looked after, I love that image of you know, that just somebody nurturing me or you.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and that is a that is an important thing that I think we'll all we're all waiting and looking forward to getting back to.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think Mauricio, you know, looking at cosmopolitan quickly.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: I have no doubt Mauricio is uh doing that.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's opening another restaurant in Melbourne, he's opening another one um in Byron.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me, so you're actually you have been Byron Bay for a long time, and you have obviously got your wonderful Byron Bay cooking club class, which is um a corporate base, but you do do, I know, very bespoke.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like if somebody wants to book you, they can.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, which I love.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we do private chefing and and so forth for you know short to long term and so forth.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: But the Byron Bay Cooking School is predominantly caters to the corporate market for the delegates that come through to the larger resorts in Byron.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then um after the first pandemic, I relocated about 40 minutes north to Casarina.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, some of your listeners might know of House in House Paper Daisy, that's yes, Cabarita.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then in 2012, I was the head chef at Cabarita Ocean Health Retreat, which is sort of on the border of Cabarita and Casharina.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm in the Tweed region now.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful region to be.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you're in, as I said, the very sunniest side of the country.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so so with that, just referring to your um, and obviously you've worked in you know uh with a lot of spas, a lot of uh luxe hotels.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: So this retreat notion of you know making sure that you really nurture, because in a sense, that's your role is nurturing and providing food for all of those retreats.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: The Halcyon days, and there's also uh what was the other one you just mentioned?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh the the one that you Laboratory Ocean Health Retreat.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wingana is you have you oh that's that's closed, but um is beautiful, and Gaia is also beautiful.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely beautiful.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: And leading up to the pandemic, I am was the wellness chef for Club Med Asia Pacific.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I was literally about to um pick up my uh village tour and and get back and check on the nine villages that we were establishing the wellness offering for their 2000 item broad buffet menus.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that kind of collapsed overnight, which is pretty massive.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that so do you see that coming back in some form?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, oh definitely, yeah.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, all is you know, all is not lost, and I think, I mean, I just applied for my new passport, if you can believe that, you know, woo-hoo, all dressed up, nowhere to go.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: So have you got some projects um on the boil or a lot of what I do now is actual um content creation, so it's digital creation.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we are launching a platform uh on behalf of a client of mine.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm part of that their project.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's launching next month, and then I teach online, have done for a couple of years, teach online learning with Le Court on Bleu.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kept me um busy, but I'm not getting that corporate job coming in, you know.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, as events are, you know, they're very lucrative and they're great fun, and it's all in the pre-production, just as any other event company, and then you roll it out for a few hours on the day, and then you, you know, do the dishes and and you prepare for the next one.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: My my I guess my essential nature obviously is to cook and nurture, but it's also to cater.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, when that kind of disappeared, I was just like, Oh my goodness, how am I gonna share the love?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, the online learning's always been there, it is only once a week, but it's it's there.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you just have to, you know, adapt and change.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, you just have to be resilient.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's resilience that will get us through because you know, you can have all the passion in the world, but you've got to be able to take a few hard knocks.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And as I say, it's really hard to manifest future and future hunt at the moment.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: So we've just got to be really nice to ourselves and gentle and feed ourselves some brown rice every so often, and you know, just take care, do the breath work, look at the beautiful artwork just as I'm what looking at you in your gorgeous office, and just be grateful for what we still have.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I absolutely agree with you 100%.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: And on that note, I would like to thank you for the most beautiful interview and love chatting to you.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I look forward to coming and tasting some of your beautiful food and hopefully at some relaxed spa up in Byron at some point, or Casarino, or Camarita, or wherever I can get to, as soon as we clear the border.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and just also like to say that I think that notion of resilience is really important for us to all take on board, and it sounds like you're doing pretty well, all things considered.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for hanging on for dear life and chewing madly, babe.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I love it, I love it.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sam, thank you so much and you take care.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: See you soon.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for listening.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: The What I've Learned podcast will now be coming to you weekly with new episodes released every Tuesday.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, stay tuned, be kind, and curious.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.