Chefs, Restaurateurs

Chef/Hospitality Legend – Teage Ezard 

It’s understandable that the description most commonly attached to Teage Ezard is ‘chef’, but his contribution to hospitality reverberates beyond his groundbreaking and influential cooking.

Teage, who died this year aged 59 from multiple system atrophy, an incurable neurological disease, was something of a hospitality evangelist, a restaurateur as much as a chef, who intrinsically understood the holistic nature of restaurants where front-of-house culture and wine held equal weight to the kitchen.

“I can’t emphasise enough that his first love was hospitality and restaurants,” says his widow, Tina Ezard. “As much as we had this beautiful relationship and love, I knew how fond he was of hospitality. It was something that was so important to him and to Australia. He would always spruik how important it was to have restaurants that actually define who we are and to pass that on to the people he worked with.”

Teage began cooking in the 1980s, working with Hermann Schneider at the pioneering South Yarra restaurant Two Faces. His first head chef role was at Guernica where he debuted his “Australian freestyle” approach, blending technical prowess, a cultural expansiveness that embraced Asia and Europe and fierce curiosity and inventiveness.

He struck out on his own in 1999 with the opening of Ezard at Adelphi, which brought a slew of awards and accolades, before opening pan-Asian canteen Gingerboy, restaurants in the Yarra Valley, Sydney and Hong Kong, and published three cookbooks.

Jane Semple, who worked as sommelier at Ezard, says he was “this big boofy Aussie bloke who could cook like an angel” and had “a searing focus on and a bedrock understanding of everything that makes a restaurant great”.

So how would he react to being named a MFWF Legend? Tina Ezard, who is now CEO of the charity she set up with Teage, Combat MSA, to raise awareness of his condition, says he’d be “humbled but also proud that he made a difference and imprinted something positive on the industry”.

Chef/Hospitality Trailblazer – Hugh Allen

Though just 31 years old, Hugh Allen has been in the trailblazing business for some time. Allen started his career at 16 with the Rockpool Group before moving to Vue de Monde where he was awarded the Gault Millau Young Chef of the year, which took him Paris to spend time in several three-starred restaurants. Energised by his European experience, he headed to Denmark to work at Noma, both in Copenhagen and at pop-ups in Tulum and Sydney. Three years later, he returned to Melbourne, first as sous and then head chef at Vue de Monde where his signature inventive use of local and native ingredients made its influential presence felt. Even after opening his own restaurant, Yiaga, last year, he continues as executive chef at Vue and is now the first chef in Australia to run two three-hatted restaurants simultaneously.

In terms of inspirational role models for aspiring young chefs, it doesn’t get much better than that. But for Allen, the accolades are less important than the experience, which is where his influence on a new generation of chefs truly lands.

“Getting out of your own town and bubble is important,” he says. “It’s not that cooking’s better overseas or there’s vastly better restaurants overseas. It’s about having a bit of a life experience when you’re young, going overseas and putting yourself in a situation where you feel uncomfortable and you learn to feel uncomfortable and you challenge yourself. I think for me, for my career, it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t do that. I think it’s about taking risks and taking a plunge and trying to immerse yourself in it as best you can when you’re young and have more flexibility to do that.”

MFWF Legend Tony Tan says he is “staggered by his passionate commitment and vision to promote Melbourne as a culinary destination by presenting an outstanding venue and exquisite food to the world stage”.