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Yes, chef! Perth-born Shane Osborn doesn’t need to watch The Bear or Hell’s Kitchen - he’s lived it

No, chef. Perth-born and raised father-of-two, Michelin-starred chef and star attraction at this year’s Taste Great Southern, Shane Osborn hasn’t watched acclaimed TV series The Bear. He probably won’t. Neither has he seen fine-dining satire The Menu, or MasterChef, or Iron Chef … “I don’t watch chef shows because it’s a busman’s holiday,” he chuckles. He’s even yet to watch The Final Table, Netflix’s big-budget cooking contest pitting top international chefs against each other in a World Cup of culinary skills — and he was the breakout star, coming runner-up with Aussie teammate Mark Best. Sitting in a Perth wine bar, Osborn confesses he has watched one foodie feature. “Ratatouille is the only chef movie I’ve really enjoyed,” the 53-year-old says, referring to Pixar’s 2007 animated feature about a rat aspiring to be a great chef. Osborn doesn’t need to watch The Bear, or an explosive episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen. He’s lived it. Even before he left for London in 1991, the Riverton-raised chef, who began cooking on his dad’s self-built barbecue and peeling potatoes for his mum’s catering company, experienced violence first-hand while serving his apprenticeship in top Perth restaurants. “I got smashed in the face,” Osborn recalls. “Going back to the 80s, I got punched in the face and slapped across the face. “It was endemic back in the day. It was part of the industry. “If you messed up, if you gave the wrong sort of response, you’d get slapped across the face or hit.” Perhaps that meant he was well-prepared for the supercharged London fine-dining scene, where celebrity chefs with a devil-may-care attitude, amazing hair, and an ability to fill a swear jar quicker than Bob Hawke could empty a yard-glass were the new rock stars. After arriving without a visa, or much of a plan, a catering company sent him to Essex to work at The Shoes, a restaurant run by, as he puts it, “one of Marco’s burnouts” — as in British celebrity chef Marco Pierre White. Osborn saw it all, good and bad. Everything was made from scratch at The Shoes, meaning the young Aussie had a steep learning curve during his two years in Essex. He then followed a girl to Sweden before returning to London in 1996 to join Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant group, working in L’Oranger under Marcus Wareing. “I was there for around 10 months,” Osborn recalls. “I didn’t really like the way they operated.” He rose to the rank of junior sous-chef with Phil Howard — a “genius” — at The Square, before taking on the sous-chef role at the two-Michelin-starred Pied a Terre under Tom Aikens. Osborn worked under Aikens for two years before the combustible chef resigned in December 1999 after he allegedly burnt a 19-year-old junior chef with a hot knife. Pied a Terre’s board then offered the head chef role to the unknown Australian. “Tom left under quite a lot of controversy,” Osborn says. Understandably, he had to be convinced to take over what was both a coveted role and a potentially poisoned chalice. “I didn’t want it, I didn’t want to be thrown into that environment,” he says. “Back in those days, there weren’t Australians running Michelin-star kitchens, you know. We weren’t given that opportunity.” After a month of cajoling from the restaurant’s board and against his gut instincts, Osborn donned the toque blanche. “When I took over at Pied a Terre it was very difficult to attract staff, and industry rumours had it that the restaurant wouldn’t survive, especially with an Australian at the helm,” he says. “Even though there were many young chefs in top restaurants, we didn’t get the same respect as European chefs. Aussie chefs were labelled ‘fusion cooks’.” While a fully staffed kitchen at Pied a Terre would usually be around a dozen chefs, Osborn had to make do with only six or seven during his first few years. However, it only took him a year to earn a Michelin star in his own right, making him the first Australian chef to receive the accolade. By 2003 he had returned Pied a Terre to two-star status. “Coming from Perth, I’d heard about Michelin but I couldn’t quite get my head around why a tyre company would be awarding restaurants with these stars,” laughs Osborn, who admits changing the culture at the acclaimed eatery didn’t happen overnight. “The pressure of running a kitchen at that level, plus the 100-hour work week took its toll. There were certainly times when I would lose my temper, but physical violence was not tolerated in any way. “The best way to earn respect is by setting a great example. “Even now, at the age of 53, I help clean the kitchen, clean the floors, and muck in.” Osborn was head chef at Pied a Terre for 12 years — a remarkable stint, especially given his baptism of fire taking over at one of only four two-star restaurants in London at the time. (There was only one diner with three stars, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.) And that’s not to say the stress of running a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in London didn’t get to Osborn. It did — big-time. He developed allergies to a range of ingredients that made an already intense gig even tougher. “It was stress,” Osborn says. “I’d just achieved my second Michelin star. I was burning the candle at both ends. I was in my early 30s and working 90-100 hours a week and not looking after myself. “My body just went into shutdown. I became allergic to a whole host of things I was cooking at the time — even tomatoes, oranges — my immune system was completely suppressed.” While he has worked out how to balance work and life, rely on others, and keep himself healthy, the chef admits — “full disclosure” — he still can’t eat oysters, lobster, uni and abalone. “Once you reach the level of two stars, it’s very hard to take your foot off the pedal because there’s that risk of losing a star,” Osborn says. “It’s not the pressure that Michelin puts on you, it’s the pressure you put on yourself. I got to that stage where I was 40 years old, I had two kids (Rose, now 19, and Oscar, 16), a beautiful wife (Julia), and I was still working 16 hours days at a pace that was just too intense.” Something had to give. In 2011, Osborn and his wife sold their house and their shares in both businesses, and went travelling. Restaurateur Alan Yau, founder of the Wagamama chain, asked him to help turn around his Hong Kong diner St Betty, with the proviso Osborn would launch his own project after two years. In 2014, he launched his Arcane Collective, a hospitality group that puts respect for and investment in staff as its No.1 priority — yes, even ahead of customers and food. “We opened Arcane in 2014 with the idea of creating a great restaurant but it also being the flagship and the training ground for our growth as a business,” Osborn explains. “We want to grow . . . but only with talent that came through the business. We want to promote from within.” A 35-seat modern European fine-diner with a staff of 16 and a rock music soundtrack, Arcane earned a Michelin star in 2017, two years before Osborn opened his second Hong Kong diner, Cornerstone. He’s recently opened a third, Moxie, and a catering company and consultancy, Victuals by Moxie. While his job title is chef patron, Osborn sees his role as more of a mentor and teacher to the staff across his three Hong Kong venues. As such, he brought Cornerstone head chef Neal Ledesma to Perth for Taste Great Southern preview events in February, treating his protege to some “modern Australian cuisine” — a couple of pies and a vanilla slice from Golden Bakery in the city. Sampling Tim Tams and cheese Twisties was also on the itinerary, along with visits to Perth restaurants Petition and Bread in Common. “You’re spoilt here,” Osborn says of WA produce. He serves Fremantle octopus in all his restaurants, which managed to weather the twin storms of the anti-Chinese government protests and COVID-19. The top WA export admits to wrestling with imposter syndrome throughout his storied career. “I’m very comfortable in my skin now,” Osborn adds. “Cooking aside, what I really enjoy more about the job is the mentorship, the teaching side of it. “I love working with people and seeing their development, especially people that are new to kitchens, and watching their skill set and confidence improve. “For me, that is a really rewarding part of the job.” And, thankfully, the rough-and-tumble restaurant scene portrayed in The Bear or Ramsay’s latest swear-a-thon is no longer on the menu. “Those shows glorify the bad side of hospitality,” he says. “We’re attracting more dynamic, more educated, more clever people into the industry now. “These are the people that need to be promoted to attract more of the same, but they don’t make the same headlines as someone throwing a pan around the room or abusing someone. “It’s that rock-star chef that people gravitate to (for entertainment).” Osborn and his wife have already set their retirement plans in motion. They’ve bought a 200-year-old dairy farm in France’s Pyrenees, near the border with Spain. The property has two huge barns, with one earmarked for Julia’s atelier workshop (she’s a carpenter by trade) and the other for Osborn’s part-time cooking school. Maybe then, when the day’s classes have finished, the affable chef will pour a glass of wine, switch on the TV, and finally watch The Bear. Hopefully, thanks to people like him, it’ll feel like a bygone era. Shane Osborn returns for Taste Great Southern, May 2-12, see wineandfood.com.au.

The West Australian exclusiveYes, chef! Perth-born Shane Osborn doesn’t need to watch The Bear or Hell’s Kitchen - he’s lived it

exclusive
Yes, chef! Perth-born Shane Osborn doesn’t need to watch The Bear or Hell’s Kitchen - he’s lived it