The Elvis Tutorial

Start with a cooked and cooled biscuit base

Now make a pastry cream with chocolate and peanut butter

Fill case with the warm mixture and let cool and set

Now scatter some ripe banana slices on top

Cover with whipped un-sweetened cream

Now add the powdered bacon and macadamia praline

Finally waste some bacon and time by arranging the word Elvis on the bench

Serve and have Ambulence on speed dial



Woody Guthrie-The first coffee lovin' anti-Foodie?

an early picture of Woody working on his guitar slogans

This latte is your latte, This latte is my latte

From Cabramatta to the Flinders island;

From the old growth forest to the Sylvania Waters

This latte was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,

I saw above me that endless skyway:

I saw below me that golden valley:

This latte was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;

And all around me a voice was sounding:

This latte was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,

And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,

As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:

This latte was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there

And on the sign it said "No Soy Lattes."

But on the other side it didn't say nothing,

That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,

By the relief office I seen my people;

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking

Is this latte made for you or me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,

As I go walking that freedom highway;

Nobody living can ever make me turn back

This latte was made for you and me.

Woody "Three-Shots" Guthrie

Johnny Young in league with the Devil!

1971-When Johnny Young was pure of heart

2012-Behold! Greg Mills AKA Jack Vidgen! Devil Spawn of the Dark Lord himself-Johnny Young!

I'm not one for sensationalism as you would be well aware but I sense something sinister its at play. I stumbled upon an old photo of Greg Mills, a young member of Johnny Youngs Young Talent Team of 1971 and then noticed a peculiar similarity to teen heart-throb and X factor winner Jack Vidgen. Are they the same person? Has Johnny Young gone over to the darkside? You be the judge!

Chefs and tatts

After securing an apprenticeship at the nearbye roadhouse, Bazza got inked

Shellvene was always fond of protein


Old-skool kitchen tatts- here is The Sailor Jerry of the South (note misspelling of cake-this denotes kitchen-code for:' he cooks cakes')

Old-skool kitchen tatts- a brief flirtation with Herve This

Old-skool tatts-This clearly indicates a deep passion for crockery

Do lawyers get a Scales of justice? Do carpenters get a saw? Do Garbo’s get a couple of bins?
I don’t reckon they do. So what explains this obsession for chef to get multiple Tatts?
Sure, not all chefs get food related tattoos but a great many do. Peer into many open kitchens these days and you’d be excused into thinking having ink done was a pre-requisite for employment.
One cannot assume though that a food related tatt will reveal a clue to the occupation of its bearer. Case in point. A few weekends ago I met a bloke who had a large tatt of a Steer dissected into the recognizable cuts with neat little dotted lines delineating each portion. ‘You’re a Butcher!’ I said triumphantly. He tersely corrected me ‘Dude, I’m a chef!’ Oh.
What do these chef tatts say about their owners? Are they meant intimidate the diners and wait-staff as if to say: ‘Don’t even ask me for well-done cause I’m a Bas-ass’ Do they have meaning like Russian mafia tatts, you know like: ‘I’ve worked in a Ramsay kitchen’ or something? Perhaps they are mementos of achieving the next level of kitchen accomplishment like ‘I totally Rule Duchess Potatoes’. To me they are becoming as clichéd as the mid life crisis red sports car/trophy girlfriend/peddling the Port Phillip Bay hell-ride.
Anyways, always on the lookout for the authentic experience my search took me to a rural kitchen in deepest darkest Southern Tasmania where I encountered a dinosaur-chef who might just hold the key to the missing link of the origins of the kitchen tatt as we now know it.

This Gun for Hire

Here’s a scenario

A chef is hired by two business partners that operate a restaurant. In time the efforts of the chef raise the profile of the restaurant and it begins to attract FOH staff commensurate with the high level of food delivery and its reputation spreads. Further down the track, the restaurant becomes a profitable enterprise and also garners some critical praise in the process. Plans of expansion are laid on the table with a more casual version of the restaurant and the chef is made a minor partner.

Now this partnership can work several ways. One model is to give the chef in question a percentage of profit. Now the cynic in me has always been adverse to this suggestion because experience has taught me that restaurateurs who have transparency in their book keeping are about as common as getting a house made cake in a coffee-chain café-it very rarely happens. Another template is to offer the chef a share in the value of the business which is also problematic as opinions and expectations are frequently different between partners. It also opens the cans of worms as to the currency of the chef who might be of the opinion that their contribution is worth more to the business than is on offer. This is a common quandary for experienced kitchen practitioners.

This brings me to my scenario. Say this chef employed as previously stated but rationalizes that he/she has an expectation to earn more money for plying their trade. They are approached by or approach another business to consult for a fee with the proviso that they don’t intentionally replicate the menu design or food style that the original business is noted for.

Is this mercenary behaviour of the chef? Do the original owners have a right to feel aggrieved? Does the chef or the restaurant own the intellectual property? What’s a fair price for a person’s creativity?

Professional sports people regularly swap team allegiances and it’s usually because of money not loyalty and yet it passes often without judgement. An old boss of mine was fond of this particular analogy, “The Priests come and go but the Church will always be there”.

I’m not so sure that this is still appropriate I mean, look around, how many restaurant-institutions remain in the scheme of things? You could name a handful for sure; usually places where great efforts are made to ensure no-one knows the name of the chef lest it water-down the impact of the brand and its venerable lineage.

Maybe this ‘out-sourcing’ or ‘sub-contracting’ of ones skills is just a sign of the times?