Life’s sweet as apple pie
The PNG chef who is making his mark in Australia.
One of the first dishes restaurateur and chef Daniel Brehaut (pictured) tried to cook didn’t make it to the plate. While it was brilliantly imaginative, at least at the time, it consisted of a single highly recommended ingredient that was hard and green. It was never going to fry up tastefully.
Brehaut grew up in Rabaul. His dad is Australian, his mother from PNG’s Duke of York Islands. Brehaut’s Australian grandmother was one of his earliest food influencers and often used to tell the youngster how wonderful green apples were for cooking.
At five, he took the literal view of gran’s advice, put a whole green apple in
a fry pan and tried to work some pre-school magic in the kitchen.
“Nothing was happening; I was thinking how come green apples are so good?” Brehaut smiles: “Always that memory stays with me”.
Brehaut owns two restaurants – the Black Bull Tapas Bar and Grill and Mojo Mama – in Geelong, the second-largest city after Melbourne in the Australian state of Victoria.
His wife Tamara helps run them and works front of house at one. Together, the couple manages the staff of 30 and the Brehaut family, which includes the couple’s two girls, Elizabeth, 8, and Isabelle, 6.
For Brehaut, life may now seem as sweet as one of the apple pies his grandma baked. The apple and the fry pan can now be seen as a portent: setbacks, no matter how hard, can ultimately define all of us.
Brehaut went to school in Rabaul and at 12, in 1988, was sent to boarding school in Queensland. At 17 he’d finished school, was jobless and going through life’s mincer.
“I had no skills, I couldn’t get a job. I had nothing and was getting up to mischief in Brisbane. I was rock bottom, mixing with the wrong crowd, questioning my worth.”
He knew he needed to work. “I rang Dad and got a ticket to Port Moresby.” In 1993 he started working at the Travel Lodge, one of the exclusive hotels in Port Moresby at the time.
The one kina an hour wage didn’t stretch far. “I gave one third to my aunty for rent, one third for food and drink. I was there for two years and made my own opportunities.”
Brehaut started on the restaurant floor but worked himself into the kitchen and met a couple of Australian executive chefs. One was Michael Fletcher. “He’d opened some pretty good restaurants around the world and had cooked for the Queen.”
When Fletcher returned to Australia he rang Brehaut and offered him an apprenticeship at a hotel on the Gold Coast. Brehaut was there for four years.
His influential grandmother had died in 1988 but in 2000 Brehaut moved to Melbourne to live with his grandad. He had plans to go to London, but won a job at a major Melbourne hotel (Crown) and met Tamara, a croupier.
In 2006, the couple moved an hour southwest of Melbourne to Geelong. Real estate was cheap for a couple with a portfolio of plans that included starting a family and a business.
They opened the Black Bull in 2008. According to Brehaut, Spanish food was red hot at the time and the dining concept of
“sharing little bits and pieces of food” relates also to his PNG heritage.
“The meal is in the centre and everyone shares the food. It’s how I like to eat at home. Rather than everyone sitting down to one big meal I like to put out a platter of meat and vegetables and everyone helps themselves.”
When the couple fired up the stoves for their new restaurant, Isabelle was less than a
They haven’t got iPhones
or iPods. They are playing with toys made from the bush. Look how
happy they are.
year old. It was the year of the global financial crisis (GFC). Brehaut started teaching cooking to help pay the bills. “I didn’t pay myself (from the restaurant) for six months.”
Hard graft and the lessons of the mincer meant Brehaut rode out the GFC.
Every now and again, Brehaut has wine dinners at the Black Bull and PNG cuisine often features on the menu. Aigir, a classic chicken dish with greens and coconut milk and mumu (pork traditionally cooked in a barbecue pit) are two dishes he serves.
Brehaut returned to PNG with his family last year, the first time in 15 years. They travelled from the PNG mainland by banana boat to the Duke of York Islands.
Walking once-familiar dirt paths, Brehaut was welcomed back by people he hadn’t seen for 20 years.
“Tamara was blown away,” says Brehaut of the greeting he and his family received. In no time the kids were running with the locals. “I was glad to take them back to the islands. I told them to take in the [local] kids. They haven’t got iPhones or iPods. They are playing with toys made from the bush. Look how happy they are.”
Taking the family regularly to PNG is part of the Brehaut family’s plans. Brehaut hopes to live in Molot – the island’s main village – for six months and teach his girls more about the appealing simplicity of island life.
In 1994, the streets of Rabaul, where Brehaut wandered as a boy, were covered by the ash of an erupting volcano. Many of his childhood footprints – his home and primary school – have been lost to ash.
The fact affects him deeply but doesn’t stop him often reflecting on times past. “I wouldn’t have achieved what I have today if I didn’t start where I did; no way. I would have taken things for granted.”
The village of Molot may yet become the place where he and Tamara teach their girls some of life’s essential lessons. For a PNG chef, it has extra significance.
“It’s where I feel at home.”
Air Niugini flies from Port Moresby to Sydney every Friday and Sunday. Local airlines connect from Sydney to Melbourne and Geelong.