BEN SEARS & EUN HEE AN

Paper Bird, Sydney

Chefs Eun Hee An and Ben Sears didn’t hit it off instantly. “He kept making fun of me,” Hee An says. “She was very shy. Like, ridiculously shy,” says Sears. “It took a while for her to come out of her shell.” Things eventually clicked while they were cooking at Claude’s in Sydney, and they went on to open Moon Park together, drawing on Hee

An’s Korean heritage for the food. “Things like our kimchi, cheong, Korean stocks and namuls are all made how her grandmother showed her,” Sears says. It also underpins the menu at their current restaurant, Paper Bird. Working in the kitchen together has its challenges. Sears recalls bitterly arguing about “the size of pastry cutter we should use on discs of pear and wondering if this was really how I wanted to live my life”. But there haven’t been any real disasters, and they appreciate each other’s strengths. Sears is in charge of breaking down meat, while Hee An excels at rice dishes (“his rice isn’t very good,” she says). But who calls the shots when they’re off-duty? “The rule is, we never cook at home”, Hee An says. “Our kitchen is spotless.”