HOSPITALITY HONOURS
Presenting the Gourmet Traveller Hospitality Honours list. Showcasing the creativity and community spirit born out of 2020.
While 2020 has been a year of challenge and change, amid the hardship and headaches have been extraordinary tales of creativity, resilience and social enterprise. To celebrate the big ideas, bold moves and successes, great and small, we present the Gourmet Traveller Hospitality Honours List.
ADAM LISTON + SHOBOSHO
It was an impassioned social media call out from Shobosho head chef Adam Liston that helped prompt the Shobosho team into two community-focused cooking projects. The team took over lunch service duties at Adelaide’s WestCare Centre, where many of the cooks were 60-plus and unable to keep volunteering during lockdown. Liston’s team also temporarily transformed Shobosho into Dr Sho, using their culinary skills to prep nourishing meals exclusively for healthcare professionals. While the restaurant has returned to regular trading, Liston reflects on the difficult time and how his team rallied together, positively. “It was rewarding,” he says. “We didn’t do it for fame, we just wanted to keep busy.”
JESSI SINGH
Chef and restaurateur Jessi Singh handed over the reins of his newly opened Mr Brownie Rooftop Hotel in Melbourne to chefs, winemakers and other hospitality folk that needed a space to sell their wares
(all rent- and commission-free). Singh also delivered meals to the St Vincent’s Hospital emergency department and sent meals to nurses and healthcare workers who were stuck in quarantine.
HO JIAK GIVES BACK
The Town Hall outpost of this excellent Malaysian eatery in Sydney offered free and low-cost takeaway meals to hospitality workers ineligible for JobKeeper. This isn’t the first iteration of the restaurant’s Ho Jiak Gives Back initiative; earlier in the year the team raised more than $20,000 for the Rural Fire Service.
COVID-19 EAD
Bar owners Jason Chan (Seamstress) and Henry Le (Ends & Means) and chef Jez Berwick started the Covid-19 Employee Assistance Directive (EAD) as a way to keep their stood-down staff fed, but it quickly grew, morphing into a volunteer-staffed, donationfunded quasi-outreach program for the Victorian hospitality industry that has been pumping out up to 3000 meals a week. Iain Ling (The Lincoln) and Jason Lui (Flower Drum) are also on board, adding further ballast to the award-winning initiative.
BANKSIA SOUP KITCHEN
Inspired by his work with food charity OzHarvest, chef and restaurateur Colin Fassnidge and his team from Banksia Bistro in Sydney’s south supported families in their local community by supplying thousands of free meals to those doing it tough during lockdown. The project has continued well beyond lockdown into the latter half of this year.
OPEN KITCHEN
This initiative from Milieu Hospitality, the people behind Congress, Future Future and Lagotto restaurants in Melbourne, was set up to help feed hospo workers who lost their jobs or were facing drastically reduced hours, and were ineligible for Government assistance. By coralling a group of like-minded sponsors, Open Kitchen has been able to supply free vegetarian meals twice a week since May using an innovative ticketing system with allocated collection times to ensure social distancing.