ON THE PASS

How did you get into cooking? I’d always wanted to be a chef, but my parents weren’t super keen on the idea. I went to uni for a very short period of time and decided that it wasn’t for me. My mum said I needed to have a job within a week and I was lucky that my cousin owned a restaurant in Perth so I started my apprenticeship there. I then moved to London where I worked at Brawn and St John for a number of years. I then moved to Melbourne and worked for Andrew McConnell’s stable of restaurants, before I moved to Sydney to open Hubert with Dan Pepperell.

Now you’re at Odd Culture. What are you trying to achieve with the menu there? Head chef Jesse Warkentin and I have worked pretty closely for a while now. We quickly realised we had similar ideas and philosophy about what we wanted the restaurant to be. We liked the idea of not really having many rules to follow. Both of us had come from places where there were fairly rigid ideas of what the food should be. We decided that we didn’t want to have to follow any rules at Odd Culture. There’s not necessarily a theme or anything, each person picks their own adventure.

What are some dishes that best represent what you guys are trying to do? We do a pâté because everyone loves pâté. It’s an old recipe that I’ve had and worked on for a while, basically with livers, pork and lots of butter. Jesse had a really good idea to make a dry caramel that’s finished with lots of fish sauce, lime juice and chilli and garlic. That gets dressed around the pâté and we serve it with some really delicious chips that we make. I guess the flavours of crunching into a bánh mì would be the closest way to describe it.

Odd Culture is also open from day to night – are there any dishes on every menu? A dish we’re super proud of is the blood pancake, which is divisive. And that’s why I like it. It’s a mishmash of ideas, but primarily using blood in the way that you’d make a black pudding, put through a pancake batter instead. The pancake then gets a fried egg, some fermented onions and chilli-spiked maple syrup lashed all over the top of it. So it’s rich, sweet, salty, spicy. There’s a lot going on, but it’s something that we run across breakfast, lunch and dinner. It’s definitely odd.

Odd Culture, 266 King St, Newtown, NSW, oddculture.group

Cruising is officially back on the agenda with Ponant’s Iconic Kimberley cruise the first to set sail in Australian waters, departing from Broome in late April. Departure dates are available throughout 2022 and 2023, on sale now. au.ponant.com