DELICIOUS, FROM BOTTOM TO TOP
On an epic road trip, chef James Viles went in search of the farmers and fishers whose harvests and catches he serves at his acclaimed restaurant
James Viles is the chef and co-founder of Biota Dining in the well-heeled NSW Southern Highlands town of Bowral. The two-hatted diner is one of the country’s most recognised regional restaurants.
A few years ago, the hardworking chef experienced burnout. Though his whole operation was devoted to sustainability, he seemed to have forgotten to look after himself along the way.
Not that he was complaining.
“I chose the bed I’m lying in,” Viles, 40, writes in his new travel book Due North: an expedition through Australia from Tasmania to the Gulf. “I love food, I love produce and I love cooking — and, for a kid who grew up not loving school, they have opened up a world of opportunity I could never have dreamt of.”
Exhausted and depleted, he needed a change of scene and decided an epic road trip was in order.
“I needed to clear my head,” he writes. Viles had started planning the route
23 years before, but now with a young family and a business, he could not just take off indefinitely. So he plotted a route he could manage in a month.
“I needed to challenge myself, both mentally and physically,” he writes. “I wanted to sleep under the stars. I wanted less. But I also wanted more. I wanted to learn and develop a sense of belonging, something that would hopefully influence the next stage of my cooking. I wanted to see what this country is all about, and not through someone else’s eyes, but through my own.”
Viles shared his month-long trip with chef mate Cameron Cansdell, of Bombini at Avoca Beach, and Tasmanian photographer mate Adam Gibson, who shot all the images in the book.
Viles's mission was to connect with people who grew produce he used at Biota and to get a better sense of “how the wild fish, animals and plants live in this country”.
“It’s easy for cooks to get complacent, to get caught up in all the bullshit that surrounds the industry,” he writes.
Their first destination was Tassie, where they met so many awesome producers that they devoted half the book to them.
The extended Tasmanian leg of the trip began when they drove off the Spirit of Tasmania at Devonport and headed northwest to Stanley to see where the beef and octopus they served at Biota came from. They cooked it up along with a big cray at the bush camp where they set up their swags and yarned with local graziers.
In Launceston, they spread an indecent amount of handmade butter on to scones at the Tasmanian Butter Company’s Bread & Butter bakery and cafe. In Blessington, they hunted deer with guns they brought from the mainland, but they missed their targets and called it a night.
Fermentation was the theme further south when they visited Two Metre Tall Brewery in the Derwent Valley, and chef Adam James in Hobart — the former co-owner of Tricycle Cafe at Salamanca has hurled himself into fermentation in the past few years.
Off North Bruny, the boys dived for urchins with James Ashmore of Ashmores Southern Fish Markets, then harvested mussels with Phil Lamb at Spring Bay.
At Leap Farm, Copping, they watched Iain Field scanning for stray goats with a drone while his wife Kate milked the nannies. Every mother and kid wore colour-matched ribbons, so the humans knew who belonged to whom..
The Fields use their milk to make cheese under the Tongola label on the farm. “A big part of their philosophy — and something I particularly like — is that they understand seasonal variation in the milk and embrace it in their cheesemaking,” Viles writes.
And so it went, with the Tassie trip culminating in exquisite abalone and honey finds at Flinders Island.
Back on the mainland, they headed for the Coorong and Eyre Peninsula. The further north they went, the more crocodiles there were.
Pickings seemed slimmer though. Clearly, the tastes of Tassie were hard to beat.
Due North, by James Viles, photography by Adam Gibson, Murdoch Books, $39.99