A month away: from garden labour to pizza, Champagne and The Gibney Gibson
There’s always more f****** rocks
I’ve been absent from this newsletter for about a month because I’ve been busy working (the usual mix of writing and eating), labouring (of the muscles hurting that you didn’t know existed kind), and travelling (if a trip up the road to Perth counts?). I think had I tried to put something out in this time it would have been a little too frenetic. So, in the spirit of the what I did on my holiday essays I remember writing at junior school here’s a brief catch-you-up. It’s a picture of contrasts now I think about it, of a push and pull between old and new.
Work has been predominantly my position as editor of the WA Good Food Guide, alongside writing for my usual outlets. There’s a lot of planning and talking about the year ahead in that new role, and as it happens, eating excellent pizza. We held a writers mixer several weeks ago at Casa Pizzeria in Perth’s Mount Hawthorn. A chance for the team to meet - many for the first time - and share what they’re up to and inevitably where they’ve been eating, what’s impressed, and to a lesser extent what has not.
I had a moment stood amongst this group of talented writers - some hungry newbies and others decades into this lark - when I felt a sense of (to go a little woowoo) the universe at work. I hadn’t seen this editor role in the tea leaves, but I realised in that moment that it felt right, and that I’m flexing a muscle that I haven’t for a while, in helping to shape a team and offer some degree of mentorship to those within it. I’ve managed teams before. Some disparate and international, others local, and I was for a number of years a Princes Trust mentor in the UK. I maintain that I learnt more from my mentees than perhaps they did from me. That could be the case now as it was then. I often compartmentalize my two distinct careers but there’s always skills and experience that you carry from one part of life to another.
One of our more experienced writers noted in a thank you email (by the way, always a classy move) that they didn’t see “any show ponies” amongst the ranks, and that “it was an evening without pretense or bluster.” Hardly the thought you’d have of a room of restaurant critics (albeit we tend to stick to reviewer these days) if you were on the outside of it, but I think food writers more generally are like this. Most of us don’t like the spotlight, and when we’re in it there’s a slight unease. Personally when I’m around other food writers - one on one or in a pack (what is an appropriate collective noun for food writers, anyone?) - I feel like I’m with my people.
The head chef and co-owner at Casa Pizzeria, Paul Bentley was our most recent WAGFG Chef of the Year. Paul’s known well beyond WA, having spent much of his career working in New York and Mexico. Having him return home I think says something about where the city and the state has come to in the past decade or so. There’s confidence in many areas of the hospitality world that previously, in my opinion, wasn’t there. I interviewed Paul about the pizzeria offshoot of wildly popular Casa (just next door) and had been desperate to get in and try the goods. I wasn’t disappointed. Remember, I’m pineapple all the way.
Paul greeted me by asking how the garden was going, the previous interview having diverted into me waxing on about the market-garden-to-be, and him sharing tips on what chefs want from a small grower. It was a funny moment, as it crystalized this feeling that life is full of contrasts at the moment.
Days before I’d been on my hands and knees pulling decent sized rocks from garden beds that we were forming and due to cover crop for winter. It’s the kind of task that feels never ending, thankless, and even an exercise in futility. There’s always more fucking rocks. But at the same time it’s strangely meditative and life affirming, watching the snaking rock pile grow, and the utter joy at finding worms and an array of insects. Proof of life.
Denim muddied, dressed in a King Gee work shirt and Blundstones, my phone started to ping. Taking a break from the rock garden I pulled out the phone and flicked the email open. It was confirmation of arrangements for lunch at Gibney, a new $5million or so restaurant that fronts to the Indian Ocean at South Cottesloe - home to power brokers, billionaires and generational wealth. I typed a quick reply and went back to the rocks.
About 24hours later, soil sodden denim ditched and an early morning drive to Perth behind me, I was dining at Gibney with a glass of Billiecart-Salmon to hand, having toured the venue with owner George Kailis and my Editor in Chief, Georgia Moore. It’s a restaurant built on detail and talent. There’s (a lot of) thought behind each detail, and the definition of no expense spared. A case in point, a lighting system which tracks the movement of the sun and adjusts the lighting accordingly. If the sun is obscured slightly by cloud there’s the slightest adjustment.
The front of house team are striking in classic white jackets, albeit there’s not a hint of starch in the service. Reading through the epic 17000 word wine list, and in particular the Champagne sections, I realised that it’s only in the last ten years that I’ve really appreciated Champagne and its ilk - previously it was just a bit of fancy fizz. The same with classic cocktails. Tastes I suppose broaden with experience and age.
And speaking of such things, The Gibney Gibson (I may come back to here as I seem to be talking to everyone about it) is something that could become a Perth must (actually, lets just call that one), in the same way that a simple but excellent pint of Guinness at the The Devonshire in Soho seems to have taken up free rent in my brain recently.
The Gibney Gibson from bar director James Gentile is served tableside and as he said to me recently is ideated around something unexpected. “In the old Goosebumps books, you could choose your own adventure… coming to the table on a stainless-steel tray you have three different options for garnish – smoked onion, pickled onion, pickled cherry tomato – as well as a little bit of Islay whisky to add as you wish. Really, [you] make it [your] own.”
Back at home in the south west after that trip to Perth the rain came in earnest, after about seven months of none. It was the talk of the district. How many mills we’d had, and always followed up with well, we need it. Life changes accordingly. The slow cooker came out but things haven’t necessarily slowed. I’m typing this from the car minutes before publishing. The rain is heaving down and I’m looking at a still patchy cover crop (I’m still hopeful for something more lush) and where the much-needed compost pile will be formed. My mind is on those things, on editorial calendars, a forthcoming trip (beyond Perth), what I need to pack, and all manner of things. Perhaps I should be more present and just ponder the more urgent question of whether we should have pizza for dinner.
Nice to read your words again, Max...