When successful British chef Nick Reade moved to Australia it was love at first step - a childhood dream come true. Words Anna Gizowska.
“I’ve always been fascinated with Australia and everything Australian. I heard about it at school and saw pictures of the Outback, kangaroos and men wearing strange cork hats, but as a child from a small Bedfordshire town, it seemed like the moon to me, one of those places that you talked about, but would never ever go to.
Then when I was about seven our neighbours moved to Adelaide and when they visited every couple of years they brought back boomerangs and told us about their Australian adventures – I was hooked. So was my younger brother John. He loved everything to do with Australia too, and for as long as I can remember his main goal in life was to move there, which he did - to Sydney - in May 2002. Nine months later I followed him. It was totally unplanned, but as soon as I arrived I loved Australia and I knew it would be my home for the rest of my life, which was lucky, because three months after I arrived on the Gold Coast to work as the Executive Chef for the Marriot Resort in Queensland, I met my future wife, Sarah, who was running the hotel spa and health club at the time. We were married four years later, in July 2007.
My other great passion as a child was food. I always absolutely knew that I wanted to be a chef. I was brought up on good British food – roasts, apple pies, crumbles, lemon meringue pies, pork pies, cold spreads, meats, chutneys and pickles – still some of my favourite foods today. When I left school in 1982 I went straight into the kitchen as a dishwasher at a small country hotel a couple of miles from my parents. Soon I became an apprentice and studied for my City & Guilds qualifications one day a week and worked five days in the kitchen. I even worked the breakfast shift every morning for a little extra cash and kept a Saturday job. Cooking was a huge passion and still is.
At 20, I went to work for the Roux brothers in London. I worked for Albert Roux – the godfather of catering - for 13 years, which was incredibly hard, but also incredibly fulfilling. I look back on those years as my golden years of cooking. I learnt how to do soufflés, clarify consumes and prepare banquets for 300 without blinking. And that’s when I suddenly thought: “My goodness, haven’t I come a long way?”
Before moving to Australia in 2003 I worked all over the world including France, Holland and Thailand. But since joining the Intercontinental Melbourne - the Rialto as Executive Chef in September 2008 - I’ve never looked back. Working as a chef and living in Australia – that’s two childhood dreams that have come true.
When I was Head Chef at Le Poulbot in London Gordon Ramsey came to work with me for a week. I had a brilliant time - he’s such a scream. Obviously the relationship would have been different if I had been working for him. He absolutely swears as much as people think he does and he’s a big fellow too. We got on like a house on fire. Having someone of such incredible calibre in the kitchen helping out was fantastic. I was in stitches half the time. He’s a really funny guy, but not someone you’d want to cross. Albert Roux also introduced me to Marco Pierre White, who I was totally in awe of. We had lunch. He’s a big guy like Gordon and a very intense character, but what a chef – incredible.
Read the full article in our April 2009 edition.
