Serge Dansereau

Serge Dansereau does everything with great energy and rigour. Be it planning the layout of theBathers Pavilion kitchens, the detailing in the toilets, the accessibility of the rubbish disposal area, the choice of laundry machinery, the variety of breads and cakes to be made daily, not to mention ice cream and butter making - yes, he is planning to churn his own butter.

But he is still able to step back from all this and reflect on his industry in a way that makes you believe that if ever he left behind the heat of his beloved fire, he'd make a great writer. Hang on, he has done that too for his book Food and Friends published last year, for which he also learnt photography - just to round out his varied crafts.

In the years we've spoken about food and kitchens, he has always had things to say which are meaningful and often prophetic, such as - "I think there is a need now for all chefs to set an example to other chefs, to actually stand back and eat our food and taste it." Years ago he spoke about the dangers of go-go food, now his message is, as with many others in the book, the importance of tasting and of understanding flavours. "It's really important to know what you want to do, and do it carefully, instead of constantly changing, which just confuses everybody in the end. We all went through this phase of changing things for the sake of change. It's the chefs who get bored with it, not the people who eat the food. This means we often lose some of the classics. Trying to find the balance is a discipline. You have to stay in touch with the market and use the products that are available on a week-to-week basis. But you have to find a middle way between changing your menu four times a year, like they do in Europe, and what we do here in changing it every week." Integrity of purpose and perfect freshness of ingredients - not simple demands but ones which Serge pursues relentlessly. Amazingly enough, he usually gets what he wants - in the end.

For many years as executive chef at The Regent in Sydney, his sourcing of produce was the inspiration of all other chefs around the country. Serge used the buying power of the hotel chain to get great quality and prices. But not without much angst, rejection of produce and personal training. His 'weekend relaxation' would often consist of visiting farms to look at how things were being grown and harvested to advise the growers, "they have to make a living too, so we have to find a way to make it work for them."

Now, as co-owner of Bathers Pavilion at Balmoral, in partnership with Victoria Alexander his domain extends well beyond the kitchen. He's been there on the building line, instructing, rejecting and demanding until he got the facilities and the environment that he has long dreamt of. When foundations were incorrectly laid, plumbing pipes put in the wrong position, cupboards at wrong height, Serge insisted that they be pulled out and re-done. Headaches and frustrations galore, and expense - but all part of what he considers as essential to creating the environment for "the most significant food situation in Sydney, if not Australia. The goal here is to be the restaurant that will be seen by people outside of Australia, as redefining what food in Australia really is". For Serge this is "the blending of Asian ingredients with French technique; eaten in the right context". A grand vision and Serge has served a long apprenticeship to get there.

In Canada he started as a kitchen hand, sometimes working all night long when the night cleaner failed to show. He then trained with Swiss and French chefs while doing a two-year course at the Institut de Tourisme de d'Hotellerie du Quebec. After graduating, he learnt a huge amount as travelling aide to the district executive chef of a large corporation and working as a relief chef around the country. "It was very difficult, I had to go out and buy everything - all the stock and equipment and just had to survive. Sometimes I worked all night and then all day with no sleep when I was behind in my mise en place." He was forced to calm down, pace himself and get organised.

That ability to organise led to his appointment at the age of 26 as executive chef of the Regent in 1984, a position he left at the end of 1998 in order to go into the partnership at Bathers. In 1997 he traveled to Europe to research Food and Friends, published in 1998. He came back from France determined to treat food better, to take it to the next step and attain a higher degree of quality. Serge had felt restricted in catering for hotel guests, now his customers are only there for the food. "After all those years, I now know exactly what I want. I want more flavour of wood and fire. I want it to be semi-rustic in winter, and in summer maybe with a little more Asian influence." He feels that the Sydney public is a fickle one, not conservative and that they like to be " on the cutting edge of food, always wanting to try new things." Serge explained how his menu has had an Asian influence for many years because his first sous chef was Hong Kong Chinese.

"When we opened Kable's, 16 years ago, my sous chef had trained at the Mandarin in Hong Kong and then went to work with Mossiman at the Dorchester, so he had this cross culture. It was kind of natural to work together on what he was comfortable with. So when that East meets West fashion came in, it was like 'Oh well, we have always done that.' But it must be thought about properly to make sure that the method of putting it together and the ingredients really work. This is not natural to most of Sydney, sometimes I think we do things too fast. I want to take stock of all that, see how people eat, and remain in tune. The Asian cooking methods and blending have been done, we just need to take it to the next stage, to be little more studied and not to forget the essentials of French cooking which have given us the base".

Other Serge Dansereau links: Food and Friends by Serge Dansereau, an interview with Serge in 1991 and a review of the Bathers Pavilion

Serge Dansereau's Recipes