About Us

In Brief

Name: Peter Young
Born: 1956
Qualifications: BA (Fine Arts)
Jobs: chef, waiting and food preparation in many restaurants in Sydney, Italy, England, France, food writer, manager Valhalla Cinema in Glebe, caterer, graphic designer, chef Australian Embassy in Brussels, chef Canberra.
Life motto: Nothing's ever as bad as it seems.
Lucky break: Being offered a job working at the Australian Embassy in Brussels where I stayed for 15 years.

What Vivienne Skinner had to say
Sydney Morning Herald - September, 2006

Peter Young ­ Chef to Ambassadors

Australia was not famed for its culinary excellence in the late 1960s but even that does not excuse the devon and mashed potato bread roll. The 'recipe' appeared in the cooking pages of a well-known women's magazine and Peter Young can confirm that not only did his mother take note of it, she also prepared it and served it up at a neighbour's wedding. "It was served cold and the mashed potato had onion chunks in it. And somewhere within the bread roll was a pineapple slice." It was not his mother's finest hour but it did reflect a prevailing tendency in Aussie kitchens towards 'bold experimentation' that, putting it delicately, was not always a success.

Australian cooking has come a long way since then and Peter Young is in a good position to observe the fads, the confusion and the fusion. Almost 40 years later and Young, a slim, boyish-looking 50 year old has spent most of his working life in kitchens of the world surrounded by food. In fact while we spoke, a rich brew of Valencia orange marmalade was bubbling on his home stove in the Canberra suburb of Narrabundah. 'You've got to use the foods when they're fresh, when they're in season," he says. And though there's nothing 'seasonal' about devon, Young says his mother's love of food and cooking and creativity was an enormous influence on his career.

Peter Young lives with his French partner, Olivier, whom he married in Belgium two years ago, taking advantage of that country's liberal marriage laws. Young was then head chef at the busy Australian Embassy in Brussels, an exciting but arduous job that he held for 15 years. With Brussels the European capital, the embassy was particularly busy with constant rounds of trade talks, as well as the regular public functions. Young's role included cooking for the ambassador's family. He got used to working alone, only calling for assistance for the really big events. In all, Young was chef to four consecutive Australian ambassadors. "People would say to me, don't you feel like a piece of furniture being passed on from boss to boss?"

He's been back in Australia now a couple of years and has found reacclimatising a lot tougher than he'd expected. "Strangely, I feel that Olivier has acclimatised so much better than I have because I've been away for so long and the country has changed so much from the image I had in my head." One great leap forward that Young cherishes is the interest in Australian bush tucker, the wattle seeds, the bush tomatoes, bush peppers and lemon myrtle.

He said Europeans are fascinated by traditional Australian bush food but feels that here it's taken longer to catch on. He serves it whenever possible at embassy functions. "There was an ambassadors' dining club in Brussels and when it was my turn, I created a seafood 'rockpool' with mussels, oysters and seaweed based on a Stephanie Alexander recipe. I followed it with lamb marinated in bush pepper ­ which went an interesting purple colour ­ then an apple tart flavoured with lemon myrtle and wattle seeds in the pastry. It had to be perfect for those people and, thank God, the meal worked. In fact I got a letter from the French ambassador congratulating me. I was very touched by that."

One weekend, Young was 'lent' to the Australian embassy in Warsaw to cook a kangaroo BBQ for two thousand people. "It was like a military operation. I was flown in and didn't sleep for 24 hours. With one assistant I had to trim all the kangaroo. I'd pre-made the marinades. The BBQ, which we set up in Warsaw's main square, was a 20 metre charcoal grill, the biggest bloody thing I'd seen in my life. People loved the kangaroo and after it was all over, I was taken to a whacko Polish nightclub where I drank too much vodka and had to catch a plane home to Brussels with a hideous hangover."

Now back in Australia and living in 'embassy city' it was inevitable that Young would gravitate back to the embassy circuit. He has found a niche cooking meals for small embassy gatherings, something he says is the trend these days. "The embassies now go for smaller more intimate dinners for a dozen or so. It's perfect for me and something the bigger catering companies aren't interested in."

He also talks to embassy staff and guests at functions about Australian cuisine and how it has changed. So what is Australian food? "We're not like the French who have hundreds of years of tradition. What we have is a frame of mind, an openness about how we use our wonderful meats and seafood and fresh seasonal produce. It's the migrants that have created markets for their products and the chefs that have travelled around the world bringing ideas back home."

Peter Young hopes one day soon to set up a cooking school within a guesthouse, where guests can eat and learn and share his pleasure in food. "The menu will not be big because we will cook only the best and freshest food that's available on any given day. And there will be tripe and offal. I love offal. And Olivier is a fiend for offal"

Peter Young

Freelance Chef
Food Consultant

ph 0404 742 611

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