'From Paddock to Plate'

Kate McGettigan, managing director of Coast restaurant/bar, has her first memories of the food industry are of growing up in a pub in Sydney. On her last visit to Hong Kong she 'just fell in love with the place' and brought over old mate and exec chef Aaron Kearney, who showed me a bizarre but beautiful approach to food.
 
Bizarre, in that the kitchen has more high-tech equipment than any I've seen before save maybe two: Bo, of course, and Amber. But this is a family-owned operation and for such, especially in rent-mad SoHo, it is quite a feat. But instead of crazy, innovative high-tech dishes, chef Kearney uses it to simplify, to render pure, honest the food he serves. "You should know where the food comes from and goes through from paddock to plate," he asserts. "We make all our own stocks and sauces and the water used for washing is run through a special filtration system which allows us to use heat, not soap to clean the pots and plates."
 
A special pizza fridge, the bio filter which catches all food for compost, LED lighting, a combined oven... I'm a former chef and I still had to ask what some of the equipment did. "Its whole purpose is to make good quality food you might get at a Sydney pub at the beach, not to dazzle with foie gras and truffles," he says.

Back in the Day

The chef had to adapt to the different market in Hong Kong, previously running the kitchen in a venture in Singapore with McGettigan, her brother and now-general manager Jimmy Lipman. "It was a much bigger kitchen there and it seemed easier to get ahold of produce. And back in Oz you could get on the phone with a supplier at 2am and have your order the next day. Here you need to try and guess what you need several days in advance if not more. Unless you have a specific function you're never really sure what to expect."
 
Before the Singapore gig, he was catering to rock shows and mass festivals. Oh, just the Dali Lamma, Snoop Dogg, KISS, Pink, Beyonce... y'know, the usual. While Coast still does catering, he wants to expand his activity with cooking classes for small groups or even workshops. "There are only really 10 cooking techniques you need to learn to become a proficient cook," he says. "From these 10 techniques you simply expand and extend the knowledge to different dishes." For an example, he took me through the lengthy but relatively simple process of making a pie made with lamb shank. There are two key elements: using the fat rendered from cooking the meat as part of the roux, or sauce, for maximum flavour. The second key is the pastry, which must be firm but not too tough.

 
I guess I must have wasted all those years at cooking school. "The first thing is to get a really good knife," he explains, 'Those knives over there are garbage, just general utility, you would never work on anything delicate with them. Now here's a nice knife: My fish filleting special. Feel how sharp that is; I send them to Tasmania to get honed by a master knife maker." I've never really heard of this before, as I was taught to sharpen my own, but what the heck, if you've got the spare cash to send a box of knives halfway across the world for some elderly gent to work up a sweat over, so be it.

Kate's Mum

I found it interesting to say the least that Kate and Brian's mum was awarded a cooking scholorship and taught general manager Jimmy Lipman from the age of 17. This really is a family operation indeed. And since Aadam has great connections in Tasmania they will soon be the only place in town to serve 9th Island Pinot Grigio from Tasmania starting March 17th. "It's the only white wine I will drink," says McGettigan. And will mom one day be a guest chef? "Maybe," laughs McGettigan.