Dan Hunter explains the secrets to Brae’s success
Brae is one of Australia’s most notable restaurant success stories.
Located on an undulating 12 hectares of organic farmland up in Birregurra, Victoria, Brae recently got a spot on the World's Best 50 Restaurants list.
It was ranked in the 44th spot and together with Ben Shewry's Attica (No. 32), these are the only two Aussie restaurants on that list.
Chef Dan Hunter, who has worked for other people including Mugaritz in Spain and the highly acclaimed Royal Mail in Dunkeld, Victoria, runs Brae with his wife Julianne and two friends-turned-partners.
"It's not like we're country people," Hunter told The Straits Times. "We have a lot of friends in the city and we run a very contemporary restaurant. I just work in a manner that you can't do in the city. A lot of it is the result of my being out there in that (farm) environment."
He says his cooking philosophy is built around what he can grow.
"We don't grow everything, although this past summer we grew about 95 per cent because it was a mild summer," he says.
That said, he does not grow his own onions or other vegetables such as carrots, artichokes or brassicas.
That’s because there is a certified organic farm nearby which does it.
"We grow things that don't travel well, or that we can't get from the marketplace, or that I can't buy organic at a good price," he says.
The result: everything at Brae is 100 per cent organic.
Creating his own restaurant brought his vision to fruition.
"When my wife and I came back from Spain, we said we didn't want to own our own restaurant,” he says. “But after working for a year we said, 'we need to own our own restaurant'. You can't work for people. You just can't. When you work at the level we do, you can't be asking for someone else's opinion all the time. You need to have the freedom to focus on your own."
by Leon Gettler, May 25th 2017
