The Gantry Restaurant and Bar at Pier One Sydney Harbour appoints David Beckham’s personal chef Chris Irving from Gordon Ramsay Group

Canadian-born chef Chris Irving outside his new restaurant The Gantry at Pier One Sydney Harbour. Picture: John Fotiadis.

The Canadian-born chef, who also worked alongside Gordon Ramsay in his UK restaurants, was enticed Down Under by the high-quality fresh produce.

The chance to soak up the views over Walsh Bay from new The Gantry Restaurant and Bar on a daily basis also played a part.

“I have lots of friends who are Australian and it’s always been one of my top destinations to travel to,” he says.

“I’ve been using Australian vegetables and Australian lamb internationally.

“Getting to come and get my fingers on it was pretty desirable.”

Pier One will be Canadian chef Chris Irving’s new home.

Irving grew up in the Yukon territory, on the border of Alaska in Canada’s west, and said the food there was “awful”.

“It was lots of meat and potatoes because everything had to get shipped up on a truck from down south,” he says.

“But we had lots of amazing seafood. We would go salmon fishing every week and eat Dungeness crabs within an hour of catching them.”

These experiences contributed to Irving’s belief that dishes should be based on seasonal products produced locally and sustainably — but not outrageously expensive.

“I’m a big advocate of working with producers and suppliers and specifically farmers to use the best quality ingredients that there is to offer,” he says.

“Last week I went out with my fish supplier and looked at all the fresh fish coming off the boats.

“I’m also going to a lamb farm at Wagga and to Martin Boetz’s Cooks Co-op farm on the Hawkesbury River.

“It’s not just about planting seeds for these people, it’s about caring for the produce.

“I want to go out and get the carrots out of the dirt and meet the people growing them. I want to be able to bring things back from the farm and have a story.”

The new restaurant has been named after the old gantry.

The new restaurant will seat approximately 70 people inside and 60 on the deck outside and will feature an open-style kitchen, chef’s table and cold seafood display with chefs opening oysters and cracking crabs legs in front of you.

“We don’t want it to be really stuffy or pretentious, we want it to be fun and interactive,” Irving says.

Irving, 32, learned a lot from Ramsay when he was responsible for menu creation, set up and execution of services for his restaurants including The Savoy Grill, Claridges and Maze.

“When he’s talking about anything — whether it’s a burger or a piece of toast — he’s always incredibly passionate about it,” he says.

It also opened doors to other opportunities, including working as a private chef to David and Victoria Beckham in their homes in the UK and US for more than a year.

“I didn’t care who they were — they were just a family to me,” Irving says.

“I didn’t talk to David about football — we would talk about things like tattoos and motorcycles.

“David once came back from a trip to Beijing and he started flicking through photos showing me what he’d eaten or he’d call me and say: ‘I just want to come home and have some fish ‘n’ chips.”

Irving ‘s hospitality career began when he moved to the cowboy town of Calgary in Alberta, Canada where he got a job in a bar with a restaurant attached.

He was soon dragged into the kitchen.

Most recently he was guest chef at Marriott Sukhumvit in Bangkok, serving experiential chef’s table creations.

From there he was invited to Australia by the owners of Pier One — part of the Marriott group’s upscale Autograph Collection.

He visited in September to meet them and do a food tasting before moving here.

Source:  Daily Telegraph - 11 November 2014