'i Didn't Really Know I Wanted To Be A Chef.'

Sun Herald

Sunday December 28, 2008

WINSOR DOBBIN

Mark Best is a rare breed of chef - he doesn't scream obscenities at staff or have an overinflated ego, writes WINSOR DOBBIN.

In an era of chefs with superstar status, huge egos, television shows, encyclopedic cookbooks and global ambitions, Mark Best is happy to let his food do the talking. His contemporaries employ expensive public relations machines and flaunt their bad behaviour but not the Sydney chef, who will probably mark the 10th anniversary of his iconic three-hat Surry Hills restaurant, Marque, with a quiet drink with his wife and son.

Best's food has been described as "gastronomic porn". It pushes the boundaries. The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2009 hails his "mini marvels". The New York Times says he creates "possibly the best food in Australia".

Marque is world-renowned among foodies and is among only a handful of restaurants to achieve 19/20 in the Good Food Guide. Best, on the other hand, is far less known to the general public than contemporaries like Neil Perry, Luke Mangan and Matt Moran. He likes it that way.

Softly spoken and intensely focused, Best, 43, became a chef by default. A country boy from Murray Bridge in South Australia, he left home at 16 to be an apprentice industrial electrician in the remote gold mines of Norseman, Western Australia. Working kilometres underground was "confronting".

He later moved to Sydney, "heading for civilisation" to work on the submarines at Cockatoo Island. But it was not until he was 25, thinking of opening a cafe with his wife, Valerie, that he had his first food epiphany.

Working a couple of days a week to help out a former flatmate at the Macleay Street Bistro, Best found his calling.

Now, he's a man in demand - and diners are prepared to pay handsomely to enjoy dishes such as roast quail with green lip abalone, chocolate feuilletage and cauliflower, or Spring Bay scallops with fish floss, apple and green mango.

The eight-course degustation dinner at Marque costs $145 a head and matching wines selected by sommelier Peter Healy add $75 to the bill, which means most couples struggle to stay under the $500 barrier. It's a place for gourmets, rather than those hoping to be seen at the restaurant du jour.

For those on tighter budgets, Best recently introduced a $45 three-course set lunch on Fridays, which has been a success.

"I see it as a reward to our existing customers and also as an incentive for people, who might not think of coming here other than for a special occasion, to eat at the restaurant and maybe get excited enough and want to come back and do the whole thing," he says. "Spending $145 is a big risk for a lot of people."

As a family man himself - his son nine-year-old Ethan loves raw oysters and visiting restaurants around the world and his former schoolteacher wife is also into food - Best says not opening for lunches allows him life-work balance.

Best also consults to the Centennial Park restaurant, having trained the staff and helped put the menu together, and is also working on a new hotel restaurant project in Albany, Wester Australia.

Cooking came naturally to Best, even though his youth featured dishes like "a giant leg of mutton cooked on a Sunday and providing cold cuts for the rest of the week - until the next roast".

"I didn't really know I wanted to be a chef, but I gave it a go to see if I enjoyed it," he says. "And I completely fell in love with the industry. We'd been mildly interested in food, but at that stage I showed no great flair for it. It's as if I somehow came across my destiny by accident."

He won the Josephine Pignolet Award for best up-and-coming chef in NSW while still an apprentice - and in 1995 he and his wife opened Peninsula Bistro in Balmain.

By now smitten, he dug into his savings to study and live in France - working as a "stagiaire" or unpaid assistant at Alain Passard's L'Arpege, a cutting-edge Paris restaurant with three Michelin stars.

"My ambition had always been slightly ahead of my ability - and continues to be so - but I felt I needed to go to the home of French food and learn from them," Best says. "It seemed like a folly at the time, but it certainly paid dividends. I learnt the culinary philosophical touchstones that I'm still able to draw on today."

He also had a stint at Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons in Britain, but was rather less impressed. He finished after cutting a thumb to the bone, which kept him out of the kitchen for three months.

Despite an offer to work with Rick Stein, he returned home and, after a short stint at Bilson's under Guillaume Brahimi, mortgaged his house to open Marque in April 1999 to immediate acclaim. He was named chef of the year in 2006.

The Marque kitchen, with Best working alongside Finnish-born chef Pasi Petanen - who has been with him for four years - and a brigade of four others is an oasis of calm. No outbursts, no volleys of obscenities. Yet on a Saturday night the kitchen produces nearly 600 plates of food. "There's a degree of organisation required," he admits.

Unlike many chefs, Best says he's "in the kitchen every day". Marque has prospered for a prodigious length of time in the volatile Sydney restaurant market.

"We struggled through until we established ourselves and began to build a reputation. Then we grew strong enough to withstand the vagaries of Sydney dining fashion and economic crises."

Asked what makes a good restaurant, he says: "We are continually inventive, don't rest on our laurels, provide a level of service that's all about professionalism and not about pretentiousness, not subservience or obsequiousness.

"In a way we are idealistic in that we try to do the absolute best we can with our resources, with service, food and wine, and are always trying to push the envelope. We are rarely satisfied with what is coming out of the kitchen. We are always pushing to improve and wine is integral to everything we do."

Best finds it hard to categorise his food, which has veered from French to mature Modern Australian. However, he says: "It's becoming more interesting as we travel more, and we are embracing Asian techniques and textures, if not overt flavours. We let the ingredients dictate."

The pressure to live up to the standards he has set keeps him on his toes.

"The expectations are enormous. It's no small pressure to have to meet those expectations. Some people are going to hate it, and do, they loathe it, while others love it and think I'm the Messiah.

"Somewhere in between lays the truth. It's like a theatre crowd. You can feel the energy - and it is palpable in the kitchen. When everything is on song and people are having a great time, that's a feeling you can't bottle."