chef

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     SHAUN QUADE

“You ask yourself what sort of restaurant do you want? What kind of food will we do? Who will be our customers?”

I am a chef-owner of Lûmé restaurant in South Melbourne.

I wanted to cook from an early age, despite not having any role models who were adept in the kitchen amongst my family. I’m not sure why, cooking was just something I was drawn to.

High school was a necessary evil, I didn’t get much out of it. I’ve always been quite self-sufficient, and if there’s something I want to learn, I will take it upon myself to do so – I won’t wait to be taught. I find researching and learning something on my own a lot more satisfying.

One of my first jobs was working at McDonalds Continue reading →

Personal Trainer Caine Tsang doing pushups

      CAINE TSANG

“When you help a guy lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle, it’s going to improve not just his life, but his kids’, too.”

I am a Personal Trainer at Virgin Active.

After I graduated from high school in Geelong, I went straight to work. I didn’t really have a focus on what I wanted to do, so I just took a job that came my way. I started out in the furniture business, doing things like furniture assembly and spraying. Over a about three years, I changed a few jobs and companies, but in the end realized my heart wasn’t in it.

Next I thought I’d get into cooking. I started with a cookery course at Gordon’s institute in Geelong. From there I applied for a few shift jobs in Surf Coast and Geelong area.  I worked as a chef for about 5-6 years, though I never completed the test part of getting a certificate. It was hard to combine studying and working as a chef. Continue reading →

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    TENDAI EVANS MANGWIRO

“Going home empty-handed was not an option”

I am a chef de partie at MoVida Next Door in Melbourne.

My first passion was IT. I’ve always loved doing it, starting with high school. It was really interesting, especially in Zimbabwe where I am from, because it is a developing country and it’s a relatively new thing there.

After I finished my A-levels , I did a graduate diploma in IT at National Institute of Technology. NIT is an Indian college, but they have a subsidiary in Zimbabwe. Originally I wanted to be a systems engineer, but I ended up doing network engineering at NIT, because in order to do systems you had to have really high grades, which I lacked unfortunately! Continue reading →

chef sunny gilbert in mt erica kitchen

     SUNNY GILBERT

“I went from cooking in some of the best restaurants in the world to parmigianas and fish’n chips.”

I am an Executive Chef at Austin’s in Prahran, and also a part-owner of The Window Corner Cafe in Reservoir.

I didn’t have a concrete plan to go into hospitality. After school, I got heavily involved with the marketing and promotion side of nightclubs, which wasn’t the healthiest job as you can imagine – late nights, drinking and all else that comes with it! And after a little while of that lifestyle, my mum, in her wisdom said: “Son, you better go and get a job where you can get a feed.” I was pretty skinny at the time.

So I went to my cricket club and asked if they had a kitchen hand position for me. They did and I found myself working with John Walsh, who was big news, big time in Darwin – he used to work at the Lodge for Malcolm Fraser as his personal chef. John was my introduction to a hard-working, strict kitchen environment. Continue reading →