Savannah Sexton

Hi Savannah. It’s great to talk to you. I haven’t spoken to any chefs in Brisbane before, you’re my first.

That’s awesome.

I’ve been reading about you and I see you’ve done a lot in a short space of time. You started cooking quite young and seemed to be one of those chefs that just always knew what you wanted to do.

Definitely. I’m only 24, so I feel as though I have packed a lot into a short amount of time. I definitely knew that cooking was something I wanted to do since I was very young. I used to always cook with my grandma and my parents. Food was always the centre of our house.

Was that a cultural thing?

Yes, South African. My mum was born in Zambia and my dad was born in Roma, Western Queensland. They met in London when they were both over there and lived in South Africa for a few years, but pretty much all my mum’s family still live there. I go over every two years pretty much to catch up with everyone. So I had a pretty significant South African streak growing up. 

Is that part of a cooking style you still enjoy or is it more part of your family life and memories now?

I see a lot of similarities between South African and Australian cuisines because both countries are quite new and we have a lot of influences from other cultures. I definitely have a lot of fond memories of what we call braai in South Africa, barbecuing. We’d have Aussie barbecues and South African braai; lots of outdoor eating by the pool when I was growing up.

Great. And now you’re in a region that is pretty famous for seafood and a lot of great produce from the hinterland. That must be great to cook with.

I did my apprenticeship in south-east Queensland, in Toowoomba, in a French degustation restaurant (Veraison) as my first job. Toowoomba is right in the middle of the Lockyer Valley, so we had amazing fruit and vege and Jondaryan and the surrounding outer towns have amazing beef, there’s Schulz’s pig farm as well. I was super lucky as an apprentice to be exposed to such amazing produce. I’ve been lucky to continue working with excellent produce now that I have moved to Brisbane. There’s not a lot of hard work to be done when you have such good food to cook with. Keep it simple, keep it sophisticated, and let the ingredients shine through for themselves.

I was reading that you already have work smarter, not harder attitude towards cooking, which is great, given that we read a lot these days about chefs burning out and how important it is to get the balance between putting in the kinds of hours chefs have to put in with putting in the right amount of hours. It sounds as though you already have that worked out.

It’s a fine line to walk and is something that’s been said to me from a young age; chefs burn out, there are no good chefs over the age of 30. I almost got scared out of cheffing when I was really young because people told me I was going to be working 100 hours a week and I’d be exhausted and wouldn’t be able to work for long. I thought that was crazy and just not sustainable so I have tried to adopt a mantra for every aspect of my life, to analyse what I do and work smarter. You can still do amazing stuff, but just be smart about it. Then you won’t burn out. You can always do something new and sophisticated when you’re clever about it.

Where do the ideas for these new and sophisticated things come from? It sounds as though you are inspired by and have a connection to the ingredients and produce, but do your ideas come from the people you work with, books, Instagram? What inspires you the most?

I have done a lot of reading over my 10 years of cooking. I have over 300 cookbooks at home. I love reading and seeing what people are doing all around the world. I definitely get inspired from people I’m working with. I like working with like-minded chefs who are passionate about the produce, chefs who are innovative. Lots of reading and lots of chats with local chefs. We’ve just had a bunch of great restaurants open here and people are usually happy to have a chat. Brisbane is still quite small, so everyone knows each other. There’s a great sense of community in Brisbane; everyone knows each other in hospitality.

That’s what hospitality should be about, connections with people, and not just with the people you are feeding, but also with those around you. It makes it a much nicer experience for everyone, I think, if there is a circle of community and appreciation.

It’s not competitive, we don’t slam other restaurants. The food culture in Brisbane is really growing at the moment. It’s a bit of a special time. There’s a massive sense of community and it is really nice to be part of it.

It sounds as though Stokehouse Q is going from strength to strength as well.

We are just releasing our winter menu, which is exciting for all of us. Everyone gets pumped around new menu time. Unfortunately, we’ve had Richard (Ousby) resign. He finished up last week. That’s a bit different for Stokehouse. He has been such a part of the furniture for the last 6 years. So it feels as though we are entering a new chapter, but that’s exciting too.

That’s true. As sad as it it to lose people who have been such a big feature of a place, as you say, it can also be exciting.

We are at the end of a really big chapter, but I feel as though we’ll get bigger and better from here.

I?'ve read that Stokehouse places a lot of emphasis on sustainability and a lot of restaurants mention sustainability and seasonality. What's the reality of that for you on a day to day basis?

There has definitely been a lot of debate about it lately. We try to use local and sustainable produce where we can. We just recently got involved with the Good Fish Project which is about using underutilised species of fish that haven’t come to the forefront yet, so we are excited to be part of that.

I had a chat to Ben Shewry about that for Broadsheet. It’s an excellent initiative.

We work with a fish farm that’s about 40 minutes-drive from the restaurant , called Rocky Point Aquaculture, they’ve been doing amazing stuff with fish. They breed their own black kingfish and grouper. They won an award at the Delicious State awards for their grouper, and we are super proud to be using that product. We try and use farmers using sustainable practices, like Longreach Lamb, which is up in the middle of Queensland. I think it’s a six hour flight from Brisbane, it’s pretty far. They don’t use any chemicals on the farm, their lambs cruise around eating whatever grass they want, drink water out of the natural waterways, they live the best happy life. Luckily enough we then get to use their product. It has an amazing flavour because of what they are eating and because there is not a lot of interference from the farmers. 

We are pretty severe on our recycling. We use a composter at Stokehouse. All our vegie matter that can’t be used in food production is composted and the compost goes on the Southbank garden, which is great. There is definitely room for improvement but we do what we can for a restaurant our size.

Obviously you’re junior sous chef, so you’re across it all, but do you have more of a leaning towards savoury or sweet?

Definitely a pastry leaning. When I first moved to Brisbane, I came out of savoury to work pretty much only pastry. I didn’t know that much about pastry and wanted to dip my toes in. I worked at Chester Street Bakery for about 18 months. It has unfortunately closed now, but I learned a lot, especially considering I knew almost nothing when I started there. In the end I was baking anything. After Chester Street, I moved to Stokehouse as a chef de partie on the pastry section. As I started working up through the kitchen, I started leaning away a little bit. But I definitely have such a sweet tooth, which is sometimes a problem.

I see that you were on the judging panel of the Royal Queensland Food and Wine Show for the cheese and dairy sections.

Yes I was involved in that this year and last year, judging the cheeses, ice creams, and other dairy products like yoghuts and flavoured milks.

What are you looking for there? How do you judge them?

All the cheeses are broken into categories, like a white mould category, cheddar, feta, halloumi and all of the products entered are judged against the same category. We judge on quality, taste, how it’s packaged and sold…the presentation of the cheese. Similar to Sydney and Melbourne’s Grand Dairy, whatever gets over a certain amount of points…everything is marked out of 20…it will be ranked, Bronze, Silver or Gold.

It’s pretty good to be part of that.

It has been so exciting. I love cheese so much. I totally understand how sommeliers can become obsessed with wine. I get obsessed about cheese in exactly the same way. There is so much love and so many things that go onto cheese to make it amazing or not so amazing. There might just be the tiniest variance from year to year that will affect the product. It has been great being part of it. There’s a lot to learn. I thought I knew a lot about cheese and then last year when I got to the judging I thought, oh my god, I have so much to learn. Russell Smith is the Chief Judge and it has been awesome to work with him.

It sounds as though you’ve worked very hard over the last 10 years. Have you had a chance to travel and try the food in other countries?

I’ve definitely travelled around South Africa a few times. I went to Europe in 2013; France, Holland, Ireland, England, Scotland. I went to Singapore last year and did a little food trek. It was amazing. I’ve been to Thailand and Cambodia as well. My very first job was in a Thai restaurant as a kitchen hand. I cut up many many vegetables for stir fry. I’ve done a bit of travel but there’s a lot more to see.

What was your favourite eating experience overseas?

I have to say Odette in Singapore. It’s a two Michelin star restaurant. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before, from the service, the food, the presentation, the décor of the restaurant, it was amazing. I ate an amazing pigeon with black garlic and kampot pepper and it changed my life. It was so delicious. 

I love that. Some chefs, the older they get, the less blown away and the less food changes their life. They are happy with delicious, rather than amazing. It astounds me the repertoire of flavours chefs build; food memories, but very focussed food memories that can be drawn on later. I feels as though there is a hidden library of flavour profiles inside you.

Definitely. You also grow that library reading books. It almost creates more of a desire just reading a recipe or seeing a photo of something. You understand the technique and you can kind of get the idea of what t might taste like, but if you then make it and it blows your mind, and you think, I’m going to remember this recipe forever because it exceeded my expectations.

What’s your goal, or your plan? Do you want to have your own place, or do you want to work your way up where you are? What’s your ideal?

My ideal plan…? I’ve just enrolled in a Bachelor of Food and Nutrition, which is mostly about the chemistry and biology of how we eat and how food reacts in our bodies. I think I would like to go into cheesemaking eventually. I was talking to someone who does judging at the RNA as well and he works for a company called Chr. Hansen. He is a cheese taster, which is the dream job really. He is contracted to companies to check their product, see how the quality changes and how to keep the quality consistent and so on. I think I’d like to finish this degree and get a base understanding of how to do that and then move into cheesemaking and see how I go from there.

That does sound pretty idyllic. And then you can write some books yourself, perhaps.

That wouldn’t be a mad idea.

Thank you, Savannah, for sharing so much with me. I should let you get back to work, perhaps.

Definitely. I have a massive box of fish that has my name written on it.

Stokehouse Q, Sidon Street, South Brisbane

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