By Leigh O’Connor.
With a cooking style that flirts with the concepts of roots-to-shoots, ferment and cooking with fire, it’s never dull in the kitchen with Kooroomba Vineyard’s Head Chef Elliot Platz.
Nestled on a six-hectare vineyard in the Fassifern Valley at Mt Alford, Kooroomba boasts a cellar door, restaurant, wedding and function venue and lavender shop, all with magnificent views of the Scenic Rim mountains; soak up a South of France ambience while perusing a Mod Oz menu embracing local produce and enjoy estate wines in style.
Born in Warrill View in Queensland’s Scenic Rim, Elliot says his early culinary influence stems from his grandmother when he would spend weekends as a young boy sitting watching her bake biscuits – sometimes sneakily eating cake batter from the spoon – Sunday roasts and everything in between.
"She showed me the beauty and love of food,” he recalls. "It was never my intention to become a cook. I loved to cook, but never saw it as a career choice growing up.
"I was never an academic achiever; my grades were average and my attendance was even worse. I guess factors growing up and influences guided me into finally settling into a hospitality career.”
Starting his culinary career at a local café in Harrisville, Elliot would ride his father’s push bike 4 km to work in the mornings on the weekends - after three years he had to undergo a knee reconstruction which was when he decided to pursue other careers.
"I’ve always floated in and out of hospitality, but after spending 12 months as a farm hand at a local producer, I came to a realisation that if I wanted to be a Chef, I had to not float on the idea but dive in with no intention of leaving.
"Good food starts with good produce, being on both sides of the whole paddock-to-plate ethos showed me you don’t need to manipulate the flavour of a tomato, if that tomato is grown in an amazing environment and well cared for by the producers. I’m just grateful to do just that as a Chef.”
Elliot shares his recipe for lamb, buckwheat, sheep’s yoghurt and rhubarb BBQ sauce with AGFG readers as an ideal dish for late Summer months when rhubarb is at the peak of its season.
"I don’t have what they say a ‘feature flavour’, it comes down to the hyper-seasonality of the produce that we use in the restaurant which then dictates the best-suited style to showcase it. Flavour has to be fluid, always changing and growing.
"The one thing I love about this business, especially food, is that it speaks the same language, no matter where you go. Food brings people together, technology I feel has both brought us closer but also separated us at the same time. Food for me is something that will still have a human connection, bringing everyone together to share a meal.”
