Chathun Perera
Chefs
AUSTRALIAN GOOD FOOD GUIDE - Home of the Chef Hat Awards
Thomas Ege
Born:
Stuttgart, Germany.
History:
After tough, but educational training in Germany, I worked in all different kinds of restaurants and hotels. Starting at 5-star Hotel Steigenberger, followed by the well-known German catering company Boehm and another 5-star Hotel Marriott.
I have had my own restaurants. I have qualifications as a Master Chef and was running a traditional Bavarian Beer Garden and Restaurant and my own multi award-winning fine dining restaurant in Germany. My trip continued finally over Vienna, the Cayman Islands and to Australia where I worked for 3 years as Head Chef in various resorts. I am now located in Bowral near Sydney at Milton Park to start the next chapter in my career.
Have you always wanted to be a Chef?
Absolutely! I started cooking at the age of twelve – highly influenced by my Mother, a big interest in cooking traditional, tasty and locally influenced food.
How would you define your style?
Crossover fusion – a mixture of intercontinental ingredients and techniques on one plate.
What is your feature flavour these days?
Lemon myrtle and tonka beans.
Obsessive compulsive about?
Fresh, local ingredients.
Your greatest culinary inspirations/influences:
Johann Lafer and Cornelia Poletto.
What do you love about this business?
Creativity, multiple working places and plenty of options.
An ingredient you can’t live without?
Meat – proteins.
Most ‘eyebrow raising’ menu item?
Lobster Ice Cream.
Signature dish:
Prosciutto wrapped scallop on sweet potato and pineapple mash with a 5-spice rum drizzle.
Horderns Restaurant
Set on a secluded private estate in the picturesque Southern Highlands of New South Wales, Horderns Restaurant nestles in the Milton Park Country House Hotel, a grand mansion built at the turn of the 19th Century. Rich fabrics, high back chairs and soft lighting give a distinctive feel of great French restaurants, enchanting diners with an elegant vibe while parted drapes look out to manicured gardens and textured walls provide a warm depth to ambient dining. Begin with choices like spanner crab salad, avocado, orange, radish, mandarin gel, citrus emulsion and herbs; before lamb osso bucco, ripe tomato coulis, pearl barley, zucchini, cherry truss tomatoes and crispy leek. Finish with a divine dessert of shiso and lime sorbet, lime curd and espuma, mint oil dust and an almond cracker.
