Jeremy Strode had just enjoyed the gastronomic trip of a lifetime. It was July 2017 and the executive chef and founder of Sydney restaurant Bistrode CBD had spent 10 days sampling the finest bistros of Paris and London. Taste testing alongside him was Nathan Johnson, head chef of the Sydney brasserie Felix. Dispatched by Merivale, the parent company of their two restaurants, the aim was to fire up their imaginations and inspire fresh platefuls of brilliance back home.
Her platinum hair is carefully blow-dried, but Jane's hands are notched with burns and knife scars from her years as a pastry chef. Having run restaurants with her husband – the pair opened the first incarnation of Bistrode together in an old butcher's shop in Surry Hills in 2005 – she understood his world on multiple levels. Yet Jane remains bewildered by his death. "I'm not a grieving widow, I'm a seething widow," she says simply.
Bipolar disorder is a tough burden for anyone to manage. But Strode had to contend with it in a notoriously demanding profession, one in which the creative pressure is unrelenting and brutal hours the norm. Jane is intimately familiar with the physical demands of the trade, having apprenticed at Sydney's Rockpool in the late 1990s: "Back then, if you weren't giving 80 hours a week, and sleeping in your car between shifts, then you weren't working hard enough.
"The hospitality industry is renowned for its unforgiving nature, adding pressure personally and on our relationships," Strode said. "Having the foresight and taking the time to have a conversation with someone you may or may not know and asking if they're okay is a wonderful thing."Louise Kennerley, that "unforgiving nature" has long prevailed.
Such occupational hazards conspire to form an environment that, if not inherently dangerous, can easily compound any external problems a worker is facing. "It would be difficult to make it a health-promoting job," Martin concedes. "But other 'hard' industries like the police and emergency services are starting to make real inroads. So it can be done.
Then his wife Natalie Tricarico introduced him to Pollard. Originally from Sydney, the 43-year-old Pollard is creator of the 1 Giant Mind meditation app and teaching academy, and travels the world as a meditation teacher to the rich and famous.
Working closely with Pollard, the focus soon expanded from a self-help exercise into a program designed to introduce a softer dynamic to his restaurants. "It's about re-humanising the kitchen," says Pollard, a sharply dressed bald guy with a quiet charisma and ready smile. "Every industry needs some of that, but we're starting here because it's the one that's on fire.
claregarry6 GoodWeekendMag This is so true. Was a chef in 1980s-90s and saw appalling treatment of staff by ego driven, sexist male chefs. The kitchens I worked in that were run by women were a completely different story. Calm, less stressful, happier places to work.
GoodWeekendMag Seriously theage? Promoting GeorgeCalombaris as someone caring about his staff? He owes hundreds & hundreds of past & present staff over $7 million! He has practised large-scale long-term wage theft. Not the actions of a caring person. WageTheft masterthief masterchefau
GoodWeekendMag A great read, but it is going to take a generation or 2 to rid hospitality of it's stigmas, aggressive characters and primal donnas! Oh, BTW, gcalombaris, MarcoPierreWht and neilperry can take their hollow words and ignorance of their pasts and fuck right off
GoodWeekendMag I can only assume that the SMH is in favour of this, given what was plastered all over the Good Weekend this morning.
GoodWeekendMag The positive flipside of this is that hard work provides therapy for a lot of people with mental issues as it can give focus and achievement. Also, Calombaris seeking victim status after stealing nearly $8m from his workers is the ultimate slimeball act😓
GoodWeekendMag But given the stories about Colombaris' restaurants' failure to pay their employees properly, to the tune of over $7m (!) why the publicity for him on the front page of Good Weekend Magazine?
GoodWeekendMag Great story. And it’s not just the food industry!
GoodWeekendMag It's well known that a majority of chefs are either alcoholics or stoners. Doesn't seem like a healthy industry to work in.
GoodWeekendMag Paying staff properly might help.