The best local produce stories you’ve never heard

Sourced direct from Daylesford

Victorian local produce is really buzzing right now. There are plenty of local chefs promoting it but a special mention has to go to Royal Mail Head Chef Dan Hunter who this week was awarded “Outstanding Use of Regional Produce by a Chef” at the 2009 Vogue Entertaining + Travel Produce Awards.

But there is much more happening out there. The issue is being pushed partly because of government support of the regions post bushfires and because of the drought. And there are passionate people who believe in it such as Frank Burger, food and beverage manager at the gigantic hi-tech and eco friendly Melbourne Convention Centre which opens in July.

At a state government level this is manifest by funding a fantastic new retail project at Prahran Market. The plan is for a stall where small regional producers can sell their goods for a few dollars a day. It sounds like an excellent initiative. And if you are passionate about local produce and want to be involved in this project Prahran Market is advertising the $50,000+ job at I Eat I Drink I Work.

What Frank Burger and executive chef Shaun Bowles have done at the new Melbourne Convention Centre is create the biggest showcase for local produce quite possibly in the southern hemisphere. Typically, these sorts of places have bulk deals for food and drink, with Fosters and Coca Cola being at the top of the list for drink. Burger has pretty much torn these bulk supply contracts up and decided to make life difficult for himself by sourcing everything direct from local producers.

To start with Sauvignon Blanc is pretty much banned. You certainly won’t find any of that nasty NZ melted sweet/acid drop variety there. Instead, he would serve you one of the new wave of extremely pleasing unoaked new wave of Victorian Chardonnays. You’ll find the latest de Bortoli sparkling, Crawford River and other great value wines he has has dug out by actually visiting vineyards in the regions.

The proscuitto-style ham you see being carved above is picked-up direct from Daylesford. Producers sourced include Red Hill Cheese, Bill’s Farm
at Victoria Market, Sher Wagyu at Ballan, Salute Olive Oil, Green Eggs and Yarra Valley Salmon. He has snuffled out an old Chinese men in Box Hill to exclusively make dumplings, Italians to supply pasta and so on.

Executive Chef, Shaun Bowles said (and you’ve caught me quoting from a press release here): “We prefer to use small, artisan suppliers to ensure the best possible quality and, in many cases, flexibility to produce to specific requirements. For large scale events, we give our suppliers plenty of notice so they can deliver the quantities required. We also go right back to the raw ingredient wherever possible and then utilise the equipment, skills and experience of our kitchen teams to do things like smoke and cure salmon and prepare bread and pastries on site.”

This is in a giant convention centre which contains 7,800 designer chairs than retail at $1,200 each. It’s a place with the kind of presentation technology that if you are called Dr Evil, Blofeld or Obama and are demanding a huge amount of money to save the world (thanks Sun subs) you would want to be.

The point I’m making is, even at that the scale of fine dining in Dan Hunter’s kitchen, it takes a real effort to source local produce. And he does from the likes of Mount Zero olives and lentils, Grampians Pure Sheep milk, yoghurt and cheeses, Hopkins River Beef, Glenloth Game birds and Warrnambool butter.

Imagine what it’s like if you are feeding some 7,000 people a day. That’s commitment.