How celebrity chef Matt Moran won over the bushies who hated him

From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Friday, March fourteen, twenty twenty five. Power bills will rise by up to nine percent for households in the coming year, well over one thousand dollars, despite the Albanese

Rockley Pub will reopen its doors under new management. Celebrity chef and restauranteur Matt Moran is the force behind some of Australia's most celebrated dining establishments, but his latest venture is close to home.

Matt, tell me, how did you come to be opening a tiny pub in a tiny town in the middle of the New South Wales Central Tablelands.

Look, once you become the public, and there you become mayor and everything else.

That's quite funny.

Actually, there's a lot of history with that town with my family which I didn't know. Basically, my great grandfather ended up there at a farm there for about ninety years, met my great grandmother in Rockley. Actually got married in the church behind the pub in eighteen eighty three. Strangely enough, we moved off the farm long story, ended up in the.

Western suburbs, decided to be a cook.

Dad ended up buying a small little farm when he got the chance in Traga. We ended up in Rockley again, a big place. I invested in it. My dad's little brother did. I ended up buying them out. Over the years, spending a bit more time in COVID thought to myself, if I'm going to spend more time at the farm, will I get bored? Just me kind of help myself. Wanted to buy the Rockley Pub. Wasn't really for sale, but I knew that it wasn't doing great, and it's the heart of the town, and the pub goes in

It's my happy place. I think.

Matt Moran isn't just a celebrity. He's one of our most powerful and influential figures in food. He owns Aria, Chiswick and chop House in Sydney, River Bar and Kitchen in Brisbane, Compa in Canberra, and plenty of other fine dining restaurants. He's also hugely influential throughout the food sector. He's a farmer himself and a passionate advocate for reducing waste and growing Australian's knowledge and confidence about food AND's

Yeah, I think they just thought that I was this celebrity, rich guy from Sydney is going to come in and change their town, and it was very far from it. I got heckled the first night. A lady turned it back on me the second night, and he that works for me. The guy that heckled me, he said to me six months down and pulled me aside, and I really love what you've done with the pub. Look, it's just about being part of that community and obviously having a lot of ties back there. I've had the farm

So it's about perception and connecting with them.

And it's a business and it has to perform, but at the same time, there's a bit of love. As a business, it's not just about making money in it and taking advantage of the locals. I want it to be for the locals, and eventually I will do something a little bit more with accommodation and make it a destination and put a proper restaurant in there.

One of the things you've already got on the menu is the Moran family farm sausage with garlic mash and peas. And the clientele for this pub food, some of them, the locals, They actually know how the sausage gets made, don't they.

Yeah, they do.

Does that make a difference to the way they perceive the food that's being put on the plate in front of them.

Yeah.

Look, you often get asked that question, why does it cost that much? And you try to explain the economics of running a business, But you are right. My farm manager he makes sausages all the time. There's the odd rue that they get or they might find a wild bore and grow up the little one, and that's where the fat comes from. Only recently he made me a heap of sausage. I love my farm farm manager. He's the best man in the world and what he does for me the farm is incredible.

But he could have a couple of lessons in sausage making. It's a bit dry, Brandon, Hopefully you.

Won't be listening to this, but here's a go which is fantastic, which is.

That idea of paddock to plate. It's a very short journey from the paddock to the plate at a place like Rockley has that experience of cooking for an audience who are either living in the bush or they've come from the city to the bush to eat this food. Has that changed your perception of what the customers expect of you and expective their food.

Oh, look, I don't necessarily think I think that I could say that about all my places because people come with whether they're farmers or producers or whatever. The producers to me are the most important people in my world.

Basically. You know, I've always said that I would.

Never be the chef for the restaurant if it wasn't for that incredible reducer that gives me the product to use. And I think that goes for every chef in Australia. We can only thank that the people that we get the produce off. As for the food at the Rocky Pub and the perception, you just want to make it really good, hearty food that is desirable and it's always.

Got to be generous.

You've got to be generous in a country pub, So the portions might be a little bit bigger, and you've got to set it up and explain why you do the things that you do, even when it comes to beer prices or one prices.

It's very touchy.

Spending the past couple of decades as a farmer yourself as a primary producer and a supplier, has that changed the way you've thought about your relationships with those producers and supplies.

One hundred percent clear.

That is something that it's been in my head since we moved off the farm when I was very little, and my family did it tough, they lost farms, and I remember when we got back into Rockley twenty two years ago and the buyers would come in and to say, all right, we'll give you fifty bucks of the lambs and never covered the cost. And I always said, when I get control of it, I'm dictating my terms rather than the other way around.

And I know how hard farmers do it.

And it's very easy to see the market fluctuates so much, and then you try to budget on you're going to get fifteen hundred dollars for your weener steers and then the next year getting seven hundred and fifty in and the drought comes and you have to sell half your mob and then all of a sudden it starts raining and you can't get back into the market. You've got to breed them back up again, so half your revenue is gone. The thing is that I'm a good farmer.

Hence thankful farmers.

But also back in the day when I made Paddic to plate and went around Australia showcasing all these don't get me wrong, out of bloody great time meeting.

All these producers and then cooking their wares.

But it really was to showcase the Australian farmer and producer and how hard they do it and how tough that they do it.

Coming up what Matt Moran makes of fake meat, dairy swaps and food waste. You can see Matt and all the food industries movers and shakers online at the Australian dot com dot au all day Friday as we live stream the Global Food Forum. We'll be back with Matt after the break. Matt, A couple of years ago, everybody was talking about meat alternatives, fake meat, plant beest meat, or fake meat as some might call it. He is wildly popular, especially on Wall Street. Sausages, burgers, chicken nuggets

Australian so tip to spend three billion dollars on plant based meat within a decade. The industry is booming, with a third of the population now making a conscious effort to reduce their consumption of animal products.

What was your take on it then, and what's happened to fake meat?

I did a little bit of research.

Strangely enough, one of them actually came to me and asked me to be an ambassador.

I'm like, do you really know my story?

And when I investigated some of it, and I'm not saying all of it is this, but when you look at it and you look at the preservatives and the ingredients that are in it, wow, it's a list as long as my arm Look, I can understand why people want it, and people understand and I get it, and there's probably a spot in the market. As my father

That has changed and that's sort of the better, and that's.

Made chefs be a lot more creative and a lot more adventurous when it comes to plant based and in all my restaurants there's plant based dishes, so it was a challenge to cross over and start being more creative.

So that definitely is a market there.

One of the other big changes in the way Australians eat over the past really few years is the huge rise in alternatives to dairy so massive armond crops now. At last year's Global Food Forum, we heard from a very experienced beekeeper talking about the pressure on beekeepers to actually pollinate those massive now nut crops that we're all

Obviously that's been driven by dietaries, and dietares never used to be a thing for thirty years ago on restaurants. Now it's the biggest thing, and it is rapidly changing. And it obviously showcases how important the bloody bees are. We need bees otherwise when we're going to starve to death. And I got to be kind to the bee. I'm at aphlactic, actually, but I still want.

To get bees at the farm.

And every thick saying you're freaking mad, I'm no, I'll put them up in the trees.

But I just want bees.

And dietaries are changing, and but that's just the way of the world, and you can understand it. And you know, if someone's got a dietary issue with dairy, you've got a heat to it. Otherwise someone else will do it and you won't have the customer, you won't have the audience.

As a producer, a primary producer, do you see it as a long game that those trends will come and go, But ultimately we'll still in fifty years be drinking milk, and we'll still have dairy herds and we'll still have beef cattle herds.

Well, the rate that we're going with the dairy farms from twenty five thousand and forty years ago to I think it's a bit over five thousand dairy farms now. Obviously a lot on the coast and real estate's very expensive. Hopefully we'll still be producing a lot of dairy in the future and not buying it from someone else. There's always going to be a market food beef cut or sheep, pigs, chickens or whatever else. There always will be, and I

One of the things I think most Australians know that you're very invested in helping Australians understand where their food comes from. That whole paddict played idea something that new that you're involved in is saveful about the amount of food that we waste? What's going on there? How much are we wasting and what should we be doing about it?

The things that are extraordinary.

Research says we think we waste about two kilos of food a week, but it's actually double that. That's two hundred and sixty five kilos a year for the average household nationwide. It's like throwing away seven point seven million meals every day eat.

But it's just extraordinary how much food people just throw back in the fridge and they let it go off safe for as an app which you can put those ingredients into it and we can give you a recipe and tell you what to do with it. It's one of those things that I think we should be investing more money and stopping because it's just you talk about

And is it about that knowledge about not knowing how to make a vegetable soup or whatever it is.

I've fortunately have a lot more ideas of what to do with food and bits and pieces are left over than anyone else. And we're just using our expertise in the app to actually show people what they can do with it. And people don't think, they don't realize that there is a lot more in your fridge that will go to waste that you can actually do something with it and turn it into something amazing.

What's one that really satisfies you when you find a wilting bunch of something and turn it into something else.

Look, we're coming into auto now, We're going to see lots brassic as. People are gonna have colon nero and spinach and whatever else. It's simple vegetable soup or a bean soup. Beans that you got in the cupboard, which generally you always have a couple of onion saute with some aromatics. Throw on your beans and a good stock. Make sure you've got a good stock and stew it

Oh my god, I'm starving already. Matt Moran will be in conversation with me at the Global Food Forum and you can check it out at the Australian dot com dot au. Matt, thank you very much.

Claire Pleasure