Five Minutes With Analiese Gregory on Foraging, Tassie Supremacy and Returning to the Restaurant World

Analiese Gregory has worked in the best kitchens around the world – from Mugaritz in Spain and The Ledbury in the UK to Quay on Sydney Harbour and Hobart’s now-closed Franklin.

Having made a serious splash, she left the world of professional cheffing behind in 2019 to live off-grid, hunting and foraging in Tasmania, while also cooking at pop-ups and residencies.

Gregory spoke to Broadsheet about the new season of her SBS show, A Girl’s Guide to Hunting, Fishing and Wild Cooking and her return to the restaurant world.

Do you remember what first made you want to become a chef?
My father’s a professional chef, so I suppose I always saw it as a career path, whereas a lot of people might not have in 1990s New Zealand. Then I just really enjoyed cooking. I was always the kid that would bake cakes and sell them to my mum’s friends. I would try to make dinner at home. I was always pulling out drawers and climbing along the bench.

Then, once you get to the stage where you’re thinking about what to do as a career, everyone says, “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life,” and I really loved cooking. I discovered that saying is absolutely not true, because it is still work, but I do get to do something I love, and I am fortunate in that capacity.

Were you always interested in foraging from a young age?
That came a little bit later. I enjoyed getting out in nature and picking things and stuff, but that wasn’t really part of my growing up. When I was a young chef in kitchens, I thought foraging was very much like a hipster pursuit for a certain type of chef. It wasn’t really until I moved to countryside France and went to work at Michel Bras, where they have a really large foraging program – and then they made me head of the program – that I really developed a love for it. Connecting with nature before going into a restaurant kitchen was really beautiful.

You’ve lived and worked in so many cities around the world, is there one that you think has a really underrated culinary scene?
When I was cooking in Morocco, I was really shocked by how amazing the produce was, and by how varied the food was. Prior to going and living and working there, all I knew about Moroccan food was tagines and spices. Then going there, I realised that even within the realm of tagines [there’s variety]. You’d go towards the coast and there’d be tagines with preserved lemon and sardines and then you go to the mountains and [there’s] beef and quince.

After living and working in all these diverse places, what was it that made you fall in love with Tasmania?
It just has everything. When I was living and working in Sydney, I would come down to Tassie for R&R for weekends. I would come down and eat in a couple of restaurants, climb a mountain, breathe super-clean air. I realised that I was getting really envious of chefs I knew that lived down here – at that time, it was Luke Burgess and David Moyle. I have this thing in my life if I’m getting envious of someone: don’t just sit there and be envious, figure out what it is that you’re envying and then to go and do it yourself.

What makes Tasmanian produce so beautiful and unique to you?
I think it’s the pristine environment. Produce is obviously a combination of the air and soil and water. Tasmania has some of the cleanest air in the world and some of the purest water in the world. It’s also the temperate climate. Tasmania has a pretty cold climate, so things are quite slow-growing and then there’s a sweetness in them that you don’t always get in faster growing regions.

You’re opening a new restaurant and that journey has been documented on your show, A Girl’s Guide to Hunting, Fishing and Wild Cooking. What made you want to get back into the restaurant world?
Everything runs its course. I’ve really enjoyed being a freelance chef, but there are so many logistical [challenges involved]. I started to feel that pull to prep and cook in one place. Also – because I do forage and preserve so much – I often have much larger quantities of things than I could ever use myself [and] this gives me a reason to be able to keep [foraging].

It’s just 10 seats. What made you want to cook in an intimate space like that?
The last place I cooked commercially was Franklin and that was 50 seats. As soon as you take a head chef job in a larger venue, there’s [admin] like rosters and the ordering and paperwork. I really wanted to strip as much of that away as I could and get back to me cooking at a stove for people, because I realised that’s the part that I enjoy.

What style food do you think you’ll be serving?
It’s probably a loose blend of Australian, French, and small influences from my travels. Occasionally I’ll use something Chinese, because my grandmother’s Chinese. I’ve also lived in Spain, so sometimes there might be a harissa or a little Spanish influence.

What are the spots in Tasmania you always recommend to people?
I really love Ogee, it’s an Italian-leaning wine bar in Hobart. It has a really moody, dark, beautiful fit-out. It just feels really cosy in there, which I think is important in Tassie, especially in winter. There’s a cafe-wine-bar I go to called Rosie In My Midnight Dreams, which is down on the pier. There’s not a lot of places in Hobart where you can eat and see the water, even though we are a harbour town. I always go to Lucinda as well.

Watch Analiese Gregory on A Girl’s Guide to Hunting, Fishing and Wild Cooking on SBS On Demand with new episodes every Monday.

@analiesegregory