May 26, 2017
Mike McEnearney’s career has been full of surprising turns. Sure,
he’s worked for Neil Perry and
Gordon Ramsay – but also for Damien
Hirst, running
the controversial
artist’s Pharmacy restaurant, where even
the toilets
were unlike anything you’d predict. He’s been
involved with
hatted and Michelin-starred restaurants,
but also sold home-made bread
in the car park of his kids’ school and nearly been
taken out by a life-threatening fireball at a French
homewares store while
cooking at a pop-up that may or may not have been
entirely legal
… Then there’s the you-wouldn’t-believe-it inspiration behind
his medicinal
garden.
After being
the head chef at Perry’s Rockpool restaurant, Mike subverted
the career
path that was expected of him and instead took a big paycut
to learn
how to make
bread. He also put together his own oven, brick
by brick,
using Pythagoras’ theorem.
The chef has also helped redefine what “eating well in Sydney”
meant, re-gathering his Rockpool team to
run Kitchen
By Mike, an
industrial canteen that was the polar
opposite of the fine-dining world
they came from. He’s even made it possible to eat well at
Sydney airport,
where there currently is a Kitchen
By Mike outpost.
A serial multitasker, Mike also is the creative director
of Carriageworks
Farmer Markets and
is involved in its food program, which includes the next instalment
of Night
Market and
the 2017 Sydney
Table events,
which I happen to be MCing!
As part
of the Vivid program, Carriageworks will pair chefs with
artists for
its one-of-a-kind Sydney Table dinner series. On June
14, O
Tama Carey teams
up with floral
artist Tracey
Deep;
on June 15, Clayton
Wells will
also be collaborating with a floral artist
– Saskia
Havekes of
Grandiflora, on June 16, James
Viles will work
with painter Craig
Waddell,
and for the finale on June 17, Ben
Sears’ night
will unfold with an origami extravaganza
by Keiko
Matsui.
For bookings and details about Sydney Table, visit
carriageworks.com.au/events/sydney-table-2017.
The dinners will place in a formerly unused part of Carriageworks,
where people used to make railway workers unions.
You can listen to this episode on iTunes or
download it via RSS or directly.
And thanks to everyone who has kindly spread the word about this
podcast or even dropped
some nice words in the iTunes
store –
it makes all the late-night battles with audio files and editing
sessions worth it!
PS Thanks to The
Mitchen also
for featuring me on
a recent episode.