Oct 19, 2017
"The chef said he was going to the bank and never came back." Shannon Martinez was working as a bartender at The East Brunswick hotel in Melbourne when she was asked to take over the kitchen. She happened to put a vegan parma on the menu and it blew up – the pub sold close to 300 portions on a Monday night, attracted huge queues and Pink even turned up with her security detail to try the dish.
It proved to Shannon there was a massive interest in vegan food and
it led to her running Smith & Daughters and Smith & Deli with
business partner Mo Wyse in Melbourne: they're eateries famous for
their lines as well as their great, sceptic-defying vegan food.
So you might be surprised to know she’s got a tattoo of jamon on
her body and it’s not the only meat-related tattoo she has. You
might also be amazed to know of her music career – she's actually
played to thousands of people on the Vans Warped tour who sang
along and wore her band's merch. And because she runs vegan
businesses, people might not realise that Shannon is a chef who
eats and cooks meat, but that’s her advantage – she’ll try a
Spanish blood sausage at Porteno and think, "how can I make a
version of this that everyone can eat?" and it’ll end up a
bestselling item at Smith and Daughters.
"Food is my number one passion. I cook vegan food purely because it
was a market, a demographic of people that weren’t being looked
after. And I thought that was really, really unfair," she
says.
Shannon also talks about her start in commercial kitchens: "40
chefs, three women, I was 15. It was horrible. That was probably
the first time I had to deal with such intense misogyny and
harassment and abuse." One of her hazing stories is truly
eye-opening. Nowadays, the majority of chefs that work with her are
women and have been with her for years and years. "The only people
I’ve had to fire have been men."
We also chat about why she opened a vegan deli, her Smith &
Daughters cookbook (which includes everything from her version of
chorizo to a dessert that sparks memories of her granddad breaking
giant slabs of chocolate with a hammer) and how meat eaters are
weirdly grossed out about vegetarians wanting to eat vegan bacon or
sausages. ("How is that yuck, it’s a plant? But here you are,
eating the face of a cow.")
Shannon's truly kick-ass to talk to – she's faced dinosaur
attitudes in her line of work and not backed down and what she does
is ground-breaking (especially with the vegan deli).
Look out for her upcoming 'My Australia' lunch at The Unicorn
Hotel, Paddington on November 26, where she'll be doing a vegan
version of Sizzler – yep, that's right, her interpretation of the
pasta bar, the Parmesan toast, jelly cubes and bacon bits. What an
awesome way to make her first proper cooking appearance in
Sydney!