Greg Huggett

Chef from Adelaide. Fifty years in the business, from an apprenticeship at fifteen to the Hilton's first Australian-born Executive Chef, the Grange, London and an island in Indonesia. Now I'm recording the stories of the people who shaped Australian food.

I left school at 15 and walked into my first kitchen.

That was the start of fifty years in hospitality. My apprenticeship was at the Gateway Inn in Adelaide, with study at the Regency Park School of Food and Catering. Then came the Hilton, where I was part of the opening kitchen brigade as a brand new hotel came to life.

Next I went to London, where I cooked at the Hilton on Park Lane and at Lainston House, a country manor house in Sparsholt, in the Hampshire countryside. After a few years it was back to Australia, and I rejoined Hilton Adelaide, with stints in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, then worked my way up to Executive Chef.

Then the food took me further afield. In Singapore I won a gold medal at Food Asia. Invitations to guest chef followed, across Europe and in London, where I'd once been a young commis chef. Back in London I presented at the London Restaurant Show, the first non-British chef ever to do it.

First Australian-born Executive Chef at Hilton.

At Hilton in the nineties

When I took over the kitchen at the Adelaide Hilton, I wanted to change more than the menu. A regimented, old-fashioned kitchen became a creative and supportive team, and we began to change how hotels thought about food across the Hilton chain in Australia.

Later I looked after food and beverage for every Hilton in the country, working alongside the executive chefs and food and beverage managers in each hotel, modernising menus and changing what a five star hotel could do with food.

Flavour, simplicity and quality ingredients.

I learnt from some of Australia's finest chefs, working alongside them for a week or so at a time: Neil Perry, Tony and Gay Bilson, Matt Moran, Stefano Manfredi, Christine Manfield and the Michelin star chef David Thompson. They changed the way I cook. All of them taught me that a great dining experience comes down to the impact of flavour, simplicity on the plate and quality ingredients.

And I learnt to cook what I love to eat. Do that, and you're immersed in every dish.

Bringing Cheong Liew to the Grange.

Inviting an Australian food icon into the Grange wasn't something a lot of chefs would have done. Cheong is still a friend, and we're working together to this day on The Architects.

Cheong joined my team, and the Grange later won Gourmet Traveller Restaurant of the Year.

My own food businesses.

I grew one bakery into three, then built a sports catering business that fed elite athletes. Clients included SACA, Swimming Australia and Netball Australia. I was also consultant chef to the Adelaide Football Club, looking after the AFL, SANFL and AFLW teams and their functions at West Lakes.

Travelling with the men's team and working with the dietitian meant every menu was shaped around nutrition and performance. Blending two passions, food and sport, was a great experience.

Designing and opening the food and beverage at BASK Gili Meno.

After that came Gili Meno, a small island off Lombok in Indonesia, where I was Executive Chef in charge of food and beverage at BASK, an 80 villa, five star luxury resort and beach club.

I designed the kitchen and bar operations, bought the equipment, designed the handmade crockery and cutlery, wrote the menus, drinks and wine lists, and recruited and trained the opening team.

The team is what I'm proudest of. I trained a young group of Indonesian chefs across barriers of language, religion and culture, wanting to give them the same inspiration the great chefs gave me, and a brighter future. The menu was contemporary and drew on more than four decades of cooking. It was food I love to eat, served next to the beach.

Grange Golf Club and LIV Golf Adelaide.

I looked after food and beverage at Grange Golf Club in Adelaide, and the menus opened up, with more vegetarian and health conscious dishes and something for every dietary need.

And there was LIV Golf Adelaide, named the world's best golf event. Feeding the players, their families, the caddies and the officials, with nutrition front of mind, was food and sport together again.

Other things along the way.

A career in food can open so many doors. Mine has taken me around the world, to restaurant of the year ceremonies and the coaches' box at the MCG. Along the way I wrote a weekly food article for the Adelaide Sunday Mail, hosted the Australian Guest Chef Series at Hilton and appeared on TV shows, trained young chefs and shared ideas with Marco Pierre White.

Away from the kitchen.

Life outside the kitchen has been full too. I finished runner-up in the Australian Open golf pro-am, and I've been married for 44 years. We have three children and three and a half grandchildren. That half is on the way.

Now I'm making The Architects, an oral history of modern Australian cuisine.

These are the people who turned a nation of home cooks into a food culture the world talks about. The Architects is a series of long conversations with the chefs, journalists, producers and suppliers who shaped modern Australian cuisine, released as podcast episodes and filmed interviews. A career among them has convinced me their stories deserve to be told properly, in their own words.

Get in touch.

If you want to talk food, hotels or history, I'd love to hear from you. Send a note to [email protected].

Greg Huggett, Adelaide