QHA_Sep-2020_Online

FEATURE
QHA REVIEW | 18
They also found a restaurant in need of an update.
“When my wife Andrea, GM of Spicers Hidden Vale,
and I moved from Spicers Peak around seven years
ago, we promptly transformed the conservative
Cotton’s Restaurant to an innovative restaurant by
utilising modern and wood-fired cooking techniques,
embracing the stunning local produce - supported
by our newly created market garden, redesigning the
menus and sourcing experienced staff,” Ash said.
“We then decided to rename the restaurant to Homage
to show respect to the land, the people, and the
produce.”
Homage is a sentiment that Ash takes seriously.
The food for the restaurant, if not produced on site, is
all sourced from local farmers and producers known to
himself and his chefs. The food story is referenced on
the menus that earned Homage two Chef Hats from
the 2020 Australian Food Guide.
Ash’s passion for innovative cooking and fresh produce
started early.
“When I was young and looking for inspiration, I was
greatly influenced by the iconic restaurants in regional
Victoria - the likes of the Lake House Daylesford under
Alla Wolf-Tasker who always sourced directly from the
local farms or from their own kitchen garden,” Ash
said.
“My ambition was always to create a restaurant like
Homage that’s truly focused on provenance, and work
in the country where I could grow or source remarkable
seasonal ingredients and work with experienced ethical
local farmers.
“At Homage we manage our entire supply chain far
more than we could at an urban restaurant. We have
achieved an amazing level of control over where
our ingredients come from, how they’re stored and
prepared, and how we take responsibility for waste,
which is pretty much zero.
“In the late afternoons, our chefs conduct guest tours
of our Market Garden, smokehouse and fermentation
room; it’s such a simple, direct connection to their
experience in the restaurant”.
For Homage, described by Spicers as providing
“farm to fork Australian cuisine”, the menu is a mix of
customer favourites and seasonally inspired creations.
“Similar to many regional areas in Queensland, our
seasons can be quite extreme therefore we know
which staples that work well plus we constantly review
and experiment with new plantings which are also
influenced by our pre-seasonal menu planning,” Ash
said.
“In winter, it’s all about root vegetables, brassica and
herbs – all perfect for roasting, and various citrus
and rosellas which appear on our menus in various
creations.
“I like to call our menu progressive-regional with a
focus on sustainability, provenance, seasonality and
fire. Our own 89-bed market garden provides us with
an abundance of produce which is another great
source of creative inspiration.
“I cook with what’s seasonal, what’s available here,
right now and I try to capture it at its peak, and then
preserve every bit of that goodness we can naturally,
through smoking and preserving.
“Our menus are constantly being tweaked to
showcase what’s daily harvested by our chefs from
our market garden and what is provided by our local
growers.
“Although we retain some favourite dishes and the
menus are more radically changed every couple of
months - menus could be tweaked daily or weekly to
include the fresh gatherings.”
“Everything we have on the menu has a story of
provenance whether it’s pork we produce, or roosters
from next door, or beef from a neighbouring family
cattle property with a history of over 100 years,” Ash
said.