FEATURE <strong>QHA</strong> 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 <strong>2020</strong> 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.
the food journey.