Erle Levey
When it comes to cooking, there isn’t much he doesn’t know.
Now, based in the Noosa hinterland with his family, Matt is surrounded by fruit trees and vegetables.
On the rollercoaster of life, he has certainly found his purpose.
His love of food has seen him travel the world and Australia, and that has only helped to build a reputation for being helpful to fellow chefs, a mentor to school children, and an avid supporter of producers of clean, fresh and fair food.
He is also an inspiration to those who value fine food that has been locally produced.
In doing so Matt has found that he is now best placed to influence people by not committing to a single restaurant but to work with, and encourage, communities.
Growing up on a tropical fruit farm on the Sunshine Coast, surrounded by fresh produce, has influenced his style of cooking throughout his career.
His father had a 30-acre farm at Palmwoods where he grew bananas, avocados and papaws.
“There was a lot of citrus. Heaps of mangoes and macadamia trees.
“Dad was always planting small crops in certain seasons, so we always had zucchinis and tomatoes, those sorts of things.”
This weekend Matt will be a guest speaker at the Queensland Garden Expo at Nambour, which is only fitting. His father used to display and sell bromeliads at the Expo, and a young Matt would help him.
He already had a love of vegetables, fruit and plants, and this just highlighted the interest he had built up in his formative years. It will also bring back fond childhood memories.
At this weekend’s garden expo Matt will be part of 120 free talks over the three days of the event with identities such as Gardening Australia’s Costa Georgiadis, Jerry Coleby-Williams, Phil Dudman, Claire Bickle, Millie Ross and Sophie Thomson.
He will conduct two cooking workshops at the Cooks’ Garden.
At 10am on Saturday and Sunday, he will present Cooking for the Seasons – My Winter Kitchen Garden. In that he will utilise some of his own produce.
Then at 1pm on Saturday he will talk about Scary Vegetables – five of his favourite veggies to cook with that most shoppers fear.
That will focus on some produce that people may be unaware of, not sure what to do with, and help demystify them.
He mentions to me that egg plant, globe artichokes and fennel are on the list but he could probably add zucchini and chokos … an old-time Queensland vine fruit that is also known as a vegetable pear and is enjoying somewhat of a come-back in the kitchen.
“It will not only be good to be there but to learn from others,” Matt said.
“It will be great to catch up with Costa … we’ve known each other quite a few years.
“We are pretty much on the same wavelength with growing, cooking and enjoying food.
“He’s a beautiful person … I’ve watched him at a lot of different things and he is so patient.”
Matt’s cooking career started early. By the age of 12, he had decided he wanted to be a chef.
He attended Nambour High School – which has turned out a number of celebrities including former prime minister Kevin Rudd, former treasurer Wayne Swan and female surgeon Dr. Kellee Slater, who works in one of the most demanding areas of medical operations, liver transplantation.
“It was a good school,” Matt said. “An old-style high school in its day.
“I had already decided to be a chef so eventually had to choose subjects and did Home Ec – half the time it was sewing and the other half was cooking.
“It was a matter of choosing the rest of the subjects for anything pertaining to cooking – French, biology and art as well as maths and English.
“I was dead-set, there was nothing else I was going to be.”
Matt went to Brisbane for his apprenticeship. He was a vegetarian at the time so he rang virtually the only vegetarian restaurant in Brisbane back then.
He asked for a job and they said ‘yes’.
“That’s where it all started. I finished my apprenticeship at a little French restaurant in Milton, called Chevaliers.
“It was a hub … Park Rd … there was La Dolce Vita, the Italian restaurant with a small Eiffel Tower on the roof.
“They were great areas – Spring Hill, Red Hill, Paddington.”
After travelling Australia, Matt moved back to the Sunshine Coast and ended up cooking as head chef at Ricky’s on Noosa Sound.
“It was the place to go. It took up the whole waterfront site.
“I could cook whatever I wanted. It was a good audience, appreciative.
“People would get off the plane and come straight to Ricky’s. They would leave their suitcases at the door and check into their accommodation later.
“We would just put them in the corner. It was the first thing they’d do.
“I was able to experiment and learn. That real love of food and it was where getting to know the producers of the area started.
“Farmers would drop their stuff at the door.”
It took a while for producers to have confidence that the local restaurants could offer year-round demand for their produce.
Then the year filled in with events instead of relying on peak times built around holidays.
“They realised there was a local market for their garlic, their tomatoes, their ducks … it’s just got better and better.
“Even up to 10 years ago it could be hard to source certain products without having to drive extensively to get them every week.”
Matt has been a member of Slow Food Noosa from the start. That was in the early 2000s.
He was president for four or five years … that would have been 2004-5 to 2007, he thought.
Matt started Films With Food in 2007 as part of Slow Food Noosa.
The first film and dinner event was at The J in Noosa Junction. It was the beautiful South American film Like Water For Chocolate … and he prepared 12 different dishes for each month of the year to complement the screening.
The next screening will be at Pomona’s Majestic Theatre on July 24. The movie will be The Perfect Dinner and due to the continued popularity of the screenings it looks like being sold out.
Matt went to the Slow Food International conference in Turin (Torino) Italy in 2014 and that had a dramatic impact on his outlook.
He attended the Terra Madre Salone del Gusto as a Slow Food Noosa delegate and did some cooking while he was there.
Slow Food Noosa committee member Rod Lees pays tribute to Matt.
“He is certainly a champion of Slow Food and was awarded the Snail of Approval from the beginning in 2017, and is our only individual to have the award.”
Terra Madre in Turin is an exhibition that brings together food producers and artisans from across the world.
“I had my kitchen and everything,” Matt said.
“I just used to go to the markets every day and get my porcinis and rabbit, then go home and cook.
“It’s amazing stuff … not what I see here. I would gorge myself on truffles.
“Turin is a pretty good adventure just walking around the town.
“There’s so much to see and do. Go to the street markets, the produce is fabulous – it’s inspiring, it’s mind-blowing.
“There’s no reason why we couldn’t have that here.
“Italy is beautiful. There’s things you come to appreciate about Australia as well.
“The way things are done in Italy …. it’s a come-and-go attitude and you wonder how they get anything done.
“It’s an attitude. A celebration of life.
“No wonder everything is so fresh, the towns and the farms are so close together. There is no mileage.”
Matt has worked as executive chef at some of Queensland’s leading restaurants and founded his own catering company, The Rolling Dolmade.
He now enjoys working as a consulting chef to restaurants as well as a regular guest chef at festivals.
For a few years Matt helped the Gympie Region promote itself as a world-class food destination in his role as their Food and Culinary Tourism Ambassador.
It was a role he loved and drew acclaim from farmers as well as the hospitality industry for utilising local produce.
“Where it started for me was being surrounded by fresh produce, and that’s a big part of me now.
“It doesn’t make sense to cook with generic ingredients. I like to know where they come from.
“By getting to know the producers and working with them for a long time, I can call and ask what they will have in a month’s time, then write a menu.
“It’s about having a relationship with the producers. When you have that, you have a better understanding of what they do.
“If you’ve been to their farms, you will understand the amount of work that goes into what they do.
“I see their passion. See what they do and why they love what they do.
“That is able to be reflected in what you are putting on a plate.
“It also means that for a lot of those producers, if you are taking care of their produce – when you’re preparing it, when you’re serving it – they’ve got the confidence in you that you’re doing it well.
“Then they are more likely to look after you as well.
“I might say I need 5kg zucchini’s, 3kg corn, this many tomatoes, this many strawberries.
“And I’ll open the boxes up and they take your breath away.
“After more than 32 years of being a chef I still love opening a box of produce that I still get excited about.
“Farmers’ markets and local markets are important as you have that direct connection to your producer. You have the opportunity to get to know them, have a chat.
“Ask how their oranges or strawberries are today.’’
There has been a resurgence in locally-produced and prepared food since the Covid pandemic, Matt said.
“It has helped but it was happening anyway.
“One of the upshots of Covid was we saw everybody race out and get punnets of vegies to grow at home.
“It helped them realise what is involved in growing food.
“It was like a food security crisis and everybody raced out. You couldn’t buy a punnet of seedlings to save yourself.’’
Experiences such as Covid make you realise that growing food can be so hard to produce on a day-to-day basis.
“There are so many things than can go wrong. You need to be in the garden each day.
“Don’t walk past an issue, as it will become a bigger problem eventually.’’
There are now networks within the Gympie and Noosa communities in which people either pick up produce for others or the producers do a run.
“We have enough restaurants interested in the philosophy of using local producers, that it’s worth their while to drive and drop off to a dozen other restaurants.
“We are at the tipping point of restaurants having enough pride to nominate the origin of cheese, yoghurt, eggs and bacon as being from the region.
“I know these products are going to be amazing.’’
Although Matt has been an ambassador of food and regions, he said it was not something you go looking for.
“But it’s nice to be thought of that way.
“We need a regional brand … whether that be Noosa, Mary Valley, Country Noosa, Cooloola or Gympie.
“People want to know your story. Travellers want to hang out with locals.
“Experiences in food are a big part of tourism.
“It’s probably something you remember a lot more of than this museum or that church.
“Once you’ve been through five museums, the castles and churches … they are stunning and amazing but I remember most of the food – the seafood in Normandy, the cheeses, whatever it happens to be.
“Sitting on the beach in Nice and eating a jambon baguette or an almond croissant.
“That underlines the fact you have to be great at whatever you do.’’
Now, establishing a home in the Noosa hinterland, he is taking care of the fruit trees that have already been established.
“Being where we are now, I’ve always understood the seasons and being ready for when certain fruits are going to start, when vegies are going to be ready.
“It really brings it home being surrounded by different produce.
It’s local knowledge, and growing hints passed down through generations.
“I grew up on a farm but, really, I’m just starting out on the farming journey.
“I picked vegies but didn’t realise when you had to prune things or when you had to fertilise.
I’m now more in tune with the year, the seasons, the cycle of the moon.
“We have these fruit trees here and I’m the custodian, I have to look after them. It’s a lifelong journey.
“I’ve got to learn all these things. It’s part of the fun and joy.
“Dad was here offering advice on how or when you cut … such as cutting the banana trees back, when to net the stone fruit. You need to cut them back before they start to bud.
“It’s part of the joy about it, of learning and understanding the trees.
“We sat there swapping old farmers tips … planting passionfruit vines, citrus, when to plant according to the phase of the moon.’’
Help and advice like that from his father must be invaluable.
Just like the help Matt must provide to others, whether it be as an inspiration to fellow chefs, a mentor for school children or just to remind us how good fresh, local food is.
His mission seems to be to raise awareness of the value that local produce brings to our lives.
Matt admits that after 30-something years he is always learning and still has the passion.
It certainly looks as if he made the right choice at school in his younger days.
