Toque Talk with….Jason Barratt

Chef Jason Barratt explains how stints at two of Melbourne’s best restaurants prepared him for the gig of a lifetime.

Jason Barratt wasn’t looking for a job when the chef’s position at chic NSW hotel Halcyon House became vacant earlier this year – in fact, he was just settling into a new gig at the recently renovated Byron Bay hotel-restaurant Raes.

“I had no intention of leaving Raes, and I umm-ed and ah-ed about it for a while,” he recalls. “But jobs like Halcyon House don’t come up very often. It just felt too right.” Barratt already knew how special Halcyon House and its à la carte restaurant Paper Daisy were: two years earlier, he and his wife had spent their honeymoon at the property. “It felt like a slice of paradise,” he says. “We had both been working a lot, so we decided to do a full digital detox: we put our phones in the safe and just completely switched off for a week.”

Returning to the hotel as a staff member, Barratt felt some pressure to perform: his predecessor, Ben Devlin, had won widespread praise for a sophisticated menu full of ambitious flavour combinations. ‘I didn’t simply want to replicate that,” Barratt says. “I decided to make Paper Daisy a bit more user-friendly, a bit easier to understand.” He adds: “We’re still using interesting ingredients – just not in such obscure ways.”

Six months into the job, Barratt has brought fresh produce to the fore, taking advantage of the hotel’s proximity to the growers and fishers of NSW’s lush Northern Rivers region. “I’ll actually go to the farm twice a week to pick up the fruit and veg,” he says. “There’s no middle man. The fish guy comes and knocks on the back door of the restaurant every now and then with a carload of fish that he’s just pulled from the boat. It’s something you just don’t get in Melbourne.”

Before moving to Northern NSW, Barratt honed his craft at some of Melbourne’s most acclaimed restaurants, including St Kilda stalwart Stokehouse and the three-hatted Attica (previously included in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants). He says those jobs gave him the stamina and resilience necessary to head up his own operation. “I was incredibly lucky at Stokehouse: they really did give me everything I wanted,” he says. “Every time I was growing out of a role and was looking for that next step in my career, they were very receptive.”

He singles out chef Anthony Musarra as a key mentor. “Before I worked with him, I didn’t think of cooking as a career that could take me places. He made me understand that, if you put your mind to it and work hard, the opportunities are endless.” And it was later, at Attica, that Barratt learned the art of running a kitchen: “It doesn’t have to be a really structured setting – it can be creative. I think Ben [Shewry] has a really unique way of operating a kitchen. It opened my eyes.”

Now, after a decade spent moving from kitchen to kitchen, Barratt is looking forward to settling in and striving to make his mark. “To run a hotel restaurant well is incredibly difficult,” he says. “Every single touchpoint needs to be consistent and considered: the food, the staff, the attitude. You have to be on your ‘A game’ all the time.”

Follow Jason’s work on Instagram @jay_barratt____