After five years at Orpheus Island Lodge, Executive Chef Josh Childs has made his welcome return to the kitchen at The Paddock at Beechmont Estate, and it feels a lot like coming home.
You’re returning to Beechmont after doing a short stint there a few years ago How does it feel to be back at Beechmont? It must be nice to be back on the mainland.
Yeah, it’s a nice change from the island life. I worked here for five or six weeks a few years ago so it’s good to be back. Living on the island’s great, but it’s nice on your days off just to have the freedom to go out and do whatever when you’re on the mainland. And living in Beechmont reminds me a lot of being back at home in the UK. It’s the same landscape as where I grew up. I grew up next to the farms and stuff like that, so that’s really nice.
The offering at Beechmont is quite different to Orpheus Island. How do you approach that as a chef?
They are two really different things. I would say the offering is a lot more personalised at Orpheus, so Beechmont is a lot more relaxed in a way. But for me, I still do the same thing. It doesn’t really change the kind of food I like and the kind of cooking I like or the way I approach it. It’s always about cooking good food. It’s just a different environment.
One big difference is at Beechmont we do a lot more cooked on fire which is nice. We couldn’t really do too much of that on the island. We had a smaller barbecue there, but here we’ve got an actual wood burner. So, that gives you a lot nicer flavour – that smoky flavour in whatever we’re cooking.
Is that an exciting challenge for you as a chef to experiment with some new techniques?
I’ve done it before, so it’s not really that new for me but it’s still nice. The challenge with cooking on fire is that you’ve got to get a bit more of a feel for what you’re doing. You’ve really got to monitor the fire, monitor the temperature, and everything that you’re cooking. You can’t just leave it and move onto something else.
Are there elements you think are fundamental to the menu at Beechmont?
The produce we use is very local. A lot of it comes from local farms, and it’s really great produce so that’s really key to The Paddock. There’s stuff you’re not going to get in the shop; you’ve got to come here and try it. I always sample the local produce before I write the dish. Flavour moves across a season, so we tune the technique to suit: a quick cure or gentle grill when things are young, slower cooking and a little smoke when they’re at peak. The aim is a clean expression of the farm, not a lot of noise from us.
The Paddock has such a strong reputation with its two Chef Hats. Is that daunting for you or does it drive you?
It definitely drives me to do better, and I feel confident that I can make it even better. I want to make the food that I want to make. I think diners here at The Paddock are a bit more open to trying stuff because the restaurant is a farm-to-table concept, so that’s exciting for me.
I think that opens things up a bit for us to use different parts of animals that people may not have eaten before. I want to start adding different offal cuts to certain dishes. You don’t really see it much and if you do it right, it’s really nice. I’m sure there’s an interest in that for this market. Given the setting, dining here should feel anything but ordinary. We want to surprise people, use more of the animal and keep it true to the Scenic Rim.
So, you want to give them something a little bit different and memorable.
Yeah, for sure. But I don’t want do it for the sake of doing it just to be different. I want it to be purposeful. It’ll be there for a reason. I think the secondary cuts are just as good as the prime cuts. You’ve got to put more work into it, but the end result is just as good as a piece of steak. One idea I have is that I want to put beef heart on the menu with a steak, so they’re eating almost the worst part with the best part. That’s the kind of stuff I’m trying to do.
I also want to start using some different meats. I like rabbit and you don’t really see rabbit on a lot of menus; and we might try and put wallaby on at some point, but we’ll see about that. I think people coming here want to try new and interesting stuff.