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Cooks and their Books: Teage Ezard
SBS Food catches up with award winning chef and author, Teage Ezard, as part of a series of features on Australia's top chefs and cooks.
Even as a kid, Teage Ezard had an unusually mature palate, regularly tucking into exotic delicacies like cocks’ combs, frogs legs and seaweed at the countless new restaurants his foodie father would take the family out to try on weekends.
Making it through a variety of tough and humbling hospitality jobs as a teenager relatively unscathed, Ezard went on to undertake a demanding but ultimately rewarding apprenticeship with renowned chef Hermann Schneider, of Melbourne’s famous Two Faces – an experience to which he attributes much of his later successes as a chef.
Ezard now runs two of his own award winning restaurants in the Melbourne CBD: Gingerboy, which opened in 2006; and ezard, which will celebrate its 10th birthday later this year. Describing his culinary style as ‘Australian Freestyle', he draws strongly on the flavours and influences of Asian food, particularly Chinese and Thai cuisines.
Ezard continues to mentor young aspiring chefs – as he was supported in the early stages of his own career - through the apprenticeship programs he runs out of his restaurants.
He has authored two cookbooks Ezard: Contemporary Australian Food (2003) and Lotus: Asian Flavours (2006), which have won multiple awards. Both are published by Hardie Grant Books.
Click on the audio player above to listen to Teage Ezard talk to SBS Food about his journey into the kitchen and the stories behind some of his recipes.
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