Brian Cole is keen to rewrite the narrative of African food in Australia. Are diners ready?

Born in West Africa but trained in Western Australia, the chef at the Ritz-Carlton Perth’s fine diner is passionate about the flavours of both his native and adopted homes.

The first thing Brian Cole tried to cook was a piece of fish. It didn’t end well.

To be fair, the budding chef was just four years old at the time. And by “cook”, I mean that Cole put a tiny anchovy into a pan with some oil and left it outside, hoping that the sun would get everything hot enough to fry the fish.

This incident is one of many fond memories that Cole has of growing up in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. He lived in a two-storey house with aunties, uncles and his grandfather and every Sunday after church, the rest of his extended family would drop in for a weekly family lunch and catch up over curries, stews, jollof rice and other home-cooked West African dishes.

Brian Cole's braised pork with jollof rice. Credit: Jiwon Kim

Cole’s childhood was a happy one. Or at least until the civil war and the rebels came to town, going from house to house and abducting young boys to turn into child soldiers. If it wasn’t for Cole’s quick-thinking mother Elsie hiding her son and his cousin under the stairs, his story might have turned out very different. Thankfully, the boys weren’t found, and everyone managed to escape to neighbouring Guinea. When the fighting reached Guinea, the family relocated again, this time to Ghana where Cole lived between his grandparents’ house and a refugee camp. His relationship with food, unsurprisingly, shifted dramatically.

“The camp was so far from the city and a bit of a struggle,” Cole says. “Mum would give me her last bit of coin so that I could buy some powdered milk or gari (maize flour). Eggs were a luxury and sold individually.”

Finding authentic ingredients in Australia

Eventually, the family was granted asylum in Australia. And in 2004, at the age of 11 and after being homeless for six years, Cole arrived in Perth, grateful for a chance to start fresh. But as is often the case with refugee stories: this new home took some getting used to, especially at mealtimes. Elsie struggled to find the ingredients to cook West African food. (Longstanding Perth continental grocer Kakulas Brothers saved the day, as did some of the city’s pioneering Indian grocery stores.) Cole, meanwhile, was blown away by the amount of fast food there was everywhere.

“In Sierra Leone and Ghana, fast food places were like fancy restaurants that you’d only go to for birthdays and special occasions,” he says. “I’d ask mum if we could get some burgers and she’d say, ‘why? We’re not celebrating anything.’”

Brian Cole's current approach to food embraces Indigenous ingredients and open-fire cooking.

Despite those early culture shocks, Cole gradually got his head around Australian food and food culture. So much so that he left high school to study cooking, much to his mother’s disappointment. After all, as Coles says, “In African culture, everyone goes to university and becomes a lawyer or doctor.”

After completing his apprenticeship at the casino, he began working at Guillaume Brahimi’s west coast outpost, Bistro Guillaume Perth, before moving to an Italian restaurant at another hotel. An opening came up at Hearth – the Ritz-Carlton Perth’s ground floor fine-dining restaurant – and Cole jumped at the chance to hone his wood-fire cooking skills plus his understanding of indigenous ingredients.

Influences from Indigenous Australian to African

In 2023, Cole became Hearth’s head chef and tasked with overseeing a menu where piquant bush tomato makes a fine accent for kangaroo-filled ravioli, and Linley Valley pork gets finished with a jus sharpened with aromatic pepper leaf. Collaborations with Wardandi-Bibbulmun woman and cultural custodian Dale Tilbrook and Paul “Yoda” Iskov of native food pop-up Fervor ensure Cole stays up to the date with the planet’s most ancient flavours.

While the food at Hearth is a deep dive into the flavours of Cole’s adopted homeland, his true passion is to celebrate the food of his native Sierra Leone. While Cole says his more-is-more approach to building dishes draws on the complexity of West African cookery and those Sunday after-church family feasts. “Layering is how I try to create dishes,” he says.

Brian Cole joins Adam Liaw in Season 8 of of The Cook Up

Happily, of late he has been afforded a growing number of opportunities to share more than just his philosophy.

The first time Cole served West African flavours was at the 2024 Good Food and Wine Show in Perth when he served tacos with jerk sauce. In October, he brought his West African cooking to Barangaroo in Sydney, when he teamed up with Anason and Firepop. At Taste Great Southern, a 2025 regional WA food event, Cole treated guests to grilled skewers of lamb seasoned with suya: a West African spice mixed made with cayenne pepper and peanut powder. And, in one of his appearances on Season 8 of The Cook Up with Adam Liaw, he showcases a braised pork with jollof rice dish that is close to his heart.

When it comes to serving West African food, at first Cole felt a bit of apprehension. "But I’m more confident now," he says. "I think a lot of people are starting to associate me with West African food and expecting these sorts of flavours. A lot of the time when I serve these dishes, it’ll be a lot of people’s first time trying them. I’m hoping if I can keep opening people’s eyes to this style of food.”

Chef Brian Cole showcased African food at Tamba Singapore during Kita Food Festival in 2025. Credit: MAX VEENHUYZEN

He is spreading his wings internationally too. At Singapore’s Kita Food Festival in March 2025, Cole served a seven-course modern African tasting menu in a kitchen takeover at the contemporary African restaurant, Tamba. Diners were treated to barbecued chicken wings stuffed with olele – an earthy bean pudding that’s also known as moin-moin in Nigeria – and cured scallops finished tableside with a glug of gron, Sierra Leone’s famously zippy savoury cucumber soup, all of it served up with a side of his intriguing personal back-story.

The Singapore dinner was the first time that Cole went public with his vision of a modern, elegant West African cuisine. The chef hopes it won't be the last.

“Being asked to cook that dinner was the greatest feeling. The response was overwhelmingly great and a huge step forward," Cole says. "I felt like it’s my time, and it’s given me motivation to pursue it some more.

“I’ve spent the last two years writing recipes and designing menus that showcase West African food. This is something I really want to pursue. I’ve been doing the work behind the scenes so when the time comes, I’m prepared.”