Cheong Liew and Janet Jeffs: Master and Apprentice reunited

Posted on 20 February, 2019

For one night only, Cheong Liew OAM is reunited with former apprentice Janet Jeffs in an unforgettable dinner at Ginger Catering.

Shannon Bennett. Ben Shewry. Peter Gilmore. They’re names that probably trip easily from your lips when you’re talking Australia’s best contemporary chefs.

But before them all there was Cheong Liew—honoured as “one of the ten hottest chefs alive” by the prestigious American Food & Wine Magazine, inducted into the Hall of Fame in the World Food Media Awards, and awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 1999 Queen’s Birthday Honours “for service to the food and restaurant industry through involvement in developing and influencing the style of contemporary Australian cuisine.

And on Thursday 14 March, Cheong Liew will be serving up an unforgettable four-course meal at Ginger Catering at the National Arboretum. Why? Well, it turns out there’s quite a Canberra connection. Janet Jeffs, Ginger Catering’s Executive Chef and Director was Cheong’s apprentice from 1978 to 1981 at Neddy’s Restaurant, Adelaide. It was to be the start of a long and celebrated career that still endures.

Janet remembers:

“Neddy’s was a “natural Australian restaurant” which from its beginning in the heady days of Don Dunstan’s Adelaide in the late 1970s was thoroughly multicultural.

“Our culinary adventure really started, as Cheong’s first apprentice, when I was introduced to the fundamental qualities of any authentic dish being texture, flavour and appropriateness to lifestyle.

“Cheong’s cooking was “My Way” underlaid with what he calls his Chinese instincts. As Asian vegetables, herbs and spices were incorporated into our base European cuisine, Neddy’s menus began to display his individualistic style.

“I remember the crispiness of his fried chicken, the meltingly soft texture of slow-cooked lamb and the velvety richness of the final bowl of broth. His original style not so much an East-West fusion as Asian cuisine clad in French couture-had been influential in forming a generation of new chefs all over Australia and made a distinct impression on Adelaide.

“Cheong’s complexity is discreet, his talent lies in combining flavours and textures into a single but multidimensional taste experience, which goes beyond the palate to the intellect…

“For me, Cheong is a culinary magician, a sorcerer of the kitchen.”

The Master and Apprentices event will see Cheong and Janet back in the kitchen together, in a night that celebrates “Cheong’s mastery and the generations of masters and apprentices in Australian food”.

Tickets are $170 per person and include canapés, four-course dinner and matched wines. Buy them online from trybooking.com/BARJX