The chef-owner of Arcane, Cornerstone, Victuals, and formerly Moxie, Shane Osborn shares the history and culture of Australian food actually is and why it’s so special
Australian food might be the world’s first fusion cuisine, but yet the hardest to define. Waves of external immigration over 200 years – be that British, Lebanese, Greek, Malaysian, Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Indian – have implanted perpetual influence on the culinary makeup of the island nation.
Shane Osborn, owner-chef of Arcane, Cornerstone, and Victuals in Hong Kong, and a native to Perth on the far-western edge of Australia, credits his four decade-long culinary career to doing what many Australians do: head to London for work. And similarly to many Australians, he began to negotiate what his country’s food actually meant.
“London was popular with many chefs trained by the books, the likes of Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Michel Guérard. The food scene was all about French cuisine and my root knowledge was of French cuisine,” Shane recounts during a conversation at Cornerstone.
Having arrived in the capital in 1990 and facing an overwhelming Franco-strong influence in the city’s burgeoning posh restaurant scene, he found himself in a rebellious mood, “typical of Australians who are not hemmed in by tradition.”
It was the “rock and roll chef” Marco Pierre White and his t-shirt-wearing naughty nature that Shane became influenced to develop his own style of the cultures of Australia, cooking anything but the strictly French style in London. “[Marco] was just starting to make his name in London; he sparked an interest in me. Australians are very good at breaking the rules.”
At two-Michelin-star Pied à Terre, where Shane worked for 12 years, he cooked French food, but with a detail to Australian and more European influences. In 2014, three years after arriving in Hong Kong, his modern European restaurant Arcane was born, again experiencing touches of Australia, yet this time with a focus on Australian produce. To him, Australian cuisine cannot be seen as a set style or series of recipes, but an amalgamation of living culture.
“Back in London in the 1990s, fusion was a bad word. English chefs would curse me out for cooking fusion food. I think Australia was at the forefront of fusion cuisine, ahead of pretty much everybody else.”
“With a country that has experienced mass migration over the last 50 years with different waves of people, how does that affect food at the time and now? On menus in Australia, you can see bits of Turkish, Lebanese, Vietnamese, and Japanese food, reflecting the population of Australia.”
“Depending on where you are in Australia, Melbourne for example, you have got a huge Greek and Italian community, as you do in Perth. Parts of Sydney have a big Lebanese community and even Chinese and Hong Kong populations. It’s just a melting pot of so many different flavours and cuisines.”
Today, under his group The Arcane Collective, Shane’s Australian touch in Hong Kong brings rich Australian-grown produce to Arcane, a health-focussed Australian vibrancy to Victuals, and certain Australian dishes – and vibes – to Cornerstone.
New dishes on the Cornerstone menu, such as the Italian chicken parmigiana dish, Korean-influenced wagyu steak sandwich, and the classic Aussie lamington dessert, all touch parts of Australia influenced by new Australians emigrating to the country. “The space itself and the vibe of the restaurant even feels like one of those small restaurants off on a side street of Melbourne or Sydney.”
Filipino Hong Kong-born Head chef Neal Ledesma leads the kitchen at Cornerstone, having bathed in Australia’s food scene on trips with Shane to explore the produce used at the restaurant and understand the melting pot that is Australian cuisine.
Over ten years at Arcane and five at Cornerstone, Shane has embraced Hong Kong’s love for Australian holidays and dining, helping his restaurants to succeed with a certain Australianness.
“There is an identity about Australian dining. When you are trying to define what is Australian cuisine, that’s a harder question for people, because you can’t necessarily put it into a dish, it’s more of a feeling.”
Where Arcane, and formerly Moxie, approached Shane’s theme of Australian food is the import of produce local to his home nation, a self-ordained mission to exhibit the raw power of vegetables, fruit, meat, and seafood from Australia.
“At Arcane, on our current menu, we are using strawberry gum, a type of eucalyptus that smells like strawberry bubblegum, lemon myrtle, and wattle seed. We are blessed to have relationships with a number of producers who can give us great fruit and veg to share what Australia is about.”
In Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bangkok, cities that have little to no arable land to field farm produce, farm to fork dining has become a buzzword and a concept designed to elicit mass interest and bookings. In Australia, it’s a way of life.
“In the Perth suburbs in the 1970s and 80s, everybody had a backyard and grew their own ingredients. You grow a true appreciation for food. Good food is so accessible to people in Australia.”
As for what Australian food truly is, Shane finds the beauty of it coming in the form of a dynamic mix of culture and people and the food they cooked before arriving in Australia and still cooking today.
To enjoy Shane’s touch of Australia in Hong Kong, book yourself a visit to Arcane, Cornerstone, or Victuals today here.