Food from the Backyard

Daniel Snooks was the kind of child who wrote out the menu for the family dinner. He would decide what was being served, set it down on paper and put it on the table, a small ceremony for an ordinary weeknight. He tells the story lightly, the way he tells most things about himself.

There is no romantic origin here, and he is quick to say so. No grandmother at the stove, no formative meal. “It was all pretty normal,” he says. His first job, at sixteen, was in a pizza shop, and the rest followed from there. A lot of chefs, in his telling, simply “fall into it.”

What followed was not ordinary. An apprenticeship led to a place on the opening team at Rockpool Bar and Grill, then to the kitchens of Mayfair in London, and back to Melbourne for senior roles at Centonove, Top Paddock and Cumulus Inc. Most recently he was at Oakridge, when the restaurant closed it was timely that TarraWarra Estate were looking for a new Head Chef, where he has been for about nine months.

His cooking rests on a single conviction: the best food does not travel across oceans, it comes from the backyard. In practice that means starting with what is in season. Daniel has overseen the revitalisation and new plantings in the established kitchen garden at TarraWarra Estate, and a dish often begins with whatever is ready there, or with a call from a local farmer about what is growing. From that starting point he works backwards, building the dish around the ingredient rather than the other way round, and sourcing everything else as close to home as he can. He keeps three questions in mind: what is in season, what is sustainable, and what is local.

The producers are specific. Vegetables from Romarro Farm, up in The Patch. Pork from Gin Pigs, a small free-range Berkshire operation in the Yarra Valley whose pigs are finished on the spent botanicals from Four Pillars gin, the detail that gives them their name. Hand-trolled calamari from Corner Inlet, where the boats work only sustainable waters. Wagyu from Sher, near Ballan. He goes direct wherever he can, and works with a butcher in Seville besides, moving further afield only when he must, out to the edge of Victoria before he looks past it.

Cooking this way asks more of a kitchen, and he is candid about it. A crop can be ruined by a week of rain. An ingredient on the plate today may be gone tomorrow, so the planning never stops. As soon as one menu is written he is thinking about the next, and the season after that. If a pasta dish goes on, he is already asking what will replace it when spring arrives.

The challenge, though, is the point. Working to the season is what keeps the cooking sustainable, and it is what lets him keep things simple. He does not reach for advanced techniques to prove anything. When the produce is picked at its peak and has barely travelled, it carries the plate on its own. The result is food that is straightforward and a little unexpected at once.

Right now that means winter. The kitchen is leaning into root vegetables, celeriac and the mushrooms the rain has brought on. Calamari has just come back in, and one of the dishes he is proudest of, pairs it with celeriac and a toasted yeast sauce, simple parts arranged so they read as something new. At the top of the menu sits the estate’s most premium ingredient, Wagyu beef from Sher near Ballan, finished with a garnish pulled straight from the garden. It is the whole idea on one plate. The best of what is close by, treated plainly, allowed to speak.

“It’s done simply, but it’s delicious.”

At The Makers’ Circuit, TarraWarra Estate is the long lunch at the centre of the Yarra Valley day. Daniel’s kitchen is a large part of the reason why.