1. 4 - The Border Watch, Thursday, March 3, 2016
South East passion sharedMount Gambier chef helps develop cooking ideas with local produce
CHEF Kirby Shearing, owner of Soul
Projects, has been in the Limestone
Coast for seven years and is passionate
about fresh local produce.
“This region has always had great
potential and now it feels like it is
starting to go somewhere,” he told The
Border Watch.
Mr Shearing demonstrated his skills
in the kitchen on the weekend at the
Fork and Cork Mount Gambier Food
and Wine Festival, using potatoes as a
key ingredient.
Now he is turning his attention to
Adelaide’s Tasting Australia event in
May.
“I’m very passionate about what I do,”
he said.
“I love to help people develop their own
ideas and always try to angle the experi-
ence around regional produce, whether
in Adelaide, Brisbane, wherever we go.
“Everywhere I go around the world it
has been about respecting the ‘locavo-
rian’ diet - sourced within 200 miles.”
While the region is a producer of world-
renowned seafood, beef, lamb and wine,
Mr Shearing said the land itself was also
a forager’s paradise.
He enjoys dishing up an array of pro-
duce not available in retail stores, with
ingredients such as rare mushrooms
found hidden deep within local forests
and watercress plucked fresh from
spring-fed creeks.
Mr Shearing “workshops ideas” out-
side his home in his “man cave”, a small
1950s stone structure which was once
the tuck shop for Reidy Park Primary
School.
“It’s missing one important factor - a
wine rack,” he joked.
“We do a bit of our preparation in here
for the experiences we create.
“When we are booked for a private
dinner, we provide a dining experience,
not just catering.
“We will set up an instant restaurant
at your house - plates, crockery, the
whole lot, and wine pairing too - and then
leave and you have no mess to clean up.
“We can pretty much do it with two
days’ notice, but it needs consultation to
tailor a menu to suit the group.”
Mr Shearing said a large part of his
business was events.
“It is also knowing what the trends
are,” he said, adding that wineries
often asked Soul Projects to cater for
their clients.
Originally from the Adelaide Hills,
Mr Shearing served his apprentice-
ship at the well-known Windy Point
Restaurant at Belair.
Qualified at 19, he went to Melbourne,
where he secured a sous chef job.
He was later tapped by a company in
New Zealand to buy into a new-venture
cafe restaurant on the South Island.
But just one year after that he was
back in Melbourne, working with Danny
Neate at the Wine House Brasserie.
After a stint overseas as sous chef at
the Falcon Inn in Warwick, Midlands,
he returned to Melbourne again, then
went to the snow, working for four or
five months at a ski lodge.
In 2009, he took up work at Bompas of
Beachport and has been in the Limestone
Coast since.
He was at Millicent’s Mayura Station
for three years, from 2010 to 2013, and
spent “just shy of a year” at the Mount
Gambier Hotel.
“I had been looking for an establish-
ment where I could showcase the region
100pc,” Mr Shearing said.
“It’s not about me, chef Kirby, it’s about
the producer.
“Our food is great and what makes it
really great is the local ingredients and
products.
“We get our produce fresh - picked that
day or the day before we cook it.
“We can take people by the hand and
say this is where the produce comes from,
take a look.”
His wife and partner in the business,
doing the bookwork, is Biddie Shearing,
who is also tourism development officer
at Regional Development Australia
Limestone Coast.
The couple has a three-year-old son,
Donavon.
GAVIN
STAFFORD
gavin@tbw.com.au
WORKSHOP: For this
fruit crumble, chef Kirby
Shearing used
ingredients sourced
almost entirely from the
Glenhuntly farm at Eight
Mile Creek.
MAN CAVE: Chef Kirby Shearing develops ideas in what used
to be the Reidy Park Primary School tuck shop.
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