Garrison sous chef Nicole Dunjay shares culinary journey from working for Gordon Ramsay to cooking with akoya

When Nicole Dunjay was a 14-year-old kitchenhand working in an Albany restaurant, she was told she was too slow and could never make it as a chef. Now aged 34, she is proving her doubters wrong, plying her trade as a sous chef at Garrison after a stint with British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. In 2008, she moved to London where she worked for Ramsay at his former Michelin star restaurants Claridge’s and Maze. While she described Ramsay as a “nice guy” it was evident he was very similar to how he appeared on TV: fiery. “It was the hardest thing I could ever explain in my life,” she said. “The discipline is out of this world. We worked from 7.30am until 2am the next day, we were on our feet all day. “Gordon knows his stuff. He walks around and if he sees something he knows you’re doing wrong, he’ll get you for it.” “I’ve seen people have things thrown at them before. He’s very blunt.” Speaking to Inspire from the top of Mt Adelaide as the sun shone over King George Sound, the passionate foodie reflected on her culinary journey. Dunjay has switched the fast-paced London life for the tourist hotspot of Garrison at the Princess Royal Fortress where she has worked for the past two years. She said she was particularly enjoying experimenting with Albany’s akoya oyster and native ingredients such as lemon myrtle and river mint. One item on Garrison’s menu is cold-smoked akoya with finger lime and river mint vinaigrette. “Working with the akoya is really exciting, no one else in the world has got it yet, but I’m developing and learning how to use it,” she said. Born in Perth, Dunjay was raised in Broome by her Aboriginal, Malaysian and Filipino mother and British father. With her mother a Broome local, her culture involved a lot of seafood “being a saltwater girl from Broome”. “We were spoilt with fish, turtle, stingray and those sorts of things,” she said. Dunjay moved to Albany when she 14, finished high school at North Albany Senior High School then started work as a kitchenhand. “I wanted to be a jeweller first, but my dad said if you want to do things in life you need a trade to fall back on in case it doesn’t work out,” she said. “So, I was a kitchenhand first, I didn’t want to do it. They said I was slow and that I couldn’t be a chef, ever.” Her career highlights include cooking for about 100 high-end celebrities at Gordon Ramsay’s London mansion. She and three other chefs were invited to cook for the Bank of America chief executive and guests at a private function inside Ramsay’s Holland Park home. “Gordon’s got a professional kitchen in his house, the four of us were invited to cook for about 100 famous people,” Dunjay said. “I remember in the hallway there was just cartons of Dom Perignon all piled up for these high-end people.” “I’d never seen anything like it. “I was very nervous but I got to be special for three or four days.” After three years in London, she came home to Albany, spent about a year in a cafe then returned to the UK where she found work at The Ivy in Soho. Since returning to Australia in 2013, Dunjay has tried her hand at everything from food vans to fine dining. She was a sous chef at Albany’s Three Anchors before she worked as the crew chef for a pearling vessel based between Broome and Darwin. Dunjay said the quality of the produce used in top London restaurants set an example for the Australian hospitality industry. “We had scallops from Scotland on the train the night before, and opening them in the morning they’d still be pumping and pulsing,” she said. “In Australia, you’ve got to look for it to be of that quality as it’s not necessarily readily available — but in Albany we get local things fresh and we’re very lucky.”