True blue BBQ
And a smoky tinge of red. RUPERT BATES heads down under to talk and taste Australian fire food, infused with influences from around the world.
Regular travels to Australia’s Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne and there is always one restaurant visit inked in the diary.
My go-to is the pulled pork, and the beef brisket with Texas style dry rub, or maybe the smoked chicken breast with Alabama sauce. Tell a lie. It’s the homemade sausage; make that the honey glazed lamb ribs, not forgetting the sweet cornbread with honey butter on the side, or Grandma Cobb’s chipotle corn.
You get the picture. There is nothing on the menu at Red Gum BBQ in Red Hill country, an hour south of Melbourne, I will not devour in the lee of the huge, belching smokers sitting in a former truck mechanic’s workshop – now one of the largest barbecue and craft beer joints in the country.
When it comes to Australia, I also must chat to Laura Romeo, the Weber Grill Master, based in Adelaide. Put her alongside Martin Goffin, pitmaster and founder of Red Gum, and in the local vernacular mate, it’s all good. Bloody oath.
While Goffin, alongside his wife Melissa from Miami, Florida, creates the most sumptuous American-style barbecue, it is important for a magazine based in the UK to point out, even if he now effectively has his ‘gumnuts’, that Goffin is actually a Pom. He’s from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk.
I know plenty of Australians who would, on stubborn principle, refuse to take lessons in BBQ from an Englishman; but Goffin is now right up there at the pantheon of pitmasters.
As, of course, is Romeo, the only qualified Weber Grill Master in the southern hemisphere, and their love and enthusiasm for all things on grills and in smokers is palpable – their food stories infectious.
“I have always loved food and, growing up in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, wine too. I really enjoyed baking with my grandma as a child, fuelling my passion for cooking,” said Romeo.
Her BBQ path began when, nine years ago, she spotted a Weber advertisement for a recipe developer. “I had never barbecued before, but the first time I did I was hooked.” She went through Weber’s Grill Master graduate programme, starting in Chicago, learning the history and evolution of the iconic BBQ brand.
Romeo creates recipes and videos to showcase the huge range of food you can cook on Weber barbecues and the lifestyle that goes with it.
Last year, she found herself teamed up with Jamie Oliver, talking across hemispheres, before cooking and filming together for Weber in Sydney.
“That was an amazing experience. Jamie is a legend and even when the cameras were off, you could see he was in his happy food place over the grills.”
Goffin’s happy place is talking to his giant smokers. If they didn’t get so hot, he’d give them a hug.
“I’ve always been a foodie and started cooking with my mum. BBQ is all about sharing and community and that is why at Red Gum we have long tables and benches, encouraging strangers to eat together and bond over great food. It’s all about authenticity and connection,” said Goffin.
He met his wife Melissa while at university in Norwich, Norfolk. Melissa’s family are from the Southern States and a trip through the heart and heat of BBQ country got Goffin drooling and dreaming. The result: Red Gum, which the couple opened in 2017, recreating what Goffin learnt and tasted in America, including a visit to Southern Soul on St Simons Island, Georgia, part-owned by golfer Davis Love III.
“I asked pitmaster Harrison Sapp if I could come and cook BBQ with them. BBQ people are always lovely human beings, who will always look after you and feed you.”
It is easy to resort to stereotype and assume Australia is the spiritual home of the ‘barbie’, leading the charge with its snags and prawns. But for a while it lost its way, never evolving much beyond a sausage sizzle outside Bunnings Warehouse.
“The culinary work and invention over fire is now huge and growing all the time,” said Goffin.
Romeo agrees, citing the influence of social media and cooking reels from around the globe, bringing new influences, recipes and fire food cultures into every backyard and hopefully attracting the next generation of home cooks.
“We all want to try these new flavours for ourselves, with Asian influences now massive in this country. It is about cooking inspirational food over fire, but keeping it simple too,” said Romeo. “Aussies still love casual cook ups and no fuss food and, let’s face it, everything tastes better on the BBQ.”
Australia is blessed with great produce, be it meat or fish, and Goffin is passionate about sourcing locally, be it free-range pork from Otway Pork, Victoria, grass-fed beef from O’Connor, Gippsland, chicken from Bannockburn, or lamb from Gundagai.
“We use only free range, ethically sourced meat, and smoke using traditional Southern-style methods and Australian native hardwoods,” said Goffin, and in 2018 Red Gum became Australia’s first B Corp restaurant.
Romeo’s Weber travels have seen her cross the states of Australia, meeting local producers. She remembers catching mud crab in Queensland to make a Singapore chilli mud crab on the beach, cooking up rock oysters in Sydney, and barramundi in Darwin.
Meanwhile, Goffin is acutely aware of America’s regional variations, when it comes to both meats and sauces, but always marinated in local history.
You can take the Englishman out of East Anglia, but Goffin remains nostalgic for the British sausage, while stressing that making ‘a humble snag’ from scratch in his restaurant is an art form that takes years to perfect.
Romeo likes nothing better that smoking a beef rib or brisket to add to a massaman curry with toasted chillies and spices, simmering over the coals, adding toasted peanuts and shallots, and serving with coconut rice.
When asked for his last barbecue on earth, Goffin clearly plays for time by suggesting a whole hog BBQ. “Also don’t underestimate the cheeseburger over coals. God hasn’t created anything better than quality beef and a slice of American cheese in a bun.”
Neither needs to look very far for drinks pairings. Romeo has the Barossa Valley close by, while Goffin can lean out the window and pluck the grapes of the Mornington Peninsula.
Time to toast two Australian pitmasters, although, whisper it among the red gum trees of Red Hill, one of them is English. We’ll find out where Goffin’s loyalties lie come this year’s cricket and the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne’s MCG. Romeo lives in Adelaide, Sir Don Bradman’s batting domain, so there is no doubting who she’ll be barracking for.
An Ashes BBQ battle – Laura v Martin. Now that would be a tasty clash, and if we could make it last five days, so much the better.
