Culinary Team
To work in the highly stressful, physically demanding yet rewarding environment of the kitchen one must be robust, passionate, creative and some may say (with great respect) a touch mad! The National Press Club of Australia culinary team are all of these and more.
Led overall by Food and Beverage Manager Paul Butler, in 2011 we welcomed Daren Tetley to lead the team in the kitchen. Daren and his team work very hard to create wonderful food for all events at the club and enjoy experimenting with fresh new ideas in our award-winning restaurant.
The culinary team are proud award winners, receiving accolades in the Clubs ACT Awards for Excellence and the Restaurant and Catering Awards more than 5 times. Team members have won the Restaurant and Catering Apprentice of the Year, the Southern Cross Graduate Cooks Award and the Golden Chef's Hat. Each of these enable the tema to enjoy extraordinary professional development opportunities in Australia and Internationally.
The team has also won the Gold and Bronze medals in the ACTAB Chefs on Show competition and then represented our region in the National Awards.
Paul and Daren are passionate about their industry and the professional development of their team. Paul and Daren volunteer their (non existent) spare time to judging and teaching culinary students and we encourage our team to enter competitions and take up opportunties to learn new, and fine-tune existing, skills.
We are very proud of our team and encourage you try their fare.
The Team officially....
Food and Beverage Manager - Paul Butler "Senor"*
Chef de Cuisine - Daren Tetley "Chefu"
Senior Sous Chef - Chanh Nguyen "Saffron"
Senior Chef de Partie - Corey Pont "Forest"
Junior Sous Chef - Maria de Los Angeles Echeverria rquez "Floyd"
Casual Chef de Partie - Ashlee Bason "Tray"
Casual Demi Chef - Sam Francis "Corey"
Casual Demi Chef - John Simms "Minji"
Australian School based apprentice - Michael Wood "Gary"
Chef de Plonguer - Cheyny Ord "Tiny"
Day Plonguer - Brommell Wright "George" or "Service"
Night Plonguer - Shing-JieWu "Gary"
Night Plonguer -Hiroki Ikedo "Rocky"
Night Plonguer - Tom Bibo "Hawaii"
Night Plonguer - Stuart Martin "Martian"
Night Plonguer - Michael Ison "Unfortunate"
Casual Plonguer - Chris Pont "Unlucky"
The Team actually.....
* Explanations for nicknames are unable to be put in writing. Explanation On Application only.
