SPIRITED
COMMUNITY OF
s s e n Kind
Matt Golinski shares the passion that drives him with the speech he wishes he had of given at the recent Eat Local Noosa event.
I
was recently asked to speak for 10 minutes about “Mental Health in the Hospitality Industry” at an Eat Local Noosa event, after the person who was going to be speaking about it had to pull out. It’s a relevant subject at present with everything the industry has been going through over the past 18 months. In my head I had it all covered. I’d spoken about the topic in front of people plenty of times; I’d just talk about my own personal journey, overcoming adversity, strategies for coping with sadness, and the importance of eating well and exercising to maintain a strong mental state. I’m not sure if it was the fact that I was standing in front of a large group of my colleagues that my brain was a bit scatty or because I was on my third 14-hour day in the kitchen; or that I was just a bit overconfident that I could speak with some authority on the subject without any structure or plan. Let’s just say, my head was wrong. As I skulked off the stage after the longest 10 minutes of my life, having just delivered (if you could call it that) a speech that didn’t make much sense, I felt embarrassed and quite frankly a little depressed, and as I sat there red faced and wondering if there was a side door I could slip out of and never come back, it suddenly struck me (about 13 minutes too late) that I should have just talked about the one thing everyone in the room had in common - our love of food. Here’s the speech I wish I’d given: “When I found out that Eat Local Noosa had chosen Peppers as the venue for this industry conference, and that 100 or so local producers, artisans, chefs, tourism specialists Hello Sunshine Magazine
and restaurant managers would be attending
the kitchen: bright red, juicy ripe strawberries
and all staying for lunch once it concluded, I
from Goomboorian to make the sorbet; a
decided it would be a good opportunity to
rainbow of coloured cherry tomatoes from
squeeze as much local produce into one menu
Doonan to go with the chicken saltimbocca,
as I could. After all, ‘local’ was the flavour of
cassava, daikon and carambolas from
the day. I enjoy these challenges because it
Woolooga. Pumpkins, mango pulp, milk and
pushes me to think outside the square,
cream from the Mary Valley, pastured
putting together ingredients that just happen
free-range eggs with canary yellow yolks
to be available at that one moment in time.
from Kybong. Trays of oyster mushrooms so
A few weeks before the event, I started
fresh they looked like they were breathing.
contacting our producers to find out what
The capers arrived in the post from the Bunya
they were likely to be picking just prior to
Mountains just in time.
today, and drafted a menu based on what would hopefully be available. A few days ago, our producers started dropping off ingredients to the back door of 22
All the special little garnishes - the sunflower sprouts and petals, the baby basil, the tiny lemon balm, the pink and red dianthus flowers, were all picked a couple