Eat & Drink
CULINARY gold By Muriel Cooper Photos Yanni
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Garry’s interest in cooking as a profession started in secondary arry Cowled won his first culinary accolade at eight school. ‘I read as much information as I could,’ Garry says, ‘but when he made and decorated cake for a prize at the process in those days meant earning very little money as an a school Red Cross fundraiser in his hometown near apprentice, not enough to live away from home, so I worked in a Cootamundra. Since then, Garry has owned his own bank and studied accounting, something that came restaurants and food businesses and in handy as executive chef at the Sofitel with two been Chef for many prestigious hotels Lemon is hundred staff in the kitchens. The best cook doesn’t and restaurants, including the Sofitel on the most always necessarily make the best chef because Collins in Melbourne (previously The you have to manage budgets,’ Garry explains. Wentworth), Leonda, and the spectacular versatile flavour. Finally, he was able to move to Canberra to do Chateau Lake Louise in the Canadian I use it in almost his apprenticeship at the Canberra Rex Hotel, but Rockies. Garry represented Australia in only because friends allowed him to sleep on their everything, the world-renowned Culinary Olympics son’s bedroom floor until he ‘got on his feet’. in Germany and now has his own cooking especially Garry’s first Head Chef position was at The school, The Olive Tree, in Frankston.
the zest
Garry learned to cook in his mother’s country kitchen, with a wood stove and produce from five acres of land, including vegetables, chickens, ducks, cows, and sheep. ‘We rarely had anything out of a packet or a can,’ Garry says. ‘Everything was fresh.’ Garry’s mother is ninety-six and still bakes every day. She boasts that if she saw visitors arriving, she would have scones in the oven by the time they got to the back door.
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March 2023
Canberra Club in 1976 after returning from Canada and Europe – male members only at the time – but Garry says that things were changing to include women in the late seventies. Garry was running his own restaurant, The Ark, in Canberra, when, in 1980, he was accepted into the Australian team for the Culinary Olympics. The team had to fund themselves, and Garry