A wizard from Oz

If Trish Hilferty thought it was tough being a female chef in Australia, making it in Pom country proved even harder. But the top-flight chef has taught her male counterparts a thing or two - as well as winning a book award.

Ever since her early years in Sydney, Trish Hilferty has wanted to become a chef.

"I was always making cakes and helping Mum and Dad with Sunday lunch," recalls the head chef of the Fox in Shoreditch, London - recently voted number seven in PubChef's Top 30 gastropubs. "It was something I was interested in - I never wanted to do anything else."

After finishing college, where she was one of only six girls in a class of 40, Trish worked her way around Australia's east coast bars and bistros. "They served mostly barbecue stuff - steaks, grills, massive bowls of salad," she says.

She moved to Britain in 1986, and her first kitchen experiences here quickly opened her eyes.

"I suddenly realised that female chefs were even more unusual here than in Australia: coming to the UK almost felt like stepping back in time.

Turning point for top-flight chef​

"I worked in a hotel kitchen in Edinburgh where the blokes refused to talk to me. There were about 20 chefs and four of them wouldn't even look at me."

Disillusioned by her first taste of life in British kitchens, Trish moved to London, where she started work as a waitress.

"To be honest, I didn't like the idea of cooking in London. I had seen how some of the kitchens were run, and how maledominated they were - I simply didn't have the patience for that."

She did some private catering and worked in a few small London restaurants before finding a job that was to prove the turning point for her career - a position at Adam Robinson's acclaimed west London restaurant, the Brackenbury.

"Suddenly, I was working with people who really loved what they were doing,"says Trish, who stayed there for three years.

While working at the Brackenbury, she started to eat at the Eagle in Farringdon Road. Owned by Mike Belben and David Eyre, it was London's hottest new eatery - the place that put "gastro" into pubs.

"I really wanted to work there. After the Brackenbury, I returned to Sydney for about a year. When I arrived back in London, I went straight to the Eagle to ask for a job. "David Eyre had just left and I spoke to Tom Norrington-Davies, the Eagle's head chef.

"When I told Tom I'd been working as a chef at the Brackenbury, he said I could start work at the Eagle the following day!"

Trish was naturally drawn to the Eagle's informality as much as its simple approach to cooking.

"Although I don't like anarchy, I hate too much structure. Of course, you need a certain amount, but I don't like working in a hierarchical way. With its small open kitchen behind the bar, the Eagle was so different to anywhere I had worked. I had a great time."

Straightforward approach​

During her two-and-a-half years at the Eagle, Trish worked alongside a number of chefs, including Tom Norrington-Davies

and Ruth Quinlan. She also met Harry Lester, now co-proprietor and chef at the Anchor and Hope in Waterloo. Trish and Harry worked together again in 2001, when Mike Belben opened the Fox - his second gastropub.

Although similar to the Eagle, it had the added bonus of a separate upstairs dining room. Trish was delighted to be appointed head chef.

The Fox dining room's approach to food is different from that of the Eagle. While the pubby bar menu downstairs ranges from scotch eggs to salt beef sandwiches, there is also a set menu which changes once or twice a day.

Costing £16.50 for two courses and £21.50 for three, the menu is short, offering just four choices per course. Recent dishes have included warm salad of Jerusalem artichoke,leeks and walnuts; pork, celeriac and red wine; spring chicken, greens and aioli; and pannacotta and rhubarb.

Trish uses some of the area's best suppliers, some of whom also provide ingredients for the Eagle and the Anchor & Hope. She orders fish from Ben Woodcraft, vegetables from Lenards of Covent Garden and meat from Barry Hadden's Rare Breed Meat Co in Essex.

Such keen sourcing of ingredients, however, doesn't get a mention on the menu, which outlines brief dish descriptions.

"I think it's a bit pretentious to list suppliers on menus," laughs Trish. "If anybody wants to know where anything on the menu comes from, we can give them the details."

Her no-nonsense approach extends to food presentation, which is free from unnecessary garnishes. Says Trish: "I remember working in places years ago where we would spend hours preparing garnishes - I thought that was just a waste of time and money. I don't have time for mucking about."

Her characteristically straightforward approach also infects her writing. After "doing bits and pieces" for The Guardian, she was approached by Bath-based publisher Absolute Press. The successful result was Lobster & Chips, a cookery book containing 100 recipes using fish and potatoes.

It went on to win the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best Single Subject Food Book. Now Trish is busy producing book number two between shifts at the Fox. Due out in October, Gastropub Classics pulls together the favourite dishes of the British gastropub scene.

Taking the broader view​

"I suppose it's going to be quite "Foxy" and there will be a number of recipes from the pub, but I'm trying to take a broader view of what everybody's doing in gastropubs. I've asked other chefs to contribute recipes from pubs that have managed to avoid turning into restaurants."

As she's still working most days at the Fox, her writing career means Trish puts in some serious hours each week.

"If I'm working at the pub in the day, I write at night and vice versa. It's a busy schedule, but I'm really enjoying it."

So, does this mean that Trish has aspirations to be a celebrity chef?

"No, being a celebrity doesn't appeal to me because I enjoy cooking here too much. I still get a buzz when I meet somebody who doesn't know what I do and they tell me that they had a great meal at the Fox."

Trish Hilferty In the hot seat

Are gastropubs a good place for young chefs to start?​

"I think gastropubs can be a great grounding for any young chef - because they're more relaxed they can offer a more conducive training ground."

Are some gastropubs charging too much for dishes?​

"I went to one place near Nottingham recently where they charged about £22 for a steak and it was rubbish, but the place was packed. It's a lot more competitive in London, so gastropubs have to lower their prices a bit."

Lobster & Chips by Trish Hilferty is published by Absolute Press (£17.99) www.absolutepress.co.uk.