It's Friday lunchtime in the dining-room of The Ledbury, in London's Notting Hill, and Brett Graham, the restaurant's 26-year-old Australian wunderkind chef, is yet to emerge from the kitchen. Which gives me a chance to look around the room, which is finished in international boutique hotel-type chic. It's a glamorous setting, which bodes well for meeting the chef, whose name is being dropped in ever-higher circles.
Since The Ledbury opened last year, it has been named both Tatler Restaurant of the Year and the Restaurateurs' Restaurant of the Year. Graham himself brings a few gongs to the table: in 2002 he was named British Young Chef of the Year and six years ago he took Australia's Josephine Pignolet Award as Sydney's best young chef. At The Square, his last restaurant, he won a couple of Michelin stars: here, he has one. Liam Tomlin, who worked with Graham in Sydney and is now a restaurant consultant, says: "What he's gone and achieved is unbelievable. I just knew this guy was brilliant."
Michelin-starred antipodean chefs are not such a rarity these days and next month's Toast festival - a celebration of antipodean food and wine - in London's Regent's Park boasts more than a handful including Shane Osborn (Pied à Terre) and David Thompson (Nahm) alongside Graham himself. The legendary Bill Granger of Bills restaurant in Sydney's Darlinghurst is jetting in specifically for the occasion.
When Graham finally emerges, he is diffident and somewhat frazzled. Then again, it's very hard work running a fine-dining restaurant, preparing a sophisticated menu full of originality and experimentation, which retains enough earthiness to satisfy the trencherman: one of his biggest sellers, for instance, is Pyrenean milk-fed lamb baked in hay with creamed potatoes, truffle and celery. It's confident stuff.
It's a long time since antipodean food was written off as mere stubby-and-barbie fuel - then again, it's also a decade since the New World fusions of Peter Gordon burst on the scene, (omega) establishing Australia and New Zealand as gastro-zones with a new Pacific cuisine that related to Asia as much as to Europe.
Graham is not so demonstratively antipodean, and adheres more to the new orthodoxy of seasonality and localism. "There are a few fusion-ish touches," he says. "I use shiso vinegar on my flame-grilled mackerel, for instance." Indeed, he does, and apparently Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is a great fan of this dish. The point, he says, is to strike a balance, and not be over-contrived. "You're trying to make food complex and interesting, but also simple," he says. Dishes such as caramelised veal sweetbread with snails, stout, broad beans and morels are a case in point, packed with different flavours but never jarring or gimmicky.
The young chef's career has followed a dramatic arc. Originally from Newcastle in New South Wales, Graham's mother worked for a pharmaceutical company and his dad ran a tractor shop. As a young man, Graham wanted to be a farmer. "But then I started cooking." Hooked, he took a job in a local restaurant, where he learnt the art of polishing glasses, then graduated to a seafood restaurant, gutting fish and making staples such as Kilpatrick oysters. "It was a good experience," he recalls. "The restaurant was very simple, very busy and very hard work."
It motivated Graham to join the "fine dining" milieu, and off he went to Banc: "To be the bottom of the chain." Banc was a traditional French restaurant with lashings of foie gras and it was here that Graham's ascent began in earnest. He learnt fast, the Josephine Pignolet Award came, and he decided to leave. "And, obviously, I thought I'd come to London."
But why? These days, surely Sydney is the gastronomic hot zone. "Yes it is, but there's still more happening in London," says Graham. "People here have such high expectations as they're exposed to so many fine-dining restaurants." Plus, he adds, the food is more consistent and labour is cheaper, creating a more vibrant market. Also, London is nearer Paris - still the epicurean's spiritual home.
So Graham arrived at The Square, where he made desserts, then became sous chef, rising above the radar to become British Young Chef of the Year. Then came the two Michelin stars, which Graham plays down. "I think it is less important than it used to be, partly as there are so many guides," he says. "It was more a sense of relief that we were doing a good job." Even so, Graham believes in the Michelin system. "The guides are absolutely correct and well-judged," he says. "I think we had 14 inspections in the first year and we weren't aware of an inspector at any time. Not that we would have done anything differently even if we had known that they were coming."
Then, Graham's British mentor - Phil Howard, who he had met at The Square - asked him if he wanted to help set up a restaurant. "I felt I was ready by then," says Graham. The Ledbury is the result (it used to be Dakota) and Graham is working hard to keep its position on the map. "Sometimes people can't get in because it's booked out," he says. "But you can never make assumptions. I'm trying to build up the lunchtime trade."
He is also working hard on the menu, to keep it one step ahead of the pack. "For instance, I've got two dishes here without any fat," he says, pointing to two first courses, one of which is a Graham special: loin of tuna wrapped in basil with a salad of radish and soy. "I'd like to come up with more dishes like that." And he's about to put a new dish on the menu: roast foie gras with glazed mango, pain d'épice and cashew nuts.
The point is that however many plaudits Graham might get, he refuses to bask in the limelight. He doesn't table hop - "I don't want to interrupt my diners' evenings" - nor does he aspire to television. "I'd say the best chefs in London aren't household names. They're not the bunch of dropkicks you see on Ready Steady Cook." It's down to a talent for cooking rather than publicity that the name Brett Graham is becoming renowned.
Toast New Zealand on 15 July, and Toast Australia on 16 July, are both at Regent's Park, London NW1. Visit www.toastfestival.co.uk or call 0870 906 3776 for tickets and details. The Ledbury is at 127 Ledbury Road, London W11, tel: 020 7792 9090
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