The chef is signing off from his world-famous Sydney Harbour restaurant. He talks snow eggs, training hundreds of chefs, and presidential personal tasters
A man in a baseball cap walks up to Peter Gilmore with a smile. “I had your snow egg five years ago,” he says. “And it was fantastic.” He shakes Gilmore’s hand, then wanders away along the boardwalk at Campbells Cove and disappears, along with other sightseers and joggers, along the path that snakes under the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
On this sunny Thursday, even if you didn’t know about the famous snow egg or recognise Peter Gilmore as its creator, it’s still easy to pick him as a Very Important Chef. Not just because he’s a stone’s throw from Quay, the fine-dining restaurant he has led for the past 25 years, nor that he’s accompanied by a photographer bearing a lighting rig. It’s because he’s dressed, outdoors, in pristine chef’s whites. He might as well be wearing a toque.