Page 20 - foodservice magazine August 2019

20
DINING
“I don’t understand how people could just order in pork scotch fillet in a bag and see that as a real form of cookery. I’m sure that it relates to training and the environment that you’re in ... but I really think, as far as the future of cookery, it kind of has to go back to where it started.”
Westcott describes how through the pressures of urbanisation, employment, mass agriculture and the proliferation supermarket chains, the farmer and consumer have grown distant.
“If we can create a little community hub that allows consumers
to realise they’re not just getting fed shit generic food from a supermarket or a wholesaler that imports it from the mainland ... that it actually comes from someone who’s like them that lives locally and works bloody hard for what they do, then I think it just makes it a little bit more real and makes the world a little bit smaller.”
At Tom McHugo’s, Westcott orders in a whole lamb every week, and a whole pig every fortnight. He breaks the animals down and reserves each part for roasting cuts, organ-filled faggots, blood sausages, house-cured and smoked leg ham, and terrine.
“Where it counts is taking something down into its smallest portions and using them to actually celebrate the animal and the vegetable and offer them to the public,” says Westcott.
But as Hobart’s dining scene grows, so does the demand for the small-scale, organic produce that restaurants like Tom McHugo’s have staked their names on. Still, it’s a problem that Westcott sees as only a positive thing in the long run.