Under the command of Sydney’s Number One Bent Street owner Mike McEnearney, students prepared a seven-course degustation menu. 

McEnearney said the menu was “simple” with “big flavours”. 

“We’re making some chicken liver pate, three different starters – it’s share oriented. They’ll have blackenend eggplant with sesame dressing, beef fillet tataki and also hot-smoked Huon salmon,” he said.

Lamb shoulder was on the cards for mains, and dessert too. 

McEnearney said he hoped to give the students a chance to experience to their normal daily routines. 

“If they can take one thing away from today, I hope that they will treat the produce with respect and take a less a more approach and make the ingredients seen by itself,” he said. 

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The award-winning chef said he enjoyed working with Tasmania’s “amazing” produce. 

“I quite like how you keep the produce to yourselves. We don’t see much of it on the mainland, it’s pretty smart,” he said. 

TasTAFE’s Drysdale division manager Maree Gerke said the series had provided great experience to the apprentices. 

“They have definitely seen different ways of working and different styles. Each of our chefs come in with a different approach and a slightly different philosophy about food,” she said. 

“But they also get to work with different produce each time around and some of it is the best stuff that Tasmania has. Many of them won’t get to work with that in their normal work place.”

The nine-series installment was a whole team effort from the Drysdale campus, with about 12 apprentices working in the kitchen, 15 front of house students running the restaurant and tourism students working the social media channels.

Nine local, interstate and international chefs took part in this year’s series. 

In a Hobart first, two events in the series were held in the state’s South.