Jamie Gannon on what makes a kitchen work

Gannon's operating checklist starts with people and produce. Hire well, buy well, cost and look after the food properly, then serve the customer properly. But he does not stop at the kitchen door. The toilets, soundtrack and ambience belong in the same answer.

He argues that margins leave little room for neglecting any of it. For a diner, that means the things outside the plate are not incidental to how he thinks a venue should work.

His 75 per cent example is illustrative. He is talking about an operator who knows the desired result but still needs to work out the route to it. The target cannot choose the produce, cost the recipe or look after a guest.

“The numbers dictate what we do, but you can always do it by doing good food, and that's what I stand by,” he said.

In that answer, cooking and cost control sit together. Looking after the food includes knowing what it costs and how it is handled. Looking after the customer includes noticing what happens away from the table.

The same practical streak appears when we ask what separates an exceptional competitor from a chef who can follow a recipe.

Gannon's first advice is to look at the sponsors. They offer clues to the ingredients a chef is likely to encounter, he says, so competitors can arrive with ideas rather than begin thinking only when the box opens.

He expects chefs to make something of the produce they receive. Treating a good ingredient conservatively can be fine, he says, but a cooking competition gives them a chance to show how they can adapt it.

He is asking for judgement, not complication for its own sake. Preparation gives a chef somewhere to begin; the ingredients still require a response.

We asked about Alfan Musthafa of Warisan in Fortitude Valley, the 2025 Queensland Chef of the Year. The organiser's record describes a winning main of wagyu rump with lemon myrtle and other native ingredients. In Gannon's recollection, the detail that stood out was the use of lemon-myrtle sticks.

He saw initiative in the way Musthafa brought his Indonesian heritage into the challenge while working with Australian ingredients. When we pressed him on why that combination worked, he returned to the relationship between where the chef came from and what he was cooking with.

For Gannon, the success was in bringing those things together. His praise was specific to the cook and the choices on the plate, rather than a general endorsement of anything labelled fusion.

The example also grounds his enthusiasm for Queensland's food scene in a local chef's work, not simply in the size of a crowd.

Before the hotel kitchens and judging panels, there was the Royal Australian Navy. Asked what it taught him about leadership under pressure, Gannon talks about discipline, then about backing a teammate.

He describes being better in pairs than alone, a lesson he says he has taken through his career. You cannot do everything yourself.

It is a useful counterpoint to an event built partly around individual titles. The chef at the centre of the attention still has to know how to work with other people.

It is also a way of looking at leadership that leaves room for someone other than the head chef to make a contribution.

Gannon is enthusiastic about Brisbane, describing its food scene as flying and pointing to the energy in Fortitude Valley and the city's multicultural mix. He says he loves coming here for the buzz.

His optimism comes with a reservation: he hopes the momentum continues beyond the Olympics rather than leaving a hangover afterwards.

For a young Queensland chef wanting to lead a kitchen or open a restaurant, he leaves us with advice that needs neither a mystery box nor a spreadsheet.

“Listen, listen with your ears. You can't hear something when your lips are moving.”