Lauren Murdoch
Lauren Murdoch started her working life training to be a nurse, before deciding her calling was in a different nurturing profession: cooking. She began training at Atlas Bistro in Riley Street and moved on to Rockpool for a year’s pastry experience before working at the Concourse Restaurant at the Sydney Opera House (now the Opera Bar), where she met Janni Kyritsis (then Executive Chef at neighbouring Bennelong).
Janni took Lauren with him as sous-chef when he opened MG Garage in 1997, where she says she learnt to appreciate natural flavours, how things as simple as olive oil, lemon juice and sea salt can lift the taste of a piece of fish. She credits Janni with teaching her to enhance, rather than disguise, the natural flavours of food. The opportunity to work with less common ingredients, such as veal hoof and gefillte fish, was also an eye-opening experience for this young chef.
When MG closed in 2002, Lauren spent a couple of summers working as a private chef in a home in The Hamptons, Long Island (USA). In 2005 she accepted the offer to run the kitchen at the Hemmes family’s Lotus Bistro in Potts Point, where she created food built around excellent produce prepared simply with those natural flavours she learnt at MG Garage.
In mid-2008 she moved across to head Ash St Cellar in the new Ivy complex, where the menu is more in the style of tapas, shared plates of tasty morsels that can be a snack or a full meal. Lauren says she enjoys this style of cooking because: “…there’s a lot of creative construction in each dish, which is fun, playful, a good thing for us crazy chefs!”