Peter Doyle

Peter Doyle may be taking a rest soon from restaurants. At the time of writing he was chef-owner of Cicada in Sydney’s Potts Point, but had just put the business on the market. In his normal, no-nonsense manner he explained that he and Beverley, his wife and business partner, wanted a break. Although he has been cooking since 1972, he has no intention of leaving the stoves permanently saying, "I don’t know how to do anything else."

Not for him a career in television or as author. He does what he does very well, and it has earned his restaurant great acclaim from his industry peers and from the public. In 1999 Cicada was the NSW winner in the 1999 Gourmet Traveller Awards. He quietly takes the acclaim in his stride and has even let himself travel a couple of times in the past year. He does admit to wanting to do a book. "I nearly started this year, I've got some ideas and some recipe bases, it is just a matter of getting the time. One day I'll get organised".

Peter has always loved to be at his stoves, working through the dishes, getting the balance right. This is one of the recurring comments about his food – the balance and style of his menu. It is a style that he developed long ago, and sees no reason to muck around with too much. "I have been cooking for nearly 30 years and I haven't really changed, so I can teach these guys to cook in my way. Tomato and basil go together for a reason, you don't have to put tomato, basil and strawberry together just because it looks good or may sound interesting, I can't do that. So that is my influence on those guys (the cooks in his kitchen)."

Peter blames food writers for putting the pressure on chefs to keep changing, to keep fiddling. And they keep on promoting the new, not supporting the established. "At least in Europe they cover the whole spectrum all the time. They don't concentrate on three star restaurants all the time, but they never go out of favour. They don't get forgotten and left on the shelf. Everybody gets their own coverage". But he quickly puts food politics aside, "I don't like to mix with those kind of people anyway, I'd rather go surfing".

It was love of surfing that made him open Reflections at Palm Beach in 1982. "We were probably naive, we were going on blind faith in a lot of ways, it was time to do a restaurant, and we lived in Palm Beach and I surf so I wanted a restaurant there. It was too seasonal and the winter was too long, but it was really good for five years till it became time to leave. It was just a run-down dilapidated fibro shack with food that was better than the place. At that time we didn't think it was such a huge jump from there to Trianon (in Challis Avenue, Potts Point, where Cicada is now but vastly changed). But in retrospect we didn't know what we were doing, didn’t have the right staff for the place. We thought we did but we didn't really. Trianon was the restaurant in Sydney during the '50s and 60s, to a lot of people. We’d got the restaurant we wanted, but then two months later the world fell over. And being a cook I couldn't predict that.

Peter explained how it really took he and Beverley a year to work out what they were doing in the new business but by then, "the market had well and truly changed and all the bistros were coming in. No matter what we tried to do we could never get away from it feeling outdated. The set up, style service, the decor was still there. Financially it was a big commitment. We just had to wait until we could afford to do something about it. It took us three years to build up enough momentum, pay off a few debts, and then it was time to change."

And so the Trianon became Cicada in 1994 and within weeks was buzzing happily. Sydney embraced the change, the feeling of openness. "Before people had to walk along the hall way, and then they entered the room, and they were intimidated before they even got that far. Where as now it is much more open and less confronting and it is really important that you have that welcome and good bye". It was a total change in ambience but little in food. "We have never been that Asian really, it became a bit more Mediterranean maybe. Sort of more French-based, just because that is what I'm more comfortable with, and what I like doing. It’s obviously always been French based technique style cooking, because that’s more instinctive to me. I mean we use Bok Choy because its a green vegetable, we don’t use it because we like putting it with oyster sauce. So we do use the ingredients, but we don't do Asian dishes."

"You cook what you believe in cooking basically, go back to '87 or early 90s, and everybody was trying to be everything to everybody, just to get that little market share and that was really hard, as you know. But then in the last few years, things have gotten a little bit better. So you’re allowed to be what you want to be, which I think is really good, it’s essential, because, one chefs doing his style and another is doing his style. Its pretty important that everybody follows their one thing, and that's the way it all progresses, it grows up and matures".

A 1991 interview with Peter Doyle

Peter Doyle's Recipes