When Ben Shewry was hit by a bus on his way to dinner, he did not cancel the reservation. He may have been bleeding, his clothes torn, but at least he arrived early. When strangers in a wasabi forest in Japan offered him a plate of unidentifiable meat, he ate it without verifying its source – and stayed calm as fellow tourists purged what they assumed was parasite-riddled bear flesh.
The executive chef and owner of Melbourne’s acclaimed restaurant Attica has faced bigger threats in his career (Covid shut his dining room for 262 days, for instance), but the threat now is something he’s authored himself. In his new memoir, Uses for Obsession, the chef denounces the “incredibly problematic” restaurant awards system that helped make Attica famous.
