PROFILE // Sam Bray
Sam Bray The Hobart chef on doubling as a bushwalking guide and working with the wild.
SAM BRAY HAS always been food-driven —
It was a fortuitous stint that led to the discovery
time was spent in front of the television with
work” and the meeting of co-owner Kym-Sarah
WORDS Annabelle Cloros
good cooks everywhere,” he says. In high
his mum was a home ed teacher and his free his nanna watching Huey and Geoff Jansz. “I was a little fatty as a kid — there were
school, Bray decided he wanted to be a chef or a cheesemaker, ultimately choosing the
former. “I don’t have the attention span to be a cheesemaker, so I did an apprenticeship after high school and went from there.”
The apprenticeship would take him across
Ruttan, who knew one of the restaurant managers at Rene Redzepi’s Noma in Copenhagen. “It
was the best restaurant in the world at the time and Kym said I should go after I finished my
apprenticeship,” says Bray. “I was 20 years old
at the time and I started saving all my pennies — working in Copenhagen for free was a very expensive thing to do.”
Bray spent two months staging at Noma,
the country and abroad to one of the world’s
but realised he wanted to take a different path
find Bray in Hobart heading up the kitchen of
projections when he arrived at the restaurant.
most recognisable fine diners, Noma. Now, you’ll MONA’s nano brewery/taphouse Manky Sally’s. The chef speaks to Hospitality about returning to familiar digs, developing a concept from
the ground up, putting sustainability first, and winning the Tranche Scholarship.
— one that was quite different to his initial
“I wanted to be in the uber fine dining world,
but when I got there, it wasn’t that much fun,”
he says. “The food was beautiful, and everyone
was driven and passionate, but I like surfing and having a life. They all seemed a bit stressed.”
All being said and done, it was a rewarding and
Sam Bray started his career in an Italian kitchen
worthwhile couple of months. “It was an amazing
where he worked alongside Chef Aaron Ruttan.
afterwards, they all flowed on one from the other.”
before moving to the now-shuttered Spice Bar
16 | Hospitality
that “restaurants could be really nice places to
experience and lined me up with every job I had
