Meet Ryan the chef

Find this cover feature on page 30 of the Flame's April edition. Or keep reading below…

In the first of our new Local Foodie series, meet Ryan O’Shannessy, head chef at Thirroul's Pará restaurant and owner of Flame Tree Food

Ryan O’Shannessy is a busy bloke with a whole lot on his (work) plate. He’s the head chef at Thirroul's well-regarded Pará restaurant and the co-founder and now sole owner/operator of Flame Tree Food, a popular purveyor of boutique food items, such as plant-based cheese, pasta and more.

He may look like a nightclub bouncer but he has a clinically creative mind, a tremendous work ethic and brings a wealth of experience to his work, honed in restaurants around the world.

Ryan grew up in the Sutherland Shire, moved to Tasmania when his dad started a new job there. He began working as a kitchen hand at Launceston’s St. George Hotel when he was only 13. He moved back to Sydney at 16 and worked as a kitchen hand at Elio in Leichhardt, and started his apprenticeship at 17.

He moved to London when he was 23 and continued to clock up years of real-world experience. He has worked in restaurants in Sydney, Kakadu National Park, London, Malaga, Spain, Noosa, the Blue Mountains, Melbourne and he “staged” (worked for free, for the experience)
in Colombia.

Ryan kindly took time out of his busy work schedule to answer our questions.

How did you get started in the kitchen?

My grandmother, my mother and my auntie were all incredible cooks. So I grew up around good food.

Has all your international experience influenced your approach?

Yeah, definitely. I think that’s one of the biggest things as a chef. There are so many different cuisines out there and you start to get interested in food and you start to try a whole lot of different things and you want to go to the source.

I spent a lot of time in South-East Asia. A friend of mine moved there, so I’ve travelled through there and eaten a lot of the food.

I think if you’re interested in food then you’re definitely interested in different cultures and different flavours that people have to offer – and travelling opens that up to you.

Especially in South America and Asia, where you’ve just got an abundance of street food, obviously strange and interesting stuff that you never encounter in Australia, available to buy for a few dollars on a street corner.

'Fresh is best' seems to be a crucial principle in your approach.

That’s always been a consideration in cooking. When I lived in Tasmania, we had fruit trees and we had vegetable gardens. We didn’t live close to any shops or anything, so we grew a lot of our own food and it’s a huge difference.

Until you have that, where you can walk out your front door and pick something from the garden and cook it, you don’t really see the difference between that and what you buy in a supermarket.

It’s important in cooking to use the best quality produce and the freshest produce, because if you don’t start with something good, you’re not going to end up with something good.

I’ve tried to use the best possible produce and work with growers as well – it’s very different to if you just buy generic produce from the market, you don’t even know where half of it’s from, versus if you work closer with producers, the difference is huge. A lot of these guys go out of their way to grow good-quality produce and beautiful vegetables, good quality eggs.

And that makes a massive difference to your final product.

How long have you been at Pará?

I started in late 2019, just working casually. And then the head chef left just before the lockdown, and I took over.

How has the menu evolved since then?

Well, Pará has always been Mediterranean. That’s always been the standard the owners have wanted to maintain.

There was a very heavy Spanish influence, Northern Spain, kind of French border, and then it gradually became more Southern, moving further into the south of Spain.

And now it’s a bit more Italian. And we’re probably going to kind of move up through Italy over the next six months or so.

Tell us about your company, Flame Tree Food. For starters, why that name?

I used to surf down here when I was younger and I always liked hiking through the Royal National Park to get to surf spots. I just always had a bit of a thing for the trees. Flame trees are just very original and very unusual – there are very few trees in Australia and probably in the world that have that bright red look about them.

And they’re just so different. They’re so unique, and beautiful.

And setting up the company in Illawarra as well. It was something very specific to this region.

What is Flame Tree Food well known for?

We started selling food in May 2020 – and some of the first stuff that we sold was actually plant-based cheese.

Most of what we sell at the moment is fresh pasta [think mouth-watering creations such as handmade pumpkin and goats’ cheese agnolotti] and a range of plant-based cheese, including smoked almond ricotta, white mould cashew milk soft cheese, and others.

What are some of the more challenging aspects of being a head chef and also operating your own business?

I think everyone’s suffering with staffing at the moment. It’s very hard to find people.

Juggling the two – Pará and Flame Tree Food – is a constant challenge, to be honest. There are a lot of days where I just think: what’s wrong with me?

It’s just time, really. I make the food, pack it and deliver it to all of my wholesale customers.

So, just simply finding enough hours in the day to be able to make everything fresh and then deliver it.

What are some of the more rewarding aspects?

It’s getting to cook what I want to cook, within reason, at Pará, that’s the main thing.

I’d like to expand the menu more – do a lot more technical and complex kind of stuff.

I’ve made bits and pieces of cheeses in various places I’ve worked, but Flame Tree Food gives me the opportunity to focus on that and get it out there, and especially see people’s reactions.

There are a lot of great producers in the vegan cheese market but it’s still lacking in a lot of ways.
It hasn’t really been taken seriously.

For me, being able to be a part of that kind of cheese revolution is quite fun. And being able to innovate and create new products and make nice food and cook good food and just enjoy it.

The freedom to do whatever I want is the main thing that keeps me going.

Pará is 258 Lawrence Hargrave Drive, Thirroul, www.parathirroul.com

Find Ryan's new website at www.flametreefood.net and follow @flametreefood

For orders and prices, email orders@flametreefood.com.au or DM on Instagram.

Keep reading: look out for more Local Foodie stories on everything from pizza to gelato coming up in future issues of the Flame.
Want to be featured? Email editor@theillawarraflame.com.au