About 50 butternut pumpkins are almost ready for harvest behind the Laggan Pantry and executive chef Evan Marler cannot wait to begin making soup from them. He believes they need another week before they’re at their peak for picking and cooking. Photo: John Thistleton.
Executive chef Evan Marler switches off refrigerators after the last customer leaves his fine-dining restaurant on most Sunday afternoons.
A decade after creating the 20-seat Laggan Pantry northeast of Goulburn with his partner and front-of-house maestro Sally Emerton, they have a no-waste policy. Much of their produce is picked as needed from their raised vegetable gardens next to the restaurant, rather than sitting in cold storage.
Protein on their five-course menu, for example, Southern Ranges beef, especially the wagyu and Cowra lamb is killed only to fill orders.
“The animal is walking as I am ordering,” Evan says. “When I’m doing blue-eyed cod I try and order the week before. It’s on the menu at the moment. It gets auctioned, (the prices) are all bound by Sydney markets, even if it’s coming straight from my guy in Pambula or Eden. It has to be sold back through the market.”
The detailed planning means the restaurant’s fridges need not be switched back on until fresh produce arrives on Thursday.
Any food not eaten either returns to the compost heap, or is fed to the 50 or so Australorp and Light Sussex chooks, the “hard-core” keys to zero waste.
Evan is excited and relieved as rain falls during this interview because they’re not on town water supply. He’s cleaned the gutters across the property the day before and earlier this morning. He’s calculated the number of weeks of water remaining for the restaurant, their micro-brewery, Laggan Cottage, house, including a laundry which is inundated on Mondays with linen.
Fresh linen is returned on Tuesday which is also a massive day of preparation in the brewery. Even so, Evan will find a window of time to jump on his ride-on mower and cut the lawn surrounding the restaurant, and over the surrounding grounds and between the silver birches, and fruit and nut trees.
“I need to get a fermenter completely sanitised; I need to fill the boiler full, running, everything up ready to go so when I go in on a Wednesday morning, we hit start and begin a nine-, 10-hour brew day,” he says.
Tuesday is a big ordering day too, with suppliers coming from everywhere. Some meet Sally in Goulburn on Wednesday.
Planning on Tuesdays includes a soup that needs to be thought of for the second course served over the weekend.
The Laggan Pantry is famous for its soup, and people often have forgotten how good real soup can be with gorgeous texture and made from something straight from the garden. “A little pot of soup” will always be on the menu.
Evan creates his own stock, putting beef bones in a 100-litre stockpot and begins creating sauces.
Australorp hens and a rooster and a Light Sussex chook forage under serene afternoon sunshine outside Laggan Pantry restaurant. Photo: Evan Marler.
“If we start knocking the big-ticket items away on a Tuesday and Wednesday, we are reducing sauces and finishing soups by Thursday and Friday in time to serve them,” he says.
“Wednesday is for problems that haven’t been solved. New problems arise; I wake up ready for anything,” the chef says.
Produce begins arriving and he starts preparing for the orders for people who are booked in over the weekend. “Contrary to belief, we’re not always booked out,” he says.
“Thursdays are non-stop from very early am, sometimes through to 2 am in the kitchen.
“Everything on the menu now needs to be put together so that on Thursday night we are in a really good place to start trading.”
Everything is made on the premises. “If something is crumbed, we crumb it; if something is smoked, I smoke it,” he says. “There is duck in my cool room at the moment brining. And Thursday is the smoker day for the duck.”
Sourdough loaves are baked to about 80 per cent complete, placed in a bread fridge and finished baking 10 minutes before service.
Friday is glamour day. Everything has been cleaned, is now sparkling and presented like a stage, with Sally across the specific details of each table.
Evan Marler’s hands can sink effortlessly into the rich, friable soil in his elevated planter beds. His garlic, horseradish and saffron are well protected from the chooks, which are let out through an automatic door to roam and forage every afternoon. Photo: John Thistleton.
“She is incredible,” says Evan. “Her service is immaculate; everything comes with a little story. There is theatre.”
Showtime begins with the first course, always cold and always a ‘show off’ dish because he has a little more time, as people are walking inside and taking their seats, to push the boundaries and show more passion for something he loves doing.
