The Golden Pig | The Recipe to Success

Author // Shannon Edwards, Place New Farm

Take the passion of two incredibly skilled chefs, combine them, their business minds and building design skills and you’ve got a recipe for success.

The Golden Pig is Newstead’s ‘golden egg’ run by the husband and wife duo, Katrina and Mark Ryan.

The café runs weekdays serving incredible food that will leave you wanting more.

What’s so cool about The Golden Pig? Each evening and on the weekends they provide unique cooking classes, so you can indeed create exclusive Golden Pig delicacies, all by yourself, from your own kitchen.

We sat down with Katrina where she shared the story behind this family run business and their recipe to success… which is really to love what you do!

How did you get into cooking?

I have always absolutely loved cooking – I used to plan dinner parties every weekend and always cook for my friends and family.

Through university I worked as a kitchen hand so I gained an understanding for how a commercial kitchen was run, and I really loved the working environment.

I was always a big reader of the food articles in the newspaper – reading about what restaurants were opening and what was going on in the industry.

One day I saw an ad in the paper for a second year apprentice for Neil Perry so I decided to take a risk, follow my dreams and apply.

They were happy with me so I got the position and that was it, I never looked back.

What was it about cooking that you loved?

It wasn’t only the act of cooking that interested me, but also the theatre of dining.

I remember as a child my family and I would get dinner at the local Chinese restaurant – while my brother wanted to get takeaway, I was always more excited to dine in at the restaurant and have the full experience.

My dad took me to a restaurant when I was about 15 and I remember ordering a banana soufflé that had spun toffee on top, the waiter came and poured a raspberry sauce over it and I just loved the whole theatre of the meal.

**How did the Golden Pig begin?**

We spent 11 years on the sunshine coast where I worked as a teacher at the Spirit House.

We’d had restaurants in Sydney previously called ‘The Pig and the Olives’ so had an understanding of what it took.

And one day, as our children got older, we decided it was time to get back into running our own business.

So about 4 and a half years ago, The Golden Pig was born.

Where did the concept of the business come from?

My husband was a chef that retrained as a building designer so he designed the space from top to bottom.

We were really looking for a warehouse space with high-ceilings and lots of good natural light because we wanted to create an open, urban feel.

We’re so lucky that Mark has the skills that he does as he was able to turn our vision into a reality.

He’s even recently designed our new home around the corner in New Farm which is just beautiful, and we can see similar concepts in the home and the café here.

The concept of the cooking classes came from my love of teaching; it has always been a passion that I’ve wanted to continue.

I think the classes are a nice way of sharing knowledge and inspiring people.

I teach the classes alongside our guest chefs that often come in and teach in their specialty area.

I have a Danish lady who teaches bread making, a butcher who teaches butcher classes, the dessert chef from Aria comes and teaches dessert classes.

**What makes The Golden Pig unique?**

We do a lot of cooking classes for corporate offices as forms of team building, and these are very different from our usual classes.

Our private classes are really focused on educating and giving everyone a real hands-on experience, whereas the ones we do for corporate groups are fun and rowdy.

This allows the corporates to not only have a fantastic meal but to also bond with their colleagues while getting their hands dirty.

Because the venue is so large and flexible, we can completely shift the furniture around to cater for any sort of event.

We’ve had weddings, big birthday parties, Christmas parties and of course big corporate groups.

Something a bit quirky we do is snail racing – that’s always a bit of fun and really gets people excited.

We’re always looking to do something different and exciting.