Pork is a truly wonderful thing. From nose-to-tail cooking by chefs to a simple juicy cutlet for dinner by home cooks, it’s the clear choice thanks to its versatile nature and bounty of beautiful, subtle flavours. These are just some of the traits that PorkStar promotes in its annual program, calling on the help of industry leaders who are reinventing and reigniting a passion for pork. The 2017 line-up is no different, featuring a diverse mix of respected chefs from around the country who share one thing in common: they really love pork. David Thompson launched this year’s program at his Sydney Long Chim restaurant over a fiery feast that included grilled pork cheeks and pineapple curry of pork. Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s inspirational pork lovers.

Nelly Robinson can remember the sound of his grandad crunching on crackling chips from one hand while he held a beer in his other hand in the Northern England pubs he grew up in. The vision even informed a recent dish at nel., his bunker-style fine-dining restaurant in Sydney. “It was essentially a pork crackling with a pork ‘beer’, which was a pork consommé with beer froth,” says Robinson, who actually left school at 15 to chase his dream of becoming a pro footballer. But after taking up a pot-washing job at Nigel Haworth’s Michelin-starred Northcote Manor, he had a change of heart. “I saw these guys running around acting crazy in this busy place and thought to myself, ‘I want to be a part of that’.” He became head chef of Stanley House Hotel and Spa in Lancashire at the age of 22, before deciding to reclaim some of his youth with his best friend by travelling. The pair chose Sydney over Melbourne and New York, but not entirely for its food offerings. “We were single and realised that where there are beaches, there are ladies,” Robinson laughs. After various stints around the country, including time in the Sydney Opera House kitchens, Robinson opened nel. in 2015, offering an eight-course degustation menu that rotates every six weeks. “A lot of chefs say I’m crazy for doing it, but I like the challenge,” says the chef.

“Obviously, bacon makes the world go round,” Palinkas says. At Young George, the Perth restaurant she co-owns, the chef cures around three pork bellies a week for her streaky rashers, which are smoked in-house. Then there’s the house-made parma ham and jamon, hanging as we speak; pork collar, prepared in the wood oven and served in a Mexican-inspired dish; and tender jowl, which is served with an orange paste. “As a child I grew up eating a lot of pork – my family is Hungarian-German,” says Palinkas. “My grandmother used to make pork knuckles and that kind of thing, and I’ve always loved it.” Palinkas is a self-trained chef who worked her way up the ranks. “I couldn’t really afford to do an apprenticeship, because I had to support myself from the age of 16,” she says. Honing her cooking skills in the UK, she returned to Perth to work in the eclectic and globally influenced Young George. “We go for bold, flavour-bomb kind of flavours and source the very-best-quality local ingredients we can possibly get.”

Monty Koludrovic.

Spencer Patrick calls his cooking style ‘old-school’. “Back in the day, we were shown how to properly butcher a pig and cook it properly, nose-to-tail, using everything from the offal to the tail to the head,” the UK-born chef explains. “What I love doing is respecting the animal and using every part of it, and training the staff to do so as well.” The blood is used for the blood pudding on his breakfast menu, while the pig’s head features in an old-fashioned brawn terrine, and the ears are cooked confit. “We also de-bone the trotters and stuff them the old-school way. And with the skins, we dehydrate and crisp them up, and they accompany other dishes on the menu. Pork is my favourite meat and it’s a crowd-pleaser, too.” Patrick worked under Marco Pierre White in London for seven years before relocating to Melbourne to join Gary Mehigan’s restaurant, Fenix. During a brief hiatus where he travelled the country, he fell in love with the tropics, eventually leading him to open Port Douglas fine-diner Harrisons, which evolved into Bistro H by Harrisons in 2016. “I just thought it was beautiful here, so I thought, ‘Hey, I’m going to set up camp’.”

Jacqui Challinor was apprehensive about becoming a chef. “I was petrified about getting into an industry that was so male-dominated,” the soon-to-be-31-year-old says. After receiving a nudge from a supportive friend, Challinor began her TAFE training and kicked off her apprenticeship at Rozelle’s About Life. “A lot of people give you grief for starting in a cafe, but that really gave me some incredible experience, because they threw me into the short-order kitchen.” She finished her apprenticeship at Merivale’s Mad Cow and Felix restaurants, before finding her stride at David Tsirekas’ now closed Greek restaurant, Xanthi. From there, Challinor arrived at Surry Hills restaurant/cellar door, Nomad, where she took the reins after Nathan Sasi’s departure. “We get in two whole pigs a week, which we break down and do as much as we can in-house, which is great for the team to see,” she says. The belly, loin and shoulder are reserved for Nomad’s dinner menu, while the rest becomes charcuterie to sit in their beautiful display cabinet. There are also rillettes and pork fat chat potatoes on offer.

Nicky Riemer has been cooking for more than 20 years, the last six of which were spent at her hugely popular Richmond restaurant, Union Dining. She swapped her engineering degree for a cooking apprenticeship at the age of 23, which she calls a “late start” in chef’s years. Her love of cooking was cemented after arriving at Stephanie Alexander’s Richmond Hill Cafe & Larder. “Those early years working with Stephanie made me want to remain a chef,” Riemer says. After recently selling Union Dining, Riemer is enjoying splitting her time between projects, including a new cookbook and running classes with The Essential Ingredient. But when she recalls Union’s most beloved dishes, it’s an easy choice. “One of our favourite dishes that we’d make every Friday and Saturday night was whole-roasted suckling pigs stuffed with lots of herbs.” And Riemer’s secret for achieving the quintessential crispy skin? Hanging the pigs for up to two days beforehand so they’d completely dry out, then blasting them in a 220°C oven.

The first cuts of pork Rhoades-Brown ever encountered as a chef were pig’s heads soaking in 20-litre buckets of brine at the iconic Roberts Restaurant in Polkobin in the Hunter Valley. “It was a great way to see how versatile the animal was. My first training with pork was making pig’s head brawn, rillettes, pork liver and pistachio terrine, and porchetta,” he says. Suckling pigs would also come through the door, which Rhoades-Brown and his team would break down and serve with local cumquats. In 2009, aged just 24, Rhoades-Brown opened Muse Restaurant with his wife, Megan, continuing the same produce-led, seasonal, nose-to-tail ethos he learned at Roberts. “We have amazing pork in Australia, and for chefs it’s great, because so much of the animal is so attractive to use. We all have budgets and need to be clever, and it just comes together more easily with pork. We use everything down to the bones, which we smoke for our broths, and even have a little amuse-bouche of crackling with a seaweed crumb on it.” The chef even embraces pork in seafood dishes, pouring a smoked pork hock broth over a blue-eye fillet. “There’s so much delicious flavour to be had with the whole animal,” says Rhoades-Brown.