After amassing 30 Good Food Guide hats and training a generation of culinary stars, the influential chef is calling time.
One of Victoria’s most influential chefs, Tansy Good, is retiring. After more than four decades spent shaping the state’s dining scene and collecting an incredible 30 Good Food Guide hats since 1983, the owner of hatted Tansy’s will close the doors to her Kyneton restaurant on October 26.
“I’m old, I’m tired, and yes, I do mind if you ask my age,” says the exacting dame of dining.
Her influence is immense. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, she trained a roll call of Melbourne’s defining chefs: Karen Martini, Rita Macali, Philippa Sibley, Andrew McConnell and Matt McConnell.
Gerald Diffey, owner of Gerald’s Bar, believes her influence was foundational. “Her alumni are the cornerstone of Melbourne cooking.” Diffey has a long history with the chef, having started as a waiter at Tansy’s first restaurant in Nicholson Street, Carlton North (now Brico), and later managed the CBD iteration of Tansy’s in Spring Street (now City Wine Shop).
“Everyone she touched turned to talent,” he says. “They all came through this remarkable school.”
Cooking author and restaurateur Karen Martini finished her apprenticeship at Tansy’s, then became sous chef in a life-changing three-year stint. “Her roots in French methods, the way she develops flavour from the ground up, her understanding and approach to ingredients, all of that laid the foundation for my cooking,” says Martini.
Joy and wonder glimmered through long hours and demanding work. “It was the hardest kitchen I’ve ever worked in, incredibly disciplined, with a prep list longer than my arm,” says Martini, who recently took charge of Bar Carolina in South Yarra.
‘She was passionate about provenance in a time when people didn’t know where food came from.’
Matt McConnell, Bar Lourinha
Andrew McConnell (co-owner of Gimlet, Cutler and Supernormal) worked with Tansy in the city restaurant, which blazed like a culinary comet in 1992 before closing in 1994.
“The food was original and pioneering,” he says. “Cooking with her truly gave me an understanding of different ways to coax flavours. There was a real lightness to how she cooked and composed menus.”
Tansy’s was awarded the maximum three hats seven times across two locations. Rita Erlich, Good Food Guide co-editor through the 1980s and ’90s, remembers the Carlton North restaurant particularly fondly.
“It was a beautiful place, so thoughtful,” says Erlich. “Wherever you looked, there was something lovely to see: a vase of flowers, a painting. The food was extraordinary in its technique and flavours. It was astonishing how everything went with everything. It was brilliant menu planning.”
Matt McConnell, who will celebrate 20 years at city restaurant Bar Lourinha next year, worked alongside Good in the Spring Street kitchen. “She was passionate about provenance in a time when people didn’t know where food came from,” he says. “She sent me down a rabbit hole of wanting to know about ingredients.”
Good studied hotel management at William Angliss hospitality training school, but is a self-taught cook.
“I spent my time cooking when I was supposed to be going to school,” she says. “I was anorexic and obsessed with food. It was a perfectionist thing. I learnt from reading Paul Bocuse, Cordon Bleu magazine, and English writers who travelled in France, like Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson.”
Good’s culinary education included eating adventures in France. She worked on and off for Stephanie Alexander from 1978. While cooking at Alexander’s mansion restaurant in Hawthorn, she met Belgian chef Marc Bouten.
Bouten became Good’s partner, and the pair opened the first two Tansy’s restaurants together before separating. After closing the city site in 1994, Good worked at restaurants including Prahran’s Locarno, again with Gerald Diffey, and one of Southbank’s original venues, EQ.
In 2003, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The aggressive treatment that followed prompted a career shift, leading her to pursue horticulture.
While she was studying at Melbourne University’s Burnley campus, however, the vacant on-site cafe drew her back into kitchen life. She went on to work at notable venues such as deli-butcher Skinner & Hackett and Gertrude Street Enoteca.
In 2019, she hung her name over the door again, opening Tansy’s in a charming weatherboard in Kyneton.
‘It’s going to be hard for me to stop because this is what I do, but the time comes along.’
Chef-restaurateur Tansy Good
Today, the dining room is set for just 12 guests, decorated with flowers, artfully placed pumpkins and exquisite crockery. The menu du jour starts with a choice of cheese souffle or sardines with romesco, continues with snapper with cider sauce or lamb cutlets with vermouth sauce, before finishing with mandarin panna cotta or triple cream cheese.
Not a single morsel is amiss. The twice-cooked cheese souffle – a plump, jiggly cylinder – is a signature for good reason, although the chef is never completely happy with it. “You’re always trying to improve,” she says.
This pursuit of perfection is evident in every element, from a simple side salad – an airy pile of glistening herbs, lettuces, and bitter greens – to her legendary sauces. They are of a standard people rhapsodise about in three-Michelin-star restaurants: silky and complex with astonishing length of flavour.
“Her sauces are sublime,” says Diffey. “I encourage all young chefs to go there and taste them. It’s cooking at a level we don’t see much in Melbourne.”
Good and her partner, John Evans, have run the small restaurant with no staff, living out the back. Now, the chef is looking forward to her next chapter in Creswick, where the couple has bought a house.
Retirement will include some teaching and small-scale gardening.
“There’s a lot of interest from my diners in how to make a souffle,” she says. “I’ll grow some things, just for ourselves. Beans are easy, and we’ll put in some garlic. I have two grandchildren. It will be nice to spend more time with them.”
Despite the restaurant’s quality, it struggles financially. “We don’t make money,” Good admits, her fatigue and frustration evident. The closure, therefore, is inevitable. “I need a breather. It’s going to be hard for me to stop because this is what I do, but the time comes along.”
Tansy’s last service will be on October 26.
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