Bar & Bites: Alberta’s roving star chef Ben Ing heads north to host Gascoyne Food Festival’s centrepiece event

Former junior ice hockey champion-turned star chef Ben Ing swapped the cool climes of Ottawa, Ontario for hot kitchens in New York and across Europe, including the Michelin-starred Noma in Copenhagen for seven years from 2014 — four of them as head chef. Ing met his wife Kirsty Marchant at Noma Sydney during its 10-week residency before they moved to Denmark to steer the flagship restaurant. Marchant, who has also worked in great eateries around the world, served as Noma’s head gardener before the couple returned Down Under in November 2020 to be closer to her home town of Yallingup. In 2022, they opened Alberta’s, a deceptively humble 50-seat cafe in Busselton drawing on local produce and techniques Ing learned in culinary institutions. “Kirsty and I love to eat and experience new cultures,” Ing told Bar & Bites. “Busselton, you know, it’s not New York or Paris, but we’re always open to new scenes and new experiences.” Alberta’s was put on the backburner in March 2024, and the couple had their first child, son Bert, in early April. Now part of the Sans Pants group behind Si Paradiso, El Grotto and FOUND, Ing is enjoying the relative freedom of working in different kitchens and at regional festivals, such as the recent Shore Leave event in the Mid West, where he co-hosted the incredible Abrolhos Long Table Lunch with Bib & Tucker’s Scott Bridger. Gascoyne Food Festival organiser Louise Cashmore, whom Ing met through the Origins Market in Busselton, has invited Ing to host the Carnarvon Long Table Lunch on July 26. “We are in a banana plantation, with a satellite kitchen and rustic set-up,” the star chef says, adding local beef, vegetables and, obviously, bananas, will be on the menu. The Carnarvon Long Table Lunch is the flagship of this year’s Gascoyne Food Festival, Australia’s largest regional gastronomic event, running from July 26-August 31. Other shindigs include a full moon feast in Exmouth, bush tucker around a fire pit, and prawns and Pimm’s at the Carnarvon Race Club. With a little help from Tourism WA, B&B crunched numbers from five recent food festivals, including Taste Great Southern, Cabin Fever and Shore Leave to discover around 56,000 visitors spent more than $9.3 million across these events, giving a huge boost to regional tourism and hospitality. Even before launching Alberta’s, Ing sought out local producers and farmers to identify the best of WA. He loves our winter citrus fruit, sustainable seafood, and the high-quality grass-fed beef from Dirty Clean Food. “I thrive on that kind of knowledge, you know, where things are coming from,” he explains. “It’s a bit of cliche, but it’s all super interesting to me. “Getting up to the Gascoyne and meeting people, well, now we can support each other. Then it just blossoms from there.” For more information on the Gascoyne Food Festival, visit gascoynefoodfestival.com.au.