The Bearded Canadian, Train, House of Goff & Johnno
Let’s start with a brief, one-paragraph history lesson/backstory:
It was a spring day in 2016 on Sydney’s Circular Quay when Train scrawled “Feast on Beasts” on a diner napkin before returning his weary gaze to the immensely dissatisfying salad double-parked in front of his tiny steak. He hankered for a truly beautiful steak, perfectly cooked in a kitchen full of passionate cooks, thrilled to be alive and creating meat dishes, and embracing their calling. “I can’t be the only one thinking like this,” Train lamented.
Fast-forward past a trip to IP Australia, a transcontinental relocation and 4 years later, Feast on Beasts was born: a tight-knit community of passionate meat lovers, presenting beef, pork, lamb and poultry-related reviews, rumours, feasting facts and fiction and fashion – and these are the people that helped turn that miserable lunch into a Feast for the senses.
Train is always hungry, loves a garish feasting shirt and believes that an appetite is like any other muscle in the body – it can be trained to get bigger, stronger and more formidable. But it takes effort!
Talent/superpower: defeating science with unusual cooking methods, banter, never giving up – at the feasting table.
Specialty: steak, crackling pork loin bites with seasoned crackling, cold hard opinions.
The Bearded Canadian sports a beard that would put most lumberjacks to shame but is known for his panoramic range of culinary tastes and insatiable appetite for gustatory parlour games and challenges.
Talent/superpower: culinary creativity, seeing beyond the carcass or cut before him and dreaming up enticing entrees, mains and stunning starters.
Specialty: Ham, pork shoulders, poultry curios, repartee, Canadian accents.
House of Goff knows things that we don’t when it comes to burgers, hot sauce and the science of meaty repasts. Genuinely humble and soft spoken, his dishes scream perfection, attention to detail and rich flavour.
Talent/superpower: maintaining a measured, logical approach to preparing and presenting feasts, even if chaos abounds; and consuming (and relishing) fiery hot sauces.
Specialty: Smash burgers, chicken wings in many and varied um… variations, food (okay meat) science.
Johnno the enthusiastic smoker, brisket whisperer and pork platter presenter with the golden olfactory senses, deconstructs sauces, rubs and recipes in general, with an unsettling confidence and unerring accuracy.
Talent/superpower: the easy answer is, plating up peerless portions of pork and brisket but it’s the detail, the ingredients, the flavour combinations that set his work apart from the rest.
Specialty: Brisket, pork, chicken varietals and lesser-known beast-based meals – buffalo, crocodile to name two.