About
My name is Stephen Santucci
I have enjoyed working with food for most of my adult life and have been inspired by the Italian food I was eating growing up. I loved eating, and eventually this led me to realise I wanted to cook for a living.
Pursuing a dream of working in kitchens, travelling and working in Italy to gain a deeper understanding of my Italian food heritage anchored my soul to my family history.
I work at Moonacres Kitchen in Robertson, Southern Highlands of NSW, which started as a certified organic fruit & vegetable farm. Over the years I have grown the business to include a bakery and cooking school. The farm is our cradle of food and inspires some of Sydney’s leading chefs in their restaurants.
Moonacres Farm and the produce it grows contain echoes of memories from my childhood of when I would visit my grandparents during summer in their suburban home. I recall my grandfather facetiously telling me that there weren’t many vegetables growing in the garden and advised despairingly that I should take a look. Gullibly, I stood on the back veranda to have a look but was confronted with an Eden of fruit and vegetables. I was invited to run through to pick fresh peas from their pods, little cucumbers off the vines, to eat and marvel at the variety, quantity and flavours which would lovingly be prepared in my grandmother’s humble kitchen.
Many years later and as Head Chef of Vini, in Surry Hills I was buying produce from Phil Lavers of Moonacres Farm so was very familiar with it. I was invited down to the Highlands to put on a dinner using Moonacres’ produce. Using entirely local produce in a restaurant kitchen was novel to me working in the city. I began to consider the concept of cooking within the locale of where good produce is grown and with a friend I began searching for other growers and meat producers within the Southern Highlands. Through a series of fun pop-up dinners, to host some dinners in a quaint country community hall in the tiny town of Avoca. This led me to make a permanent move to Robertson and work with Phil Lavers of Moonacres Farm to set up Moonacres Kitchen.
The denominator that I was not aware of at the time was the love and care my grandparents fed into their soil. The taste of the food was my thermometer and so it was not until many years later working with Phil Lavers and Moonacres that I understood about the authenticity of flavour.
The penny had dropped.
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