About
Chef, business owner, author, public speaker, creative, brand ambassador & hot chip lover
Ben Shewry is the chef and owner of Attica restaurant in Melbourne, Australia. The author of two books, Origin 2012 and Uses For Obsession 2024. One of the most influential and celebrated chefs of his generation, Shewry began at Attica as an employee in 2005 before purchasing the restaurant in 2015. A noted public speaker and advocate for the environment, Shewry is featured in the inaugural season of the Netflix documentary series Chefs Table. His work as a cook and a person is renewed daily by creativity, a love of culture and people, and the native ingredients of Australia. Today, he runs the Attica with his wife, Kylie.
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Never interested in using indigenous ingredients in a tokenistic way, Ben made it his mission to learn about the culture and cuisine behind the ingredients from Indigenous Australians.
His championing of native ingredients in a fine dining setting has been highly influential on the Australian dining landscape. Attica started slowly, but momentum built and the restaurant began to attract both crowds and accolades.
Today, Attica is one of Australia’s most celebrated restaurants.
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Experience
Attica
2004 – Present
Owner, Head Chef
Test
2004 – Present
Owner, Head Chef
Attica
2004 – Present
Owner, Head Chef
Attica
2004 – Present
Owner, Head Chef
Attica
2004 – Present
Owner, Head Chef
What I've done
In September 2020 Ben Shewry and The Avalanches Hosted an epic party for Melbourne, with over 20,000 people attending
In the leadup to the house party, Ben developed party recipes and taught Melbourne how to cook them via video
Ben opens a pop-up restaurant in the Yarra Valley in Summer
My new book:
Uses For Obsession
Chef and restaurateur Ben Shewry knows obsession well. Whether it's crispy-edged lasagne, saltwater crocodile ribs or the perfect potato, obsession is what motivates him and what makes him tick. It's also what has propelled his Melbourne restaurant Attica into the league of the most innovative, acclaimed dining experiences in the world, and one of the most vital in Australian history.
In this absorbing and wide-ranging memoir meets manifesto, Shewry applies his sometimes searing, sometimes comic eye to creative freedom in the kitchen, food journalism, sexism in hospitality, the fraud of the farm-to-table sustainability ethos, the cult of the chef, cooking as muse and the legendary Family Bolognese.
Raised on a farm in a close-knit rural New Zealand family, he shares how a childhood surrounded by nature and a reverence for First People's cultures has influenced his work, the values he lives by, and the meticulous, inventive multi-course menu that is synonymous with Attica. Uses for Obsession also tells the intimate, desperate story of how Attica survived 262 days with an empty dining room. How, during a time of epic hospitality transformation, it morphed into a takeaway food business, a merch shop and a summer camp. He was told it couldn't be done and that doubt both tortured and drove him.
At its heart, this is a positive story, an antidote to the macho chef culture that thrives on old ideas about leadership and success. Shewry prosecutes the compelling case for a new way forward. A bold blueprint for the restaurant - and workplace - of the future. One built on kindness, community, truth and a commitment to never giving up.