Brae’s Dan Hunter Created a Brand New Role for Damien Neylon

Dan Hunter’s Hot-Listed regional restaurant Brae is one of the world’s best, but it’s not resting on its laurels. Hunter and partner Julianne Bagnato have hired Damien Neylon as the regional fine diner’s first head of development and creativity.

Neylon first worked with Hunter in 2008 when Neylon was an apprentice at the now-closed Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld. He was part of the opening team at Brae in 2013 and worked his way up to head chef, a role he left in 2022 to join the Windsor Group as executive chef. He was head chef at the group’s sustainability-focused wine bar Parcs before it closed last year.

Now at Brae, he’s implementing more sustainability initiatives and has worked with the beverage team on expanding the non-alcoholic drink options. “The aim is to approach the rest of the year with an even greater level of focus on our creativity, sustainability, consistency and excellence,” he says. We caught up with Neylon to learn more about what he has in store.

You have a fun job title. What does the role entail?
About half of the time will be devoted to research and development of new techniques, recipes and procedures, which includes working on new dishes and refining existing ones alongside Dan. Then there’s a sustainability aspect, including analysis of in-house and on-farm closed loop systems, food and non-food waste reduction through repurposing, and sustainability across the business in general. There’s a training component as well, which is an investment of time into the kitchen team for technical development and to implement new dishes. I’ll be involved in kitchen service to a degree as well.

What dishes are you particularly excited for people to try?
One of the most recent dishes has been some excellent pork from Xavier [Meade] at Barongarook Pork that’s been aged in-house for 30 days and cooked in the masonry oven. It’s served with a shiso sauce; a puree of black garlic and ruby blood plums that have undergone the same process of “blackening” as the garlic; and poached early long eggplants that have been marinated in chocolate and six-year-old heritage corn miso.

Can you tell us a bit about the non-alc program you’ve worked on at Brae?
I approached it from my chef background and thought about the beverages as stocks, broths and sauces – with the intention to use as much produce from the property as possible, and incorporate and upcycle products from the kitchen. We’re using peach leaves for tannin instead of tea, and green almond shells to kickstart a soda made from gooseberry leaves.

Any drinks you’re particularly proud of?
A highlight has been a broad bean plant tea that was done in the style of a pu’er [fermented black Chinese tea]. The broad beans themselves were used in the kitchen, and for the tea, the leaves and stems were hand-crushed and fermented, pressed in a cider press and then brewed with some of the smoked broad bean pods and lemon balm. There was also a zucchini flower and lemon myrtle ginger beer that we made that was particularly delicious.

What does it feel like to return to Brae?
There have been ongoing conversations since my departure about what a role might look like if I returned. It feels really good to return to a workplace that means a lot to me. Dan and Jules are putting a lot of effort into the future of Brae, and I feel like I’m returning to a restaurant that’s firing on all cylinders.