Ciao Thyme Cafe Viva : Courtney Brack

She’s worked for the stars but doesn’t have stars in her eyes.

Starting with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers in the early 1990s, she’s been personal chef to Bob Dylan, U2, Madonna, Rod Stewart, singer-songwriter Lenny Kravitz, INXS and cooked for Prince and Michael Jackson. These days she puts in a 100 hour week running a hip café (Viva) and down-to-earth eatery (Ciao Thyme) in Balmain in Sydney’s inner west.

Thirty-something Courtney Bracks has packed a lot into her life.

“I always wanted to be a chef,” she says. “I knew when I was 8 years old that was all I wanted to do.

Her first job was at Rockpool when it opened in 1989 with Neil Perry, Sydney’s very own rock-star chef. “I had no training,” she says. “Neil wanted apprentices at the time and gave me a job. I was in my teens and worked there for 2 ½ years. I worked again for him a couple of times over the years.” She then travelled to Europe, where she spent a lot of time in Italy.

“One of my favourite places was a restaurant in an old country cottage. The chef dropped a 200 year old balsamic on a fresh fig and I was won. Then we drove to France and visited Troisgros in Roanne.”

“That’s where I had my first ‘degustation’. It cost a fortune and I was violently ill all night. The food was fabulous but there’s was way too much. “I’m not a degustation person, and anyway I hate that much touching of my food.”

After her stint overseas, she returned home and worked for a while at Armstrong’s in North Sydney and then for a small catering company called More Than A Morsel.

“We got the contract for the Entertainment Centre and I cooked dinners for INXS. Then the Red Hot Chilli Peppers came to town and took me with them as their personal chef to the U.S. I loved them and their shows – they were health fanatics then.

“I worked for them for a year and then went to New Orleans where I was personal chef to Lenny Kravitz.

“New Orleans was fantastic food-wise. There’d be big pots of Crawdad Gumbo (Cajun soup thickened with file’, chicken, shrimp, Andouille sausage and Cajun rice) out on the streets and people from the food market would keep adding their own food to the pot.

“Lenny shared a studio with Al Green where I met “Teenie” Hodges who was rhythm and lead guitarist and songwriter on many of Al Green’s popular soul hits. His mum gave me her recipe for cornbread and we put it on the menu for our Spanish/Mexican night at Café Viva.”

In 1993, on a trip to New York with Kravitz, she cooked for Prince and Michael Jackson.

“I didn’t know what time they’d arrive and was up all night cooking and refreshing the food. I’d almost given up when there was a knock on the door at 1am and in walked Prince and Michael Jackson. They loved my food, especially my sugar-cured tuna with adzuki beans.”

Today Courtney describes herself as a good rustic country cook. You’ll often find her running up and down Darling Street between Café Viva and Ciao Thyme, delivering freshly baked quiches, tarts and exotic cakes to either venue.

“My mum was a huge influence,” she says. “She was really adventurous. I was the kid at school with the weird lunchbox. She now makes a lot of the cakes at the café – her frangipane tarts and cheesecake are hugely popular.

“My father is half Lebanese and there are a lot of Middle Eastern influences in the food I cook now, especially in the salads.”

Courtney devises mouth-watering combinations such as her smoked trout and watercress tabbouli made with parsley, shallots, coriander and mint and topped with pomegranate seeds, pistachios and walnuts. Her Shangleesh salad, made with marinated fetta, tomatoes, cucumber, red onions, radishes, fresh herbs and Za’atar, is a big seller, as is her French lentil salad which is made with du Puys lentils, cannellini beans, braised carrots, celery, onions and speck with Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar and walnut oil.

While Ciao Thyme caters for the breakfast, brunch and lunch crowd, Café Viva is also open at night for dinner where she devises weekly “culinary trips around the world”. At a recent Italian night, the menu included baked figs wrapped in prosciutto with goats cheese, roasted veal cutlet on soft polenta with braised tomato, olive and saffron sauce and a “surprise” dessert.

Courtney Brack herself is full of surprises.

Story and photos by Sheridan Rogers – and she’s published the Red Plum and Frangipane Tart recipe on her website SheridanRogers.com

Ciao Thyme
212 Darling Street, Balmain NSW 2041 Australia
+61 2 9555 5455

Cafe Viva
4/189 Darling Street, Balmain NSW 2041 Australia
+61 2 9810 9028