Andrew Bowden is the “lord pastry master of Hartsyard“. You may know him as Andy Bowdy if you follow him on social media, where you can see the next-level desserts he makes for the hatted Newtown restaurant. This includes his ever-changing soft serves and pies – which incorporate everything from deep-fried cheesecake, wasabi peas, toasted bourbon marshmallow and duck fat choc chips – and his spectacular bespoke cakes (one particular creation was bartered for 18 cheeseburgers from Mary’s). One of these concoctions still takes the title for the best cake I’ve ever eaten.
He didn’t start off wanting to be a chef, but he managed to get there through some unlikely steps. Despite some unfortunate incidents with knives and unco-operative lettuce, Andy has had some great adventures in the kitchen (including a memorable dance session that led to emergency vehicles turning up at the restaurant where he happened to be busting his moves). Andy also talks about how he ended up at Hartsyard with head chef Gregory Llewellyn, his inventive dessert experiments, his mentors and his favourite places to eat and drink in Sydney.
You can listen to the podcast on iTunes or download it via RSS or directly. And thanks to everyone who has helped spread the word about this podcast or left a rating or comment in the iTunes store, it really is icing on the cake.
Your podcasts kept me entertained last night while I was staying up icing an ombre cake so thank you for keeping me sane and giving me an insight into so many impressive food talents. The Mary’s burger swap was a cracking tale 🙂
Helen, your ombre cake was next level! I imagine it tasted as spectacular as it looked. The people who got to dine out on it would be very lucky indeed! Thanks for your very sweet comments, I’m really thrilled that you enjoyed the podcast and could help with retaining a little sanity during your mega cake-making mission! It seems apt that you’d be listening to a podcast about making spectacular cakes while conquering one yourself! The Mary’s story is brilliant – it still makes me laugh …
I found your latest interview/chat with Andrew Bowden really entertaining. I love your interviewing style, and you always seem to make your subjects shine and bring out their personality. I have eaten at Hartsyard before but hearing this interview makes me want to go again! I am always excited to see when you’ve got a new podcast out, keep ’em coming!
Dear Lori,
Thank you for your incredibly kind and considerate feedback and taking the time to scribble it down! I’m really stoked that you enjoy the podcasts, especially the most recent one with Andy. He was a lot of fun to interview and I really liked how he painted a picture of how far he has come as a chef (kitchen raves and all!). I’m also stoked that the podcast has inspired you to revisit Hartsyard, it definitely is worth detouring again – and saving stomach room for Andy’s amazing desserts. I went in for a take-away version of his banoffee soft serve, it was definitely spectacular! Thank you for your gold-star encouragement – I have a little backlog of podcasts to edit at the moment (it can be a s-l-o-w process), but your enthusiasm definitely helps me power through! Thank you for being so awesome!
Hello LTL! I’m just getting back into your podcast and just listened to this episode. I really love how you’re talking to a lot of people in food that I personally admire as a home cook. I would like to make a suggestion though and ask if you could do a summary of links to the places you guys talk about, as I was interested in a few of them. I understand that it is more work for you, but it would give us Sydney foodies some nice to-do lists.
I’ve seen a good template for this in Tim Ferriss’ podcast. Here’s an example:
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/
(scroll down to “selected links” and “people mentioned”)
Ones I remember from this podcast are: Pink Salt, Sepia, Gelato Messina, Rockpool (date pie), 11 Madison Park, Shake Shack… I’m sure I’ve missed a few.
Thanks for having a great podcast! Keep it up!
Hey Erich,
Thanks so much for your nice words and also taking the time to write this considerate note.
Thanks for the suggestion, it’s a really good one. I’ve currently got a bit of a backlog of podcasts to work through, but I’ll keep this idea in mind for future episodes. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to logistically footnote every place that is mentioned (as I am already having trouble just keeping up with the audio-editing side of the podcasts!), but I might try to annotate all the Sydney dining recommendations which are named at the end, which seems like a good compromise.
Thanks again for your idea and also for your lovely comments!
All the best,
Lee Tran