Ben Shewry doesn’t take short cuts with his food. The head chef at Melbourne’s Attica restaurant not only makes nearly everything from scratch, he like to go out and forage for the ingredients too.

“My chefs and I go out each day and for age,” says Shewry, “we have up to ten differ ent wild ingredients on the menu each day.”

The New Zealand-born chef who took over as head chef at Attica three and a half years ago has in that time taken the restau rant in the suburbs from ambiguity to The Age Restaurant of the Year 2009.

While many a guest and critic have struggled to pin hole his cooking, its takes little effort to see Shewry, 32, has an un deniable respect for produce and skills to match the Michelin star chefs of Europe.

“We prepare almost everything from scratch every day. In the morning we start out with pretty much nothing,” he says. “We leave ourselves a lot of work during service, so service is pretty intense. We will cook things to order that most chefs or restaurants wouldn’t do. But that’s what we decide, when we look at a product or ingredient, and determine it needs to be cooked fresh.”

One such dish on Attica’s menu at the moment is the marron dish, a native Aus tralian crayfish from Western Australia. The marron is kept alive until it is ordered, and is served with cured beef, a selection of freshly hand picked sea vegetables, a homemade oyster sauce and homemade seaweed broth.

“We go through the process of preparing the marron once the order is made,” says Shewry. “Marrons are a beautiful creature and it pains me to kill them, but I want to do justice to that ingredient in the most pre cise way that I can, and I want to convey how excellent that ingredient is as well.”

Shewry has a deep emotional connection with many of his dishes, particularly the mar ron dish, which he says is based on the expe rience he had of falling into the ocean and being rescued by his father as a young boy. “These dishes are created at a deeper level of thinking, and are more complicated dishes.”

He cites one of his favourite compli ments as being from a customer who told him that his meal reminded him of his childhood spent by the ocean. Not surpris ing given how fresh his produce from the ocean is.

Shewry’s love of using food straight from the source can be attributed to his childhood in the “back country” of New Zealand. “I grew up in a household with a love of food, where food was in abun dance,” he says.

“My parents grew their own vegetables and farmed cattle and sheep. From the age of five I had decided I wanted to be a chef.”

“Lots of things we do at Attica are our own innovation, and I think that comes from my upbringing in New Zealand, be ing totally isolated from most people and us not having a lot of toys, having to find our own fun, being inquisitive and curious about things.”

A young Shewry was so determined to become a chef that, at the age of ten, he did work experience in a commercial kitchen. By the age of 14 he was working part-time in a restaurant washing dishes and preparing food.

A few years later he was working at Wellington’s Roxburgh Bistro, with ac claimed Swiss-New Zealand chef Mark Limacher, someone Shewry refers to as his mentor and the person who has helped him the most.

“He had the best restaurant in New Zealand at the time, and I worked for him, that was a real turning point in my career, I think I was 21 at the time,” he says.

“He’s been my major mentor and influ ence, and he’s still my good friend now. I still talk to him about things that come up; we talk regularly about restaurants and food.”

From The Roxburgh Bistro, filled with Limacher’s advice and skill, Shewry headed to London to do work experience at Nahm with David Thompson. He then went travelling around south east Asia, perfecting his Thai cooking and de veloping an appreciation for new flavours and foods, before landing in Melbourne, to work at Luxe and then Circa, the Prince, with Andrew Mc Connell, in a sous chef role.

Having grown up on a working farm, where days off don’t exist, Shewry has continued that same level of dedication in his work as a chef. “I always worked in my spare time,” he says. “On my days off I cook, and I cooked properly.

“If you want to get ahead and if you want to take it to another level, you need to work on weekends.”

Friends and colleagues agree Shewry is unbelievably dedicated to his work.

“The one thing Ben bought to the kitchen is he’s incredibly driven,” says for mer boss McConnell. “He’s worked hard on developing his unique style and skills.”

McConnell adds: “He’s a good teacher, and believes in the people around him. It is a contributing factor to Attica’s success.”

Indeed, success is something Shewry has mastered at Attica. Less than two years af ter joining the restaurant located in a for mer bank building, he had won two chef's hats in The Age Good Food Guide, best new talent in Gourmet Traveller Aus tralian Restaurant Guide and last year won the converted Vittoria Coffee Restau rant of the Year award.

And. to wrap it up, Attica was recently named in the Top Twenty Up and Com ing Restaurants around the world by Unit ed State’s magazine Food & Wine.

Accolades like these are like gold for At tica, which doesn’t spend much in the way of public relations.

“We don’t have a budget for PR, any PR we do is done by me on my days off,” says Shewry. “Because of our location getting the name out there, and getting that expo sure, as being somewhere worthwhile to go to, is really important to us.”

While many restaurants are starting to struggle with the economic slowdown in Australia, Attica is going strongly with customers continuing to walk in the door for Shewry’s award winning and afford able five star food.

“Prices at Attica are incredibly reason able; I would venture to say it’s the cheap est restaurant in the top 20 restaurants in Australia,” he says. “We want to be for everybody, we don’t want to be exclusive; we wanted people to be able to come to At tica and be able to afford it without hav ing to take out a second mortgage.

“When we won Restaurant of The Year, we could have put up our prices quite eas ily, but we made a strategic decision not to do that and I think that is paying off now.”

Along with keeping prices moderate, Shewry is focused on not letting the proto col take over from the food.

“You can’t take it too seriously. The food can be serious, but the service of the food doesn’t have to be.” he says. “It’s about customers coming to the restaurant and having something to eat.

“They shouldn’t be made to feel intim idated.”

Along with hordes of locals, Attica is fast becoming a regular for many of Aus tralia’s other top chefs and international chefs such as Peter Gordon, executive chef of London’s, The Providores, who, after dining at Attica said it was “one of the best dining experiences of his life”.

But as much as Shewry likes cooking for other chefs and friends, it is his parents he most enjoys serving up his food. “Cooking for them is pretty powerful,”he says.

“When I first launched Attica, my par ents were in New Zealand and could only read about the restaurant and the food I was doing.

“They couldn’t fully grasp it. When they came to the restaurant, they finally under stood it. It was quite emotional for me, as they are the reason I did this.”

To ensure he sticks to his motto of not having a day off, Shewry is in the midst of renovating his house, by himself, includ ing the installation of a commercial kitchen, so he can “work properly” at home. He’s also installing a new test kitchen at the restaurant, along the side of the dining room, walled by glass, “so din ers can see what’s happening”.