Gayan Pieris grew up in a big family on a rice farm in central Sri Lanka. Early memories are of a bustling kitchen; his mother would cook three times a day for ten hungry mouths plus the many ring-ins like farm workers, relatives and friends who dropped by. After school each day, Gayan would help out in the kitchen and it was there he developed his deep love for food and his mother’s infectious passion for cooking.
At boarding school in Kandy, Gayan would long for his mother’s Moringa Leaf curry and her sambal pounded with 4-foot-long mortar & pestle made out of a tree trunk. Studying biology to follow the Sri Lankan dream of becoming a doctor, Gayan’s realised his own dreams were of becoming a chef. The civil war in Sri Lanka provided the unlikely opportunity; Gayan’s sisters convinced him to move to Australia to become a chef.
After establishing himself in the inner-city kitchens of Melbourne, Gayan relocated to the Mornington Peninsula and Polperro Vineyard Dining and Many Little Bar and Dining. Gayan’s upbringing on the farm meant in many ways Polperro’s connection to the land was a welcome return to old. In Sri Lanka everything was grown in the garden, meat and fish preserved at home; the smoke coming out of the chimney signalled a busy kitchen.
When the Covid pandemic forced the businesses into lockdown, the mostly-Sri Lankan kitchen team at Many Little utilised their skills cooking up batches of curries for takeaway. There proved to be a huge local appetite for the dishes and when the restaurant reopened after lockdowns they pivoted to a modern Asian menu with a Sri Lankan focus. With a growing local interest for the food of his homeland, Gayan envisages a future where people get to know the techniques and complexity of Sri Lankan food beyond the tourist favourites of hoppers, pan rolls and curries. Taking things, one dish at a time.
