Who is Grant King ?

Grant King is a International private chef, food & beverage collaborator, bespoke event specialist, author and multi award winning Sydney based Chef/Restauranteur.

With over 30 years of international experience, still to this day has a focused passion to create the most memorable bespoke experiences. Grants unique creative ability specialises in taking your vision and create menus to suit any design or dream.

Originally from NZ being inspired by food from his parents gardens was the first trigger to get into the kitchen, he started doing work experience in local hotels when he was at school, something really clicked and he couldn’t wait to leave school and become a chef.

In 1992 he enrolled to Central Otago cooking school and this is where the obsession began, a couple of years later after working in various quality local restaurants in Queenstown and Christchurch, he left at the age of 19 to London.

After 5 years in the UK and much travel through Europe sponging all he could around, his then wife and 6 month old daughter Olivia decided Sydney was where they wanted to be. They landed in Sydney in 2003 and Grant came across the highly regarded 2 hat seafood restaurant the Pier with high profile chef Greg Doyle, Grant fell in love with this restaurant and was soon offered position of Chef de Cuisine. He was given complete freedom to create and develop the food further, which took the restaurant to Australia’s highest accolades, 3 hats, 3 stars, No1 restaurant in the country and international acclaim with the San Pellegrino top 100 restaurants in the world, along with the publication of the Pier cook book, this was an amazing 7 years which cemented Grant as one of Australia’s most celebrated chefs. 

Grant always wanted his own restaurant as he had always worked for smaller quality operations led by passionate chefs, In April 2011 he risked everything and made his dream come true, he created Gastro Park “A playground of Gastronomy” this opened with immediate success gaining 2 chefs hats from the SMH and 2 stars from the Gourmet Traveller in its first year. Guest judge appearances on MasterChef Australia, 18/20 from the Gault & Millau with Grant also taking chef of the year for Australia in 2016, Gastro Park was also a finalist for best restaurant in the country 2016 coming in at no 7. 

In 2017 he wanted the restaurant be come more accessible and local so he transformed the restaurant into the Antipodean, this was 100% committed to only Australian and New Zealand products. This was such a great way of supporting only local and received a SMH hat & a Gourmet Travellar star in its first year, however 8 months later he realised the days of operating a restaurant as sole financier had become an unachievable model. So he left the restaurant industry.

In 2018 he was offered a role at the QT Hotel in Sydney as Executive Chef, he accepted and was soon promoted to Director of Food & Beverage. This was a great role but after running his own businesses for so long it was a natural progression to get back into something of his own.

2019 Smile Catering was born and things really took off, during these years the nature of business has grown into many forms from extravagant weddings and private events to hospitality consulting, food manufacturing, product development, collaborations and guest appearances, so this is GKC an event and hospitality creator and visionary.

He is still super obsessed about food and is even more thrilled to be able to share his expertise where ever the venture may take him.