Wildflower’s new head chef Paul Wilson on cooking at Geranium, a Crown Prince’s estate and luxury islands

A turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken is called a turducken. But what do you call a camel stuffed with goat, lamb, chickens, meatballs and rice? Whatever it’s called, Sydney-born and raised chef Paul Wilson had to cook three of them in a two-week period during his 11-month stint as executive chef for the Crown Prince of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates. Vegans and vegetarians, look away now. “We cooked it whole for 36 hours and then carved into it and opened it up, and all the other animals fell out of it,” he says of preparing the medieval camel feast for Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi. After stints in Michelin-starred establishments and luxury island resorts, Wilson wanted to add private catering to his resume. It’s fair to say the nomadic chef bit off more than he could chew when he relocated to the Emirati citadel of Fujairah south of Dubai in April last year. While he served fine-dining cuisine during his two-day trial for the job, Wilson was informed that the Crown Prince wanted “home-style” food. “I don’t want to see dots, I don’t want to see micro herbs,” the Sheikh told him. Wilson oversaw multiple kitchens, including a butchery team, cheese room and two pastry kitchens, pumping out daily changing menus for the Crown Prince’s large family, which includes a dozen kids. The animals for that camel dish came from the Sheikh’s farm. “I had 40 chefs, and around 13 doing the dinner service,” Wilson recalls. “They’d make a dish for him and it would come with dots. I had to literally shake the plate to make it messy or put a spoon through it just to make it not pretty. “If I didn’t, I’d get in trouble.” The hardest part was keeping fussy children happy. “It was an admin job,” he says. “I was on my phone until 2am organising kids’ food.” Wilson recalls that after initially impressing the family, the kids became even fussier and more demanding. “We were getting 14 Instagram videos a day,” he laughs. “They’d forward an Instagram video and we’d have to reverse engineer the recipe. “We only had two guys in the kitchen who spoke Arabic. ‘How do we figure out what this is?’ Then they’d want it in 10 minutes. It was out of control.” Wilson says he was planning to stay in Fujairah for two years but pulled the pin after 11 months. “I sacrificed a lot for the team,” he says. “I was waking up at 4am to drive to the other palace to do a breakfast service (for the prince), which he never even woke up for. He had toast in the villa. “I set up a full breakfast buffet with the gold chafing dishes and I’d stand there for two hours, then I’d get a toast order. “Doing that 20 or 30 times takes its toll on you.” Paul Wilson could never be accused of turducken a challenge. After returning to Sydney earlier this year and looking around for work — and finding nothing to entice him back into a kitchen — the 34-year-old chef spotted an advertisement for head chef of Perth fine-diner Wildflower at the State Buildings at Perth’s Point Zero. Wilson is one of four fresh appointments, alongside Robbie McGowan (ex-Quay and Aria in Sydney) as director of food and beverage, Jessica Roe (most recently acting chef de cuisine at Bistro Guillaume) as head chef of Petition and Lucas Fernandes as executive chef across State Buildings’ offerings. While he won’t roll out his menu until October, Wilson is already working with “beautiful” Pemberton marron and revising some of the current menu. “It’s been 12 or 13 years since I’ve had marron,” he says, sitting in Wildflower’s gorgeous dining room atop the State Buildings in the heart of the CBD. “It’s a beautiful product, the quality we’re getting.” Already enjoying the change of pace in Perth compared to the UAE, the quietly spoken chef admits he was a fussy eater as a child — perhaps the Crown Prince’s progeny were subconsciously inflicting karma. “I didn’t like vegetables, I didn’t like anything,” Wilson chuckles. “My mum, God bless her, she wasn’t the best of cooks.” He “fell into” cooking at school. “I saw the creativity of it, that was the side that probably drew me to it.” Pushed to either finish school or pursue a trade, Wilson did the latter and trained as a chef. But it wasn’t until he served a five-year apprenticeship at the Marriott Hotel and dined at world-famous Sydney restaurant Quay that his career path became obvious. “I saw the fine-dining side and my mind exploded,” Wilson says. “The finesse, the creative freedom … going into Quay and seeing the structure of the kitchen was great.” The young chef worked for a couple of years at hatted Sydney establishments before landing roles on Hayman Island and Lizard Island Resort in Cairns. At the latter, he rose to senior chef de partie alongside acclaimed chef Anthony Healy. The island gigs were Wilson’s first jobs away from home. He would soon embrace living out of a suitcase. “I fell in love with the island life,” he admits. In 2013, when he was appointed executive chef at Laucala Island, a whole-of-island luxury resort in northern Fiji, Healy enlisted Wilson as executive sous chef — his second in charge. Laucala Island was then owned by late Austrian billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz, the co-owner of the Red Bull energy drink company. “It was an amazing property,” Wilson says. “We grew 85 per cent of produce that the guests ate. Anthony and I, we brought heaps of seeds from Australia and started growing a lot of heirloom stuff that no one had seen in Fiji before.” The guests at the private, invite-only resort were a who’s who of the rich and famous, including Oprah Winfrey, Elle Macpherson, Tony Hawk, Ludacris and The Rolling Stones. “They would come into the restaurant and then we’d have a drink with them afterwards,” says Wilson, who adds that Healy was an important mentor. The other career-changing influence was Rasmus Kofoed, the co-owner and head chef at Copenhagen’s three-star Michelin restaurant Geranium, which was named the world’s best in 2022. Wilson was executive sous chef at Geranium from February 2016, arriving shortly after Kofoed earned his third star, until July 2018. “I already knew how to cook but he really took it to another level,” the Australian chef explains. “He showed me how to respect the produce, how to create the menu, how to look at the different seasons . . . things like that. “It was very strict but very calm as well. He didn’t like any drama in the kitchen. There was never a fight.” Wilson says that the attention to detail at Geranium was beyond intense. “Five millimetres would make the different between good or bad,” he says. “It was out of control. Unfortunately, you see the waste side of things because it’s three Michelin stars and our investor was a billionaire. He just wanted the best restaurant in the world. “You’d pick the top off a lemon thyme branch and throw the rest away.” Kofoed taught Wilson that a “carrot today is not a carrot tomorrow, so taste, taste, taste. Everything needs to be tasted”. Respect for produce was matched by next-level technique: “Once you understand the science of things, you can go as far as your imagination takes you”. Under Kofoed’s guidance, Wilson created an elaborate trout dish which became a fixture on the menu on Geranium. Wilson loved living and working in Copenhagen. “On Saturdays we’d play football, all the Michelin chefs,” he says. “We were all friends — it wasn’t like Geranium versus Noma or anything like that.” In July 2018, Wilson returned to the island life as executive chef at Orpheus Island Resort in northern Queensland. He served two stints there until March 2023, when he began his short tenure in the UAE. The chef says he became jaded by the realities of living and working at isolated resorts. “I won’t miss the island life. It was good when I was younger but I’m a bit older now,” Wilson says. “I want to set some roots down and not live out of a suitcase. “Island life comes with a lot of challenges, just getting the stuff. You can’t go to Woolworths, you can’t go to the bottle shop. You have to plan.” On Orpheus Island, for example, produce was delivered once a week. “You’ve got to get creative with that. It was challenging but I felt it made me a better chef.” The real issue, Wilson admits, was being “stuck with the same people for months on end. You can’t escape them. Work-life blends into one. Here you can separate them a bit”. The career-driven chef says the real reason for leaving islands and the Crown Prince behind was the desire to get back into “real cooking”. Wilson has embraced the challenge of leading Wildflower, one of Perth’s best restaurants. He wants to push the team to even higher standards and the accompanying recognition. “I honestly want to get the accolades,” he states. “I’m happy to walk into a restaurant like this and I want to grow with it.” Before he disappeared into Wildflower’s kitchen, Wilson summed up what diners can expect at the sumptuous restaurant: “A bit of theatre to the food, creativity and good memories.” But probably not a stuffed camel or, as it’s called, a camalambakicken.