THERE’S nothing like being thrown in the deep end. Jacqui Gowan had never cooked Spanish food and never been to Spain before she was appointed head chef at Subsolo, a Sydney restaurant cum tapas bar which has quickly established a reputation for its modern Iberian fare.

Gowan took up the job three weeks before the restaurant opened late last year. “A week before it opened, I had no kitchen staff and no menu,” said the dynamic young chef who embarked on a fast learning curve to master the finer points of Spanish and Portuguese cuisine.

While Gowan had dined out in England and the US, her travels had mostly been devoted to shopping rather than furthering her cooking career.

But, she says, “you always need new challenges” and she immediately began researching Spanish dishes and tasting Spanish ingredients at providores around Sydney.

Gowan is used to challenges. Growing up in Sydney, she came from a household that wasn’t particularly food-orientated. “I never even cooked at home. My mother didn’t like cooking. She was a good cook but she didn’t like it.”

Gowan’s only explanation for becoming a chef is that she “thought it would be fun to carry a little red toolbox like chefs do.” She began her apprenticeship in 1994 at the Australian Club, a men’s club in Sydney. “It was a very good base for learning old English style food,” she says. “It was a great place to learn—we did a lot of butchery from scratch and made all our own soups and stocks.”

Two and a half years later, the lure of fine dining grabbed Gowan and she secured a job at the now defunct Darling Mills in Glebe, a one-hat restaurant at the time. “It was fantastic,” she says. “They grew their own vegetables and salads. It was great to work with all the fresh herbs and vegetables. I learnt a lot about more refined food from that [experience]. The restaurant was a bit of an institution.”

After three years there, Gowan decided it was time for “an even bigger challenge and even finer fine dining.” Serge Dansereau was re-opening Bather’s Pavilion in Balmoral and Gowan applied to join the team. She spent three years there, ending up as sous chef. “As soon as we opened we had two hats. It was a big restaurant and hard paced. I learnt the running of the job from there—ordering, rosters, managing my staff. I was travelling one and a half hours to work and learnt how to work long hours on very little sleep.”

In 2003, wanting to try “something different”, she went to work with Shawn Wigham at his Santa Fe-style Rattlesnake Grill in Neutral Bay. Gowan embarked on her first lot of serious research and found herself learning all about ingredients such as chillies and American bison.

Gowan says that while she loved fine dining she began to believe that it wasn’t the way of the future. “I love the adrenalin of service—being faced with all these orders and wondering how you are going to come out through to the other side,” she says of working at Bathers Pavilion but says that while she was at the more casual Rattlesnake Grill she realised “fine dining was starting to head out”.

It was this realisation that encouraged her to take up the position of head chef at Garfish, an informal seafood restaurant in Kirribilii where she spent the next three years. During her time at Garfish she began work on the Channel Ten TV show, Ready, Steady, Cook. She has done three seasons on the show. “I’ve learnt a lot from the other chefs and it’s been great exposure for the restaurants I’ve worked for, especially Garfish and Subsolo.”

Gowan embraces an exciting mix of modern and traditional Spanish and Portuguese flavours at Subsolo, the tapas and degustation dishes being mostly Spanish and the mains Portuguese. A popular feature of the menu are the Portuguese Espetada grills—charcoal spit-roasted skewered meats for which a special barbecue had to be built. Subsolo’s co-owner Richard Nichols comes from a Portuguese background, hence his desire to include some Portuguese offerings.

“[The restaurant] has a modern spin so I didn’t have to research stews and the older style Spanish dishes,” said Gowan. “People love the barbecue skewers. It’s a very interactive way of dining—the skewers hang from a stand in the centre of the table. Dining is meant to be interactive.”

On the sweet side, while the churros and crème catalana are traditional desserts, the Valencia orange cake on the menu was inspired by an upside down pineapple cake.

Gowan has grown to “really enjoy and like” Spanish and Portuguese food. “They’re very simple flavours. They don’t have a rich herb that’s always used. They’re just simple flavours put together well.”

The restaurant’s basement location in King Street, where Peter Conistis’ Omega restaurant was previously, gave rise to its name—“subsolo” means “basement” in Portuguese. It offers an array of dining experiences, with tapas and an a la carte menu available during the day, along with Spanish bocadillo rolls, sandwiches, antipasto, coffee and wine.

After work, diners can snack on tapas such as Bacalao Croquettes with aioli; Pan-fried Pork Chorizo and Morcilla with Caramelised Eschalots or Char-grilled Baby Squid stuffed with Paella on Burnt Anchovy Butter. Patrons can even customise their own tapas-style cocktail, known as the “Impostor”, using a selection of premium liquors and fresh fruits at the table.

The restaurant offers a more elaborate dining experience with three degustation menus ranging in price from $55 to $95 (matching Spanish wines are extra).

“People thought it would be hard to be downstairs in a basement but we’re quite well known already,” said Gowan.