![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/82953fd75fcf73d654b7f47b15c15c6837837c8df44957d06265c8e5ff058d38.gif\")
Ben Shewry as a young chef and at the Press Club (right) last year.Tom McKendrick<\/p>\n
Obsession details Shewry\u2019s rise, a New Zealand-born chef who took over a flailing <\/a>Ripponlea restaurant in 2005 and, 13 years of sweat later, turned it into the 20th-best restaurant in the world<\/a> and one of the most important chow-houses<\/a> to have opened in Australia in, well, ever.<\/p>\n The 49-year-old cooks with a storyteller\u2019s eye, a stage director\u2019s flourish and a watchmaker\u2019s obsession. His menu is always changing and evolving, but last year there was fried sprig of saltbush<\/a> paired with a riberry tart and wattle wafer, a map of Australia made from King George whiting, kangaroo satay and spiky meringue.<\/p>\n Besha Rodell, The Age\u2019s chief restaurant critic, was particularly taken by a dish of thickened cream topped with sugarbag honey from native stingless bees. \u201cLike all the best of Attica\u2019s dishes, it tastes like Australia itself,\u201d she wrote<\/a>, \u201cthe honey giving off soft notes of eucalyptus, reminding me of the sweet smell of the bush after a light rain.\u201d<\/p>\n Shewry\u2019s masterpiece, off the menu now for the sin of being too popular, \u201cA Simple Dish of Potato Cooked in the Earth in Which it Was Grown\u201d, tells a story about the underappreciated terroir of humble ingredients, as well as one about Shewry\u2019s own childhood.<\/p>\n \u201cTo really hit that three-hats, Michelin, 50-Best level, generally you need to be telling some sort of story with your food,\u201d says Alex Carlton, local academy chair for The World\u2019s 50 Best Restaurants. Shewry\u2019s story is \u201cunapologetically Australian. It\u2019s not twee, there\u2019s no cultural cringe. There was a real pride in Australian food, and that was sort of new when he was in his heyday.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article<\/p>\n Everyone wanted to eat at Attica, which was booked out months in advance<\/a>. Food journalists adored him. Chefs wanted to be him.<\/p>\n Shewry, as is his right, declined an interview for this piece, saying he \u201cwould feel ethically compromised if I was participating in a piece for Good Food as I\u2019ve been critical of the Good Food Guide\u201d. But there are plenty \u2013 chefs, servers, journalists, editors \u2013 who are happy to talk about him, on and off the record, and Shewry has put plenty of his own material on the public record.<\/p>\n In profiles, he has described himself as a man boiling with a thousand ideas at once<\/a>, with being the best chef in Australia only but one of them. He wanted to make Attica sustainable<\/a>. He wanted to end hospitality\u2019s culture<\/a> of misogyny, drug abuse, overwork and sexual assault.<\/p>\n To help lift wages and cut hours, he went through Attica\u2019s menu and crossed out anything that required too many chef-hours to make. \u201cHe said: the product isn\u2019t just what\u2019s on the plate, it\u2019s the entire output of the restaurant, including the experience his staff has,\u201d recalls one former staffer. \u201cAnd I think the quality of the food only got better.\u201d<\/p>\n He was the first chef to ever address the National Press Club, where he spoke not about food but about creativity. That speech, in front of a room of journalists, indicates to some that Shewry is trying to move from chef to thought leader. \u201cPeople from the hospitality industry do not easily assume positions of power,\u201d he said at the time.<\/p>\n But when Obsession dropped into bookstores in early October 2024, few journalists were focusing on Shewry\u2019s thoughts on native ingredients or Yo La Tengo.<\/p>\n Via text messages and cropped photos of Obsession\u2019s pages, word quickly spread: the media darling had taken a kitchen knife to the food media industry.<\/p>\n \u2018Restaurant reviewers really aren\u2019t any better at judging restaurants than you are. How could they be? They don\u2019t actually make anything.\u2019<\/p>\n Ben Shewry<\/p>\n \u201cHere\u2019s the thing, dear reader,\u201d Shewry writes. \u201cRestaurant reviewers really aren\u2019t any better at judging restaurants than you are. How could they be? They don\u2019t actually make anything, can\u2019t hack it in other forms of journalism. A vacuum cleaner review I recently read was more informative than any restaurant critique I\u2019ve seen in the past year.\u201d<\/p>\n With those words, and many more that would follow, the one-time darling of Australian food media became its most vocal detractor.<\/p>\n Food media, he says, is a feckless system built on hype. \u201cThere are conflicts of interest everywhere. Experience and insight are almost non-existent.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018It turns my stomach to be complicit in what I consider to be a polluted moral ecosystem.\u2019<\/p>\n Ben Shrewry<\/p>\n This is a system, he continues, that has contributed \u201cgreatly to bankruptcy, divorce, depression and suicide\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIt turns my stomach to be complicit in what I consider to be a polluted moral ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n Shewry recounts a story from the Good Food Guide Awards in 2022 (Good Food is an editorial section of The Age) when Attica lost a hat<\/a>, dropping from three to two. More \u2013 much more \u2013 on this later, but for now it\u2019s important to understand Good Food\u2019s hats.<\/p>\n To get a single hat is an achievement: the guide\u2019s dozens of critics deciding this restaurant is really, really good. Just 33 Victorian restaurants were given two hats this year \u2013 and only four earned three of the tiny toques.<\/p>\n The morning after Attica lost a hat in 2022, Shewry\u2019s restaurant crew gathered to grieve and mourn. \u201cI wish I could have done more to protect them,\u201d Shewry writes.<\/p>\n Related Article Later that night, a senior staff member tells Shewry: \u201cF— the Good Food Guide. In 15 years, Attica is going to be around and the Good Food Guide is not.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a bold statement of who holds the power in the restaurant industry: the chefs, not the critics. But is it true?<\/p>\n The voice of a potato<\/p>\n Shewry might be the most profiled chef to ever work our shores. But let\u2019s recap the highlights. The son of farmers in Taranaki, New Zealand, begins French culinary school, eventually rising to sous chef for the governor-general, before coming to Melbourne to cook Thai food, where in 2005 a restaurant in Ripponlea took a chance on the 28-year-old.<\/p>\n Just eight years later, Attica would be named 20th-best restaurant in the world. How?<\/p>\n From early in his career, learning the language of the French kitchen, \u201cI began to see I was cooking with words that were not mine, to make food that bore no resemblance to my culture, the culture of New Zealand, of Maori cooking culture,\u201d Shewry writes. \u201cWhen I cooked this cuisine, I did not feel like myself.\u201d<\/p>\n At Attica, he found his style: an obsession not just with ingredients but with their context. \u201cWhat did they want to say? What could they tell me?\u201d<\/p>\n Here, we should talk about his potato, perhaps Shewry\u2019s most important dish. Potatoes, like wine, taste different depending on the soil they grow in; most of us don\u2019t appreciate that because they are, well, potatoes. For months, Shewry the obsessive experimented with ways of telling that story, settling eventually on a tuber sealed in the dirt in which it grew, borrowing the Maori technique of cooking food in earth ovens. The chef was making his point about context by literally serving the potato in its context.<\/p>\n It\u2019s cooking that makes you feel something. Besha Rodell, living in America at the time, was overcome by homesickness when she ate at Attica in 2017. \u201cI had never tasted things that tasted like Australia before,\u201d says Rodell, this masthead\u2019s chief reviewer. \u201cIt was very emotional.\u201d<\/p>\n Dom Wilton, chef and co-founder of Hector\u2019s Deli, still remembers Attica\u2019s solitary chip, over-seasoned in salt and malt vinegar, like the last one trapped at the bottom of a bag. It tasted of his childhood, he says: \u201cThat\u2019s his art.\u201d<\/p>\n People started to notice. In 2010, Attica hit number 73 on the World\u2019s 50 Best Restaurants List. To mark the moment, Shewry gave an interview to Broadsheet.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI was walking up to the kitchen and this wave of emotion just hit me,\u201d he told Jane De Graaff. \u201cJust to see those guys and to see the work they\u2019ve done, it was just amazing and I actually started to cry.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to emphasise this point because of what follows: Shewry cared so much about being on the list, according to his own telling, that he wept. And in the same moment, with a prescience that now feels eerie, he was already contemplating his own chef mortality.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually think it would be hard, emotionally, to be dropped [from the list]. I was speaking to someone who\u2019s much higher up on the list than us, and he was saying that the pressure of being dropped [from the list] would break his heart. I\u2019d have to agree; it would break your heart,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t really want to think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n The golden boy<\/p>\n Shewry didn\u2019t have to think about it for a while because Attica was going from strength to strength. In 2015 Shewry was featured as one of the stars in the first season of Netflix hit Chef\u2019s Table. On the first day of filming, they expected to spend three hours interviewing Ben, but spent nine. \u201cBoth Ben and [director] Brian McGinn were crying,\u201d says producer Michael Hilliard. \u201cThe secret was Ben was so open, so vulnerable, about his own story.\u201d<\/p>\n Shewry had become \u201cthe golden boy of Australian food media\u201d, says one food journalist \u2013 who like many in this piece was granted anonymity to speak freely without damaging professional relationships. Shewry guest-edited<\/a> an edition of Good Food. Every journalist I interviewed remembered him as happy to work with the media, keen to sit for photos and be interviewed. \u201cLike, you were complicit in the whole thing,\u201d says another journalist.<\/p>\n Surely, there would have been an opportunity to turn Attica into an empire, as other chefs-turned-celebrities have done. But there is no Attica at Crown Casino, nor can you buy Attica\u2019s dirt-potato at Coles. \u201cBen is much deeper in his thought and connection with food,\u201d says a chef who has worked with him. His interest remains in \u201ctraversing the bridge between art and food\u201d.<\/p>\n Media attention generates cultural capital, and Shewry has turned that into real capital. He was an ambassador for Lexus <\/a>and then Mazda<\/a>, and has collaborated with Remedy on an Attica-branded line of Kombucha<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was that influence outside the kitchen that drew Jane Morrow, Murdoch Books\u2019 publishing director, to approach Shewry. When he told Morrow he wanted to devote a chapter of his book to reviewers and awards, \u201cwe knew that it would have ramifications for how the book was received in the media and for our own media relationships\u201d, she said. But \u201cthis was Ben\u2019s story to tell\u201d.<\/p>\n Ahead of the book\u2019s publication, word started filtering through the tight-knit food journalism community. \u201cWe knew that there was going to be some sort of hit job on us,\u201d says one journalist. But everyone I interviewed for this piece was shocked by how hard the blow landed. <\/p>\n Shewry tells unflattering stories about several anonymous food journalists, who were quickly able to identify themselves. He complains about them booking Attica under pseudonyms like Joanna Narlist, and emailing him \u201cpainfully superficial questions\u201d. He writes of giving a critic a free table and then being rewarded with a \u201cgushing\u201d review: \u201cIt felt totally wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot in there that he writes that\u2019s \u2026 really mean, unfair and untrue,\u201d says one journalist.<\/p>\n \u2018She wrote about him before he was famous. When he lost that hat, he turned on her.\u2019<\/p>\n Besha Rodell<\/p>\n There is a sense from many journalists that they helped build Shewry and Attica and were now under attack. \u201cThere\u2019s part of it that\u2019s like: mate, you wouldn\u2019t even have a book deal if it wasn\u2019t for all the positive media coverage you\u2019ve had over the years,\u201d says Rodell. \u201cHe was so beloved, and everyone felt like they were really pulling for him.\u201d<\/p>\n Good Food writer Dani Valent repeatedly <\/a>profiled <\/a>Shewry and then partnered with <\/a>him to make food for the hungry during the COVID pandemic. \u201cShe wrote about him before he was famous. When he lost that hat, he turned on her,\u201d says Rodell. \u201cAnd I think it\u2019s been really hard on her.\u201d (Valent, who authored two<\/a> profiles<\/a> as part of this series, declined to comment.)<\/p>\n Most infuriating to many writers is Shewry\u2019s claim food media did not support Attica during the pandemic. \u201cEvery journalist wrote at least three stories on Attica and his lasagne. He got the Good Weekend cover story<\/a>,\u201d says an independent food journalist.<\/p>\n Good journalists turn themselves into problems for powerful people. Criticism comes with the territory. We grow thick skins. But reporting this piece, I was struck by the level of personal hurt from colleagues that Shewry targeted.<\/p>\n The chef and the critic share a tighter bond than either would like to admit. \u201cIt felt like a friend turning on them,\u201d says Rodell. A worry gnaws at another food journalist: most chefs and hospo types are extremely nice to journalists in person. Do they all actually secretly hate us?<\/p>\n The answer might be yes. \u201cI think it\u2019s complete and utter horseshit in the format we\u2019ve come to know \u2026 for some white f—ing older guy to come along and go \u2018I think this is good or bad\u2019,\u201d says Hector\u2019s Deli\u2019s Dom Wilton. <\/p>\n What made Shewry decide to pull the pin out of the grenade?<\/p>\n In his telling, he found two years in COVID lockdown, with no reviewers, freeing. He realised Attica needed only to be judged by \u201cour customers and ourselves\u201d. Restaurants no longer need positive mainstream media coverage, he writes. He feels a personal responsibility to try to change the system. \u201cWe have not been honest, we have not spoken the truth,\u201d he writes. \u201cIt is time to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n Others suggest different motivations.<\/p>\n Several food journalists circle the moment Shewry lost a Good Food Guide hat in 2022. \u201cI think it would be very hard to be on top for a long time and suddenly not be on top,\u201d says a journalist. \u201cIs it a clever pivot to suddenly say \u2018I reject all this\u2019 and therefore it does not matter?\u201d<\/p>\n Shewry flatly and strongly rejects that, both in his book and in the storm of media coverage following its publication. \u201cIt has absolutely nothing to do with losing a hat, and losing a hat has had no effect on our business,\u201d he told this paper in 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Obsession, he writes he felt \u201cstrangely freed\u201d by the loss. His narrative then introduces an employee, Anna, who believes \u201cAttica is the most important restaurant in Australian history\u201d. Anna is so devastated by the loss of the hat that \u201cI\u2019m terrified something will happen to her\u201d.<\/p>\n Rodell thinks the loss of the hat \u2013 announced at the Good Food Guide awards in Melbourne, as Shewry was surrounded by his peers \u2013 \u201cmust have been quite publicly humiliating\u201d. The team could have done more to warn him about it quietly in advance, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just turned everything for him \u2026 he got it in his head [that] it was designed to take him down.\u201d<\/p>\n (Good Food\u2019s editor, Sarah Norris, tells me the guide has had a mixed approach over the 40 years of warning chefs in advance when they go from three hats to two in the future, but we have considered making it a policy to inform in the future.)<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s something we agonise over\u2019<\/p>\n A few years after I started as a cadet at The Age, the paper\u2019s bar reviewer left. I spotted an opportunity \u2013 I have no experience writing about food, but liked pubs and beer \u2013 and made my advances to the Good Food team. Externally, food reviewing looks like having a fancy meal on the company credit card.<\/p>\n Shewry paints reviewers as arrogant fools, clumsily destroying the labours of chefs.<\/p>\n The idea that someone could go from journalist to food critic is \u201can even bigger leap than me deciding that tomorrow I\u2019ll go from being chef to head sommelier \u2013 unthinkable,\u201d he writes. \u201cThe arrogance behind assuming such a position of authority so readily undervalues the mastery of restaurants.\u201d<\/p>\n My campaign to be the new bar reviewer did not get far. I was politely but firmly rebuffed.<\/p>\n Every critic I spoke to seemed to feel the heavy weight of their dual responsibilities: to celebrate, champion and support great Australian cooking while also critically reviewing it.<\/p>\n Related Article \u201cIt\u2019s something we agonise over,\u201d says Carlton. \u201cWe have a responsibility, first and foremost, to the reader and the diner, [to identify] where the best places are to spend their income. But I also think restaurants are a vital part of our culture. They bring our city life. To sort of smash them down is something I\u2019m not really comfortable with.\u201d<\/p>\n Before Attica lost a hat, Good Food visited multiple times and brought in external critics. The publication reserves negative reviews for those big enough to handle them, says restaurant editor Callan Boys. He points out that while Attica lost a hat, it still scored 17.5\/20 \u2013 one of the top seven restaurants in the state.<\/p>\n \u201cContrary to popular belief, most restaurant critics \u2013 certainly Good Food critics \u2013 don\u2019t enjoy writing negative reviews,\u201d he says. \u201cIf it\u2019s a small independent restaurant that isn\u2019t up to scratch, we\u2019ll simply, quietly move on.<\/p>\n \u201cBut when there\u2019s a big public relations push and massive capital behind a new restaurant, often coupled with a well-known chef trumpeting their latest venture as the best thing since complimentary bread, it\u2019s fair play to publish negative criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n They are not reviewing food as a chef would, but as a customer would. And a meal at Attica can run to hundreds of dollars. \u201cUltimately,\u201d says another critic, \u201cyou are advocating for the diner.\u201d <\/p>\n That is not to say all is well in the world of food media.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery journalist I spoke to said \u2018they are really valid criticisms\u2019,\u201d said one food journalist. Good Food can afford to pay for review tables, but smaller outlets receive tables from publicists; to write critically is to literally bite the hand that feeds. That\u2019s not even getting into the modern economy of influencers with little experience and no code of professional ethics.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople get used to and want to be treated like VIPs,\u201d says Rodell. \u201cFamils\u201d (from familiarisation) \u2013 where a brand pays for a journalist to travel to some exotic locale or dine at a top restaurant \u2013 are always on offer. There are free meals, free drinks, invites to fancy dinners. \u201cAnd people love it \u2013 it\u2019s hard not to love,\u201d she says. (Rodell does not accept \u201cfamils\u201d or free meals.)<\/p>\n Against a backdrop of industry upheaval \u2013 in newsrooms and kitchens \u2013 the prediction by Shewry\u2019s staff member about who will be gone first is a shot across the bow. Will Attica still stand in 2035, while Good Food\u2019s writers hunt through job listings?<\/p>\n Betting on the future of legacy journalism might seem a brave call. But Attica hasn\u2019t sat on the World\u2019s 50-Best list since 2021, despite Tourism Australia paying to fly out judges from the list to dine there in 2024<\/a>. And it hasn\u2019t gone unnoticed that a restaurant that used to have a six-month waiting list now has tables available to reserve online most nights.<\/p>\n![\"Critic\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/4eaaa15c88d1b8be5b0d411d0dda2c4884d8da51.jpeg\")
Critic\u2019s photograph of the King George whiting map.Besha Rodell<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/7728608460851298c1c79fe11f2d6125d2435a19.jpeg\")
A young Ben Shewry poses for the camera with an underground pit oven.<\/p>\n![\"Shewry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/b716565dbb5fb20e6de7526042a18bda757df0887985567df00ec393d6308e8f.jpeg\")
Shewry once described himself as a man boiling with a thousand ideas at once.Marija Ercegovac<\/p>\n![\"16](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/aaab66fd41b9c838ee3623c64e6b8d4fe5724a20.jpeg\")
16 years ago: Ben Shewry at the Good Food Guide Awards, when he was named chef of the year.Eddie Jim<\/p>\n![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/c6f68cadb31b165423f74264d16f5858e08b2735.jpeg\")
Ben Shewry\u2019s signature dish from 2008: potato cooked in the earth in which it was grown. <\/p>\n![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ec527631f1f3ee97de196bf717911a944a50a14f.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Clad](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/54184f83bca6008aca4a824b9496e61257894bc9fdd10be9d74d88a2e86f6274.jpeg\")
Clad in tartan pants. Ben Shewry sips on a sparkling wine in a picture posted on his Instagram.Instagram\/benshewry<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/44b98f158d52416be0249fabbe666b5592d39d61.jpeg\")
The critic\u2019s smartphone photograph of the opening course. Attica did not respond to The Age\u2019s request for professional photography.Besha Rodell<\/p>\n![\"Outside](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/474281691e495ef9c1bad50b88d1a992dd961f36.jpeg\")
Outside Attica in Ripponlea in 2025.Joe Armao<\/p>\n![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/116908968e47886f3432dd8b14cf96624c481dc5.jpeg\")
Ben Shewry back in 2012 posing for a story for Epicure in The Age on what chefs eat when no one is around.Fairfax Media<\/p>\n![\"All](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/6aeb5f00bbdca450e1b2aeafb16a0a0a5fd9d7cf.jpeg\")
All parts of the pumpkin at Attica.Colin Page<\/p>\n![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/98b1ff7693c710d703f04d666fcfc3bcc46beb8c.jpeg\")
Ben Shewry at the Australian Open in 2022.Justin McManus<\/p>\n![\"Shewry\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/8dec3c7a2f3b16c36c06cb95fd8d73b1ca6b4dcb.jpeg\")
Shewry\u2019s book.Murdoch Books\/Allen & UnwinThrowing the grenade<\/p>\n![\"What](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/6d6a0376a18b4689e1e69257afff19286aee3c11c9b69988ddb08078e1a1a532.gif\")
What made Shewry decide to pull the pin out of the grenade?Marija Ercegovac<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a545eb4f48164ac5f78c309f68a284c1473b6c11.jpeg\")
A photograph of Ben Shewry out foraging for a Good Food story titled: Chef who makes grown men cry.James Geer<\/p>\n![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a6bc1ee534576e50d44d4b64082f8430d81fecfe.jpeg\")
Ben Shewry (middle) with Dani Valent (pictured left) at the Good Food Guide 2017 Awards.Daniel Pockett<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/d8f6c2cbcf7f1c4446775efa7559b9aaebbfa9b7.jpeg\")
The cover of Good Weekend in June 2020. <\/p>\n![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/e587d711c096d518acb3ba3e44f21e8bd5bab219a413cda1a40195a9d7704c9c.jpeg\")
Ben Shewry wearing a second-hand Tom Ford jacket he got off FB Marketplace. \u201cI like a good suit,\u201d he writes on Instagram.Instagram\/benshewry<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/7916a5ab77c23782472eab21669ca61e148846a5.jpeg\")
The Age\u2019s chief restaurant reviewer, Besha Rodell.Simon Schluter<\/p>\n![\"f\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/bd56342b45cd9c0100790bf8cd04f40ecb9d7160.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/715a4ef3ea091247b07aac733e5b4bb618663d2f.jpeg\")
Ben Shewry poses for a photo in his restaurant Attica on June 19, 2015.Wayne Taylor<\/p>\n![\"Ben](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/44faa93dfd64e2c59ca089fd1b68d96a0e9d26dc.jpeg\")
Ben Shewry in a local laneway in 2009.Simon Schluter<\/p>\n