Colin Fassnidge
Colin Fassnidge is your favourite Irish-Australian chef, author and television presenter.
Born in Dublin and trained by the legendary Raymond Blanc, Colin Fassnidge moved to Australia in the final days of 1999 and started to make a name for himself throughout the early naughties.
First at The Four in Hand Dining Room, in Paddington and then in his own restaurant 4Fourteen, in Surry Hills, Colin’s creative yet refined take on the nose-to-tail food philosophy turned each venue into an awarded and celebrated dining destination, listed in:
- Gourmet Traveller’s Top 50
- Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food Guide – 2 Hats Four in Hand
- Sydney Morning Heralds Good Food Guide 1 Hat 4Fourteen
- Australian Financial Review’s Top 100
Colin Ventured back to London in 2003 for a short stint and was part of the opening team of chefs for Gordon Ramsey’s Boxwood Kitchen at the Berkeley Hotel London.
Back to Sydney – Colin’s latest venues takes him back to his love of pub dining spaces and good honest no nonsense cooking, Banksia Bistro part of the Banksia Hotel thrives as part of the local area and has become the go to place for the local community in the suburb.
Colin’s opinions and honesty led him to an 8 year appearance as a judge on Channel 7’s ratings winner ‘My Kitchen Rules’.
Adding author to his list of accomplishments, Colin’s first cookbook ‘Four Kitchens’, published by Random House, brought together his fine dining recipes from the Four In Hand – his sharing whole animal dishes from 4fourteen, casual fare from both the home kitchen and the bar kitchen. His second book The Common-sense Cook was released at the end of October 2020 and promises to remove the stigma that cooking is hard, he keeps it simple and easy to follow for the everyday home cook. Colin was creatively involved in all aspects of both books and both are something which he will cherish and look back to for years to come.
Colin has always believed in helping others, a tract pasted down from his parents. He has a long standing relationship with Oz harvest, but has always done quite a bit off his own back as well. A Saturday night tray bake was part of the prep list for chefs at both Four in hand and 4fourteen to help a local charity with their dinner program. The start of the pandemic in March 2020 saw him create a local “soup kitchen” as he called it, for produce left over from the sudden shut down of venues, this continued weekly throughout 2020 and 21.
His profile as a no-nonsense chef keeps growing and his following expanding, again the pandemic in 2020 saw his business @byfassnige pivot and delve into the world of creating the @byfassnidge Cookery School, with private dining experiences and online cooking classes for both the corporate and public marketplaces, a YouTube channel where he has created a place to provide cooking advise and recipes but also some light entertainment thrown in for good measure as well.
2022 sees Colin and the team look to move back into a CBD venue where they will continue to create a new venue bringing the Fassnidge experience to the city.
