Chef Karen Martini's rise from on the nose to kitchen star

Cooking wasn't the first career choice for the young Karen Martini who, in 1988, was a Dead Kennedys-worshipping teenage goth with a half-shaved head and a penchant for talcum powder as makeup. No, she wanted to work as an embalmer at a funeral parlour. But that fell through. Instead, she spent two weeks at Mietta's – one of Melbourne's premier restaurants at the time –peeling garlic and shallots in a corner under the eye of Jacques Reymond.

"It was terrifying," she says. "It was a crew of waiters in white with black bow ties. It was over the top. I walked in the back door with my shiny patent shoes, and [Reymond] just said, 'Ugh'."

Within minutes of arriving the kitchen, Martini was hooked, but chef-restaurateur Mietta O'Donnell refused Martini an apprenticeship. Martini believes it was because she was both too young (she was in year 10), and also a young woman in an all-male kitchen – one that wasn't afraid of being a little grabby. "I remember being chased out of that kitchen late at night by one of the kitchen hands who thought he'd have his way with me," says Martini. "He came at me with these big rubber gloves. I dived under the bench and out of the door."

It wasn't the last time she experienced that kind of behaviour in Melbourne kitchens either. She describes one chef who would spike his morning coffee with grappa and then ask her to follow him to the coolroom and to hold out her apron, which he filled with tomatoes. "And then he just went for the grab," she says, "thinking that I'd hold on to the tomatoes." Instead, she dropped them, ran, and never went with the chef to the coolroom again.

At the hospital she worked at briefly, one chef chased after her wearing a pair of chainmail butcher's gloves.

But she was resolute about making it as a chef, and quit school in year 10 to pursue the trade full time. "I think [the chefs] tried to intimidate me. But I was just taking in, not only what I saw, but what I could smell. It was just heavenly. The adrenaline in the kitchen really got me."

I remember being chased out of that kitchen late at night by one of the kitchen hands who thought he'd have his way with me.

Karen Martini

But then the nosebleeds started. "[The chef] was just like, 'Get out,'" after she bled all over the food during service. Twice. "It was hard enough to get in in the first place. In the end I had my nose cauterised to stop the bleeding."

Martini may have had a lot of defining moments in her life as a young chef but working at Tansy's was the foundation of her cookery. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at the influential Carlton North restaurant, led by chefsTansy Good and Marc Bouten, that nurtured Melbourne hospitality legends Philippa Sibley (Syracuse), Rita Macali (Supermaxi), Andrew McConnell (the McConnell Group) and Gerald Diffey (Gerald's Bar, Carlton North and San Sebastian), who worked front-of-house.

"It was a kitchen that ran on fear. But we were there because we wanted the knowledge. You weren't spoon-fed. It was about getting in early enough and getting next to the chef and working with your eyes open. Smell and taste when [the chefs] weren't looking. And then you still had to get your shit done, while getting yelled at and mopping up what was thrown at you."

After three years, she resigned to take some time in Europe. Coming back to Melbourne, she took over an old Carlton North pub, the Kent, with her friend and former Tansy's colleague Macali. Martini was barely 20. "I was very young. And I was a bit arrogant. But we just cooked and made a bit of noise in the industry."

It was certainly enough to attract the attention of the late Donlevy Fitzpatrick and business partner Maurice Terzini, who crossed town to eat in the little pub several times before asking Martini to cook for them at St Kilda hot spot the Melbourne Wine Room. She took the job, and left the Kent.

Working at the Wine Room, Martini suddenly had the opportunity to work with a large open grill. It was thrilling for her, playing with an open fire. "It comes with burns, smoke inhalation, and all that. [But] that's back to the basics of cooking and flavour – you can't get it any other way."

It was there she met her husband, Michael Sapountsis, who ran the floor, and the bar. "It was the culture that we were building that people really loved and enjoyed for different reasons. Michael could pour a glass of Krug while telling a drunk not to piss on the window at the same time. That was the essence of St Kilda."

A year after Martini took over the kitchen at the Wine Room, Terzini made the move to Sydney to open Icebergs, and asked Martini to move to Bondi to set up and run the kitchen. She turned him down twice. "I went up, had a look, and went, 'Oh, this is amazing, but am I ready for this?' I was a bit sheepish about putting my toe in the water. In the end I went, 'F--- it'. There could not be a better platform in Sydney than Icebergs."

For the first six months, Martini says she was spending 100 hours a week in the kitchen. After that, she cut back to 80 hours on the pans. During that time she started writing recipes for Fairfax. She was exhausted, burnt out and she wanted to go home to Melbourne. On return, she opened pizza restaurant Mr Wolf in her old St Kilda stamping ground, started shooting a cookbook, and fell pregnant in rapid succession.

Life took a different turn for Martini. She started doing television, and has been a regular on Better Homes and Gardens for 11 years. She's also a guest judge on My Kitchen Rules and has written, over the years, nine cookbooks. Continuing to manage large-scale kitchens, long hours and punishing services was no longer a going concern for her.

"It's really hard as a female [chef] because how do you maintain your integrity and keep working solidly in the industry and have a family? You don't. A lot of great female chefs step back into catering or part-time positions. I wasn't satisfied with that."

Quickfire corner

Indispensable kitchen tool The Microplane is amazing, it's so incredible inside the kitchen.

Non-cooking ninja skill Apparently I'm like a firecracker at parties. I'm not very good at cleaning up, though. I also have an uncanny knack of telling most of an amazing joke and then missing the punchline.

Music to cook to It depends what you're cooking. If you're cooking for a dinner party or if it's hard prep in a kitchen then you need to get through it; it might be electronic sort of Daft Punk or Vampire Weekend. I do find myself going back to Girls on Glass, too.

After-midnight snack If I've got the ingredients it'd be bucatini all'amatriciana, or just garlic and chilli.