Meet Kylie Millar, the Josephine Pignolet Young Chef of the Year 2018

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Take a good look at Kylie Millar. She's the future of Australian chefs. The 2018 Josephine Pignolet Young Chef of the Year didn't start at 16, or even in kitchens at all. Long before she got into the sauce station at Attica she was on track to be treating the corked thighs of the Sydney Swans.

A trained physiotherapist and MasterChef contestant-turned-pro, she is fluent in Spanish, has transitioned from pastry obsessive to saucier to butcher wannabe and is proof that the road to success for young chefs is no longer clearly paved. The days of brigades are gone. And with them the ideas about what chops are really going to cut it.

Currently working for Attica, owner Ben Shewry thinks she has the goods. "Kylie has a proper deep passion, not the superficial kind that young cooks sometimes display when they see something shiny and think that's what they want to do. She has the work ethic, commitment and edge to back up her ambition and really cares about all aspects of what it means to be a cook in 2017."

Millar quit physio when she realised she couldn't give it 100 per cent. "Instead of reading my journal articles I would be Googling how to make mayonnaise or looking up a food trip overseas. In health I believe you have to give it your full attention."

In the kitchen she was all in. Entering MasterChef in 2012 led to a stint at dessert lab Burch & Purchese, and then a stage at Mugaritz that lit the fire. "Using apples and turning them rotten with a controlled penicillin, putting chicken skin and marshmallow skins in a dessert and eating horse is memorable for a diner, but for a chef to prepare them really stretches the creative bubble. I was hooked."

Millar did two more seasons at Mugaritz, with time at Mark Best's Pei Modern between. But if envelope pushing grabbed her, stripping everything to its core is her obsession. "Maybe it's the physio in me, but I love butchery. I recognise the muscles, know how hard they work and what I could do with them. That really interests me."

Her future plan is to have her own bistro. "I want it to be somewhere you can walk in and say, 'everything is made here'. I don't plan to work around so much now, but to develop those skills."

Millar's found a good fit at Attica to prep for future moves. "Ben is an incredible person for putting things in perspective, being able to go to work and put your heart and soul into what you do, but also have a life outside. That's what I'll take with me when I go."

If in the past a fanatical drive has defined future chefs, it's Millar's inclusive, pro-team attitude that makes Shewry thinks she will go the distance. "A couple of days ago she came up to me and said, 'Would Ella (my 11-year-old daughter) like to come over to my house and do some cooking with me? We could make whatever she wants and I'll teach her.' That offer comes from a place of sincere goodness and it's just one of the many reasons I choose to employ her."

Five burning questions

Album to cook to: Anything by Lorde.

After midnight snack: Bread and butter after service with our cultured butter.

Kitchen weapon at work: My palette knife – it's got burn marks and scratches all over it. It's even been through the washing machine.

Formative cookbook: I love Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking. I like knowing the science of why things happen and his writing is great. When I cooked for him at Mugaritz, it was a star-struck moment.

Non-cooking ninja skill? Karaoke. I'm not good at it but I'll do anything to make sure people are having a good time.

The national Good Food Guide 2018, in partnership with Citi and Vittoria, is available from newsagencies, bookstores and via thestore.com.au/goodfood, RRP $29.99