7 Aug 2021

Jock Zonfrillo: from drug addict to top Australian chef

From Saturday Morning, 11:05 am on 7 August 2021

He’s a familiar face on our television screens as one of the judges for popular cooking show MasterChef Australia, but the path to success has been a rocky one for Jock Zonfrillo.

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Born in Glasgow to an Italian father and Scottish mother, Zonfrillo's formative years were heavily influenced by both cultures and he was attracted to the dynamic environment of high-pressure kitchens. Eventually he found himself working in London alongside top chefs like Gordon Ramsay and David Cavalier. 

But a crippling heroin addiction and a world of excess saw Zonfrillo spiral out of control. Now he shares the story of hitting rock bottom and the turning point that saved him in new memoir, Last Shot.

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He told Kim Hill on Saturday Morning that his life experiences had been "colourful".

"It's not just me. I think my generation of cooks grew up in kitchens in Europe that were ridiculously tough for no apparent reason.

"That method of working of course got the job done, but it left so much carnage in its wake."

He said like a lot of young chefs who trained in similar kitchens, he too emulated the behaviour of his superiors.

"It's not until you leave that environment that you're able to take a step back and look at it and go 'hang on a second that was just not right'."

He worked in Turnberry in Scotland.

"These sort of kitchens demanded discipline like the army ... and it was embedded into this culture that was, a bit toxic, a bit of bullying, a bit of intimidation and ad the belief was that it made the chefs and everyone sort of keep on their toes and be the best they can be and it was just such a misguided way of not just working but running a kitchen or a business or a team for that matter."

However, Zonfrillo said over the past five to six years things had changed.

He said working hours were getting shorter and some of it was a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

"I spent 30 years working in kitchens and working nights and weekends, bank holidays so that everyday normal people could celebrate birthdays and Christmases."

He said he would "absolutely" not let his three-and-a-half-year-old son Alfie end up working that way.

Obsession and addiction

Looking back at his life through the book, he said it was the "obsession" with food and "addiction" that wreaked havoc in his life.

"At the same time, if I didn't have that obsession, I wouldn't have been able to pull myself out of the addiction.

"I really consider myself to be a cat that has 18 lives, not nine. And I reckon I've used all 18 of them.

"I'm lucky to be here ... given the amount of narcotic abuse that I've done to myself, but also just that obsession was more compelling than the addiction. If that obsession wasn't there, I wonder what would have happened, would I have been able to pull myself out of that? I don't think I would."

In his book, he says while he was working in Cornwell, married and living in a tiny cottage with his then-wife, he required industrial level quantities of heroin and spent a lot of money on it.

"It's the most thankless drug on the planet as far as narcotics go ... for me that I found very tough to get out of this cycle."

And nobody knew except the people he was buying from knew about his addiction.

"If you're a junkie, nobody's giving you a job, nobody's even giving you an interview let alone a job.

"One of the most shameful, embarrassing things in my life is that ... having lied about everything and the impact that had on relationships and marriages and everything along the way. It's very tough.

"It's easy to keep anything a secret if you really want to."

He said it was the reaction of people finding out he was a "junkie" that made him keep it a secret.

In the book, he says he took his last shot of heroin in a Heathrow Airport toilet on New Year's Eve.

He said going into rehab was an "unpleasant, horrific experience".

"It is one of the big reasons why a lot of people fall to break their addiction because it's such a horribly graphic experience."

He said he did reach for alcohol but soon realised that he did not want to swap one vice for another.

He also talked about seeing therapists and learning to spot behaviour patterns.

"The biggest thing for me was to learn the tools to recognise my own behaviour and recognise that repeat pattern and pick up on it and make a change as soon as possible.

"I've only got myself to blame for the situations I put myself in."

Embracing indigenous Australian culture

He said he tried to understand indigenous culture and bring acknowledgement to it, because "I feel as an immigrant, it was missed".

Back in the 90s he did not feel restaurants were doing enough to "bring acknowledgement and be respectful and bring indigenous people into the conversation".

"So going out into communities gave me the opportunity to sit with people on country, and hear from [elders] themselves what the ingredients mean to them.

"And it was them that asked me to try and spread that message in a way that not just Australians, but the world could appreciate indigenous culture as being something more than just hunter-gatherers ... because it's far from that.

"At the end of the day, what I wanted to do was with good intent as anything, and I was doing it in consultation in keeping with indigenous people on country and was being asked by them and they were my check in points, they were my advisors and so I knew that I was on a path that I felt okay about.

"I've spent nearly two decades trying to bring some kind of acknowledgement around a conversation for indigenous culture and its people and its food and through food."