COOKING SCHOOL
Beverley opened the Beverley Sutherland Smith Cooking School in 1963 one of the first cooking
schools in Melbourne.
Beverley has attended and taught in cooking schools in Venice at the Gritti Palace and the
Cipriani Hotel; Villa d’Este in Lake Como; La Varenne in Paris; Cordon Bleu in Paris; Cordon Bleu
in London; Julie Dannenbaum in Philadelphia; the late James Beard in New York who became a good
friend; with the late Julia Child in the United States; the late Simone Beck in Provence; Jacques
Pepin in the United States; Michael Geurard in Eugenie les Bain in France and San Francisco;
Madur Jaffrey in San Francisco; Anton Mossiman in London, and many more. She was a close friend
of the late Danny Kaye and cooked dinners with him at his home in Los Angeles for friends.
CATERING
Apart from creating menus for large companies for their special functions, many Wine and Food
Societies used her Edible Garden and Cooking School to hold their dinners with an emphasis on
wine and food matching. Beverley catered and hosted at her Cooking School, Team Building
Events for the corporate world based around the creation and preparation of the Team created
menus.
GARDEN
Beverley’s passion for fresh produce to use in her Cooking School, was the catalyst that saw her design and create the Edible Garden as a “potager garden” which was open to the public or to special groups. The garden was largely devoted to edible flowers; herbs, heritage and unusual vegetables mingling with cottage plants and roses.
The Edible Garden became part of the Australian Garden Scheme and on Open Day weekends throughout the year, approximately a thousand people visited. This continued for approximately 20 years until 16 October 2015, when the property was sold.
Beverley became a keynote speaker at many luncheons and dinners, her topic relating to her food background and the concept of the Edible Garden and joined Joan Sexton’s stable of guest speakers.
For 2 years, the garden was featured monthly in the “Herald Sun” with a story on planting and using seasonal food, which led to the idea of her book, “The Seasonal Kitchen”.