Chef's Choices: Alex Owens

(Above: Alex Owens photographed by Matthew Donaldson)

Alex Owens has been a chef at The River Cafe since 2017.

'I’ve never been entirely sure whether I’m a chef because I love to cook, or because I love to eat. But I do know my passion for food started in Tuscany where we stayed with my family every summer.

It was there I developed a love for local and seasonal ingredients. I recall there was a crisis when our friend Mario had to buy tomatoes from a farm two towns away.

Good food became inextricably tied to these holidays: to time and place; people and family; friendships and memories. It’s easy to see then, why working at The River Cafe is so important to me.

I love ice cream—and our fruit sorbets encapsulate the flavour of a fruit at its peak. The colour of a sorbet is so strong it could be on the Pantone colour chart.

As sorbet is so light I would allow myself a decadent meal beforehand.

I think you should eat sorbet as often as you possibly can, whenever you want, whilst the fruit is ripe.'

Here is the recipe for our Rhubarb Sorbet, on the menu now.

Rhubarb Sorbet

Serves 6

800g rhubarb, chopped into small chunks
400g rhubarb juice
160g caster sugar

Add the rhubarb, juice and sugar into a oven-proof tray. Cover in foil and steam in the oven for 20 minutes, or until tender.

Once cooled, blend until smooth.

Transfer the contents into an ice cream machine and churn until frozen, or freeze in a suitable container.


Rhubarb Sorbet


Blood Orange Sorbet


Yali x River Cafe Gelato Spoons

Photography by Matthew Donaldson