Ben and the Bearnaise

Rottnest Island was one of the key ingredients for a celeb chef’s success.

Rotto Bloggo is indebted to the Courier-Mail for this news: we just about fell off our chair when we read it.

Ben O’Donohue is the chef in question: he’s on the looming Foxtel show ‘The Best in Australia’.

(Former Jam Tart Sophie Gare also stars: good to see WA girls doing well).

“O'Donoghue's cooking career began one night in a busy kitchen in a little restaurant on Rottnest Island, Western Australia,” reports the C-M.

"I'd been hired as a kitchen hand and I got involved in a bit of food preparation but one night the chef ran out of bearnaise sauce and he told me to make some more," O'Donoghue told the paper.

"I said I didn't know how to do it but he said he'd talk me through it, which he did, and I made it! I ended up getting a job as an apprentice chef."

No word on when this was, or at what gourmet Rotto location this happened, but you can’t have everything.

O’Donoghue was also on Surfing the Menu, of course, and after finding this ABC page we discover Ben began rattling pots and pans at the tearooms.

Dedicated Aunty viewers will recall Ben and Co (including Luc Longley) going to Strickland Bay, snorkelling for lobster…paradise!

“When he's not filming TV shows or writing columns for food magazines, O'Donoghue's attention is split between his wife and two children who live in Hackney, east London and his new firm, The Great Australian Pie Company, which he set up with some partners in the UK last year,” the C-M reports.

"We sell pies at major sporting, art and music events around the country and we're planning on opening some pie shops across the UK soon too," he tells the paper.

What about a Rotto-inspired/named pie? We’d like to see that.

* Pic not of Ben, and not taken in the tearooms: instead it shows a cream mishap in a Thomson Bay kitchen.