What a wild and impressive ride of a career. When I went in to chat to Sunny Gilbert at the Hofbrauhaus, I did not expect to hear about cooking whole crocodiles in a bread oven in China. A career as a chef can certainly take you places. Sunny hadn’t planned on being a chef, but once he got into a kitchen as a kitchenhand, he was quickly hooked, loving the adrenalin rush of service and wanting to push himself as quickly as possible. From starting his career in Darwin and taking the crocodiles to China and so on, to moving to Melbourne, working in hotels, owning his own restaurant in Docklands and eventually becoming head chef at MoVida next door, Sunny has had so much hospitality experience. He brings all that knowledge to the Hofbrauhaus, a Melbourne institution which has been around for 56 years. Sunny is executive chef and owner of this incredible place that’s sees chefs crumb to order hundreds of schnitzels on a Saturday night and where the tables in the upstairs beer hall next door are reinforced, “because of the dancing.” The Hofbrauhaus is a good time and Sunny is there for it, a firm believer in the goodness of hospitality and the importance of nurturing the next generation. I loved this conversation and I’ll see you up on the tables in the beer hall after I’ve eaten a schnitzel and had a Bavarian lager.