“Young guys want to be me on TV, but they don’t want to do the hard yards; they don’t want to work the weekends, they don’t want to work the long hours – and cheffing doesn’t pay that well, either,” Fassnidge tells The Message Pod‘s Nicole Haack.

“I think they get into the industry for the wrong reason and then they leave…

“Kids now days want fame, and fame’s not a bad thing … but you have to have something to back it up because it doesn’t last very long.”

Dublin-born Fassnidge, owner of Sydney restaurant 4Fourteen and guest chef on My Kitchen Rules, is seeking to explain why Australian restaurants still struggle with a shortage of chefs, despite the plethora of television cooking shows supposedly fuelling interest in food.

Fassnidge admits the “fierce pressure” of his own early years in the kitchen turned him into an angry chef, but says having a young family – and finding other outlets to relieve stress – have helped him find more balance in his life.

In the podcast – listen below – he also shares his views on the current state of the Australian food scene, and how he reckons Adelaide stacks up against the rest of the country.