Bryan Nelson is living the dream. He loves nothing more than making people happy through his food and transporting them elsewhere. Now that he and partner, Kate, have opened in the beautiful heritage-listed former court house on Bay Street, his hard work and commitment to hospitality allow him more than ever to make that happen.
This is a beautiful room.
This whole building is beautiful.
It is. How long have you been operating out of this space?
Nearly two months now.
What made you move in here? Did it become available?
Yes it did become available. We’ve had Ciao Cielo down the road for seven to eight years and it became available about three years after we had been down there and we tried to get it then. I’m going to say that it probably worked out better that we didn’t get it then because I think we were too young and a little but too inexperienced. So when it came up a second time, we jumped all over it.
It feels as though I’m in Europe in one of those really beautiful places. It’s incredible.
It’s stunning at night too. Although it’s beautiful during the day too with the sun coming through the windows.
They’re like the play school windows…looking through the arched window. It’s gorgeous. Has being in this bigger space changed the way you’re cooking?
A little bit. I wouldn’t say overly. The way I cook is still full flavoured, I try and push my boundaries a lot. It’s a bigger operation than the last joint, but I still try and include as much in every dish even though we’re doing three or four times the covers. Some dishes have six or seven components. The pastas have five different liquids in them. I don’t try and dumb it down to make it easier.
It’s described as fine dining, but it’s still that hearty, flavoursome Italian food?
That’s right. I’m not fully deconstructing everything. Full flavoured food is what I like to do. Sometimes you go to places and it looks pretty on the plate, but it doesn’t have a lot of substance. I try and have interesting presentation, so that people say, oh wow, that looks beautiful but I also want beautiful flavours and a balance of textures.
You travel overseas a lot and use that as part of your research. All the chefs I speak to want to continue to grow and discover new things. It's great.
Absolutely. This year we went to Italy for winter for the first time. We went to Modena, the home of balsamic vinegar. We went to a place that has been making balsamic for eight generations, maybe even longer. We learned about balsamic vinegar and gained more of an appreciation of it. There’s a consortium controlling production, aka, probably the Mafia, I don’t know. They are very strict and regimented about how they produce things like balsamic. They can only do a vintage when the daughter has a baby or something like that.
That’s so strict.
Yes, so you hope the family is big and producing babies.
I’d never considered that. I know in France, they have all the AOC rules for things like roquefort and champagne, but that’s about technique and terroir, this is a whole other level if it’s about daughters having babies and so on.
The most aged bottle you can buy, they have to buy a special bottle that comes from the consortium and each of those bottles costs the producer 20 euros because they are engineered by the guy who made Ferraris or something like that.
Wow. And are you using that?
We did buy some to try it but it works out to be about $5 a millilitre or more.
It’s interesting to try those things and to see the value people place on food and production and on the heritage of something.
That’s exactly right. For these guys, it’s more about carrying on the family tradition that was started. It’s not so much these days about profitable living. It’s about carrying on what was left to them. They still do it the old school way, in barrels in the cellar, hand-done, no machinery.
It says a lot, doesn’t it, about how important artisans have become in our society because they seem to be fewer and fewer. We place so much value on technology, but in fact, it’s so good to remember that the old ways can still be the tried and true ways.
It’s a lot more of a hands on approach for a more precise product.
In terms of that in your kitchen, are you hand-making pastas?
Definitely. My guys are out there extruding pasta. We make all our own gnocchi here. We make pretty much everything here.
Do you make your own bread?
Yes. We play around with the wood-fired pizza oven too. We’re roasting carrots in there, for example. Dutch carrots usually take about 15 minutes in a hot oven, but in the pizza oven, four minutes. You get a beautiful caramel on the outside. It surprisingly locks in the sugar because it doesn’t have time to leach out, so it tastes caramelized but they are still crunchy. We like playing with the pizza oven a bit. I don’t know whether the pizza chef likes it. It burns at 400 degrees, so it’s great.
Is your food typical to a region?
No, not at all. I take inspiration from all over Italy, even the Mediterranean sometimes. I definitely don’t stick to one area. I know for some Italians, it’s a big no no to cross areas; you don’t take something from the north and cross it with something from the south. Even a couple of the Italian guys I work with, if I say maybe we should do Ndjua with a particular kind of bread or pasta and they say, no you shouldn’t do that because one is from here and the other is from there.
Do you do it anyway?
Always. I follow Mossimo Bottura and he’s big on that. He’s breaking down those boundaries in Italy to try and bring it together. When you go to Italy, it’s a little bit homely. They are all very region-based and very used to what they’re used to and it’s hard to change them. A guy who has Bolognese in the north compared to a guy who has Bolognese in the mod-section around Rome or something, they won’t like the other’s Bolognese. I don’t want to sound rude, but they’re not very open-minded.
It’s interesting, isn’t it. I remember when I was over there that they are so happy with the same toppings on pizza and over here we just really are not happy with the same flavours. We need variety.
We mix it up. Our pizza chef, Andrea, we gave him some Tiramisu that we had made and it’s quite different to what he’s used to. He’s from Genoa and he’s used to more of a sponge, light-flavoured…pretty much sponge, whipped cream and coffee. Ours is quite rich with mascarpone and orange through it. He said it was ok, but it wasn’t what he’s used to. Dan Scott from the Herald Sun’s review just came out yesterday and he loved it. And I love it. I think it’s one of the better ones from around town and I don’t usually say that about my own stuff.
You should. I was speaking to Domenico De Marco at Tipico and he likes to do a twist on things as well. He’s Italian but he said the twist is in his blood. And apart from going to the source, going to Italy and talking to your chefs, where do you get your inspirations? From reading?
A little bit from reading. A lot of it is from ingredients. Just before we opened here, one of my suppliers brought down some wagyu bresaola. I’d had bresaola before. It wasn’t wagyu and it was a little bit dry and a little bit strong flavoured. But when they brought me their product, I was quite excited. It tok me about a week to two weeks to fully work it out. Now we’ve got it with some artichokes, horseradish cream. We make some little baby gnocchi frittis to go with it and some pickled red onion. We created an entrée pretty much from getting a sample from a supplier.
Seasonal things. When broad beans come in or pine mushrooms. I go and get my own pine mushrooms usually but I haven’t had the opportunity this year because I’m here. I’ve had one day off in two months.
You must love it. From the way you talk about, it's easy to tell.
I do.
You probably wouldn’t mind a break as well.
I’m into hard work. I really enjoy working hard and I enjoy cooking. Even in the kitchen, I don’t do pass. I like being on the line, working hard and working with the boys. I’ve always enjoyed that. I love service. I like making people happy when they eat my food. I like it when people say, oh that was the best steak that I’ve ever eaten. It’s something as simple as steak, cooking it perfectly and seasoning it, it’s the simple things that people appreciate. I source good cuts of meat and cook it properly and people love it.
Nothing upsets me more than if someone has had a bad meal or a bad experience. Even the little things, if they haven’t had their water or wine topped up. I don’t like reading things like that. Because it is hospitality. We’re here to be hospitable to people.
Did you always want to be a chef?
Very much so. When I was younger, maybe 12 or so, I wanted to be a park ranger or wildlife officer. Totally different. I wanted to do that until I was about 14 or 15 and then I realised I had to go to university to do that and I didn’t really enjoy school, and I didn’t want to do any more schooling after I finished Year 11. I always found that my food subjects at school were interesting and I did well at them and I found that I was a bit of a natural at them. I don’t come from a family of cooking. My mum was the real eighties meat and three vege kind of person. She makes a beautiful roast and beautiful baked goods. I don’t come from a dining background so it was an interesting thing to get into.
I did work experience in Year 10 and had a couple of weeks in the kitchen. I saw it in full swing so from a quiet day to a frantic Saturday and I thought it was interesting and fast-paced. When you’re 15, you’re quite easily impressed by the people around you…I’m not sure if I should have been. I enjoyed the high pace and the environment. I washed dishes for a couple of years from that age and I also worked in a pizza shop for about 14 months. That was more of a franchise style pizza but I was, I guess, the head pizza maker there. By 15 ½, it was a full time job, 45 hours a week plus school. It was enjoyable. I’d pump out 150 pizzas a night by myself. It was in a conveyor oven so that made it easier. Someone else was boxing them but I really enjoyed it. I really loved having the pizza oven full and more pizzas coming, even at that stage.
You obviously get satisfaction out of creating something and as you say, working hard and that whole hospitality thing of pleasing people.
It definitely is. Nothing upsets me more than if someone has had a bad meal or a bad experience. Even the little things, if they haven’t had their water or wine topped up. I don’t like reading things like that. Because it is hospitality. We’re here to be hospitable to people.
Is that something you talk to all your staff about, do you share that concept?
A little bit. I try and keep a high standard. Everything I make, I judge. I literally do look at everything and if there’s something wrong I know. At the last restaurant it was 35 seats and two chefs. It was micro-managed. Here I have eight chefs on my roster and probably six on a shift. I can’t be everywhere at once.
Congratulations on getting to this point. Was it always your goal to have your own place?
It was definitely my goal to have my own place. Whether it was as big and wow factor as this at this point in my life, probably not. We’re trying to make it a great place to be. It has good bones and structure and we have a great reputation in the area. Down the track I’d like it to be another place like Donovan’s or The Stokehouse, an institution, like Cicciolina. When I say Donovan’s and Stokehouse, this place has a wow factor about it. Donovan’s has that beautiful space on the bay. Stokehouse, even in it’s previous form, I thought it was a beautiful joint. You could sit up there and be transported to another place.
Well I’m already thinking, when can I come back here and eat? Look at your glassware. It’s stunning.
Yes, Kate does a wonderful job with all that.
What would you say to young chefs coming in to the industry? What would your advice be?
My advice? That’s a tough question. Be prepared to work hard. Don’t expect to have all your weekends off. Head chefs always try and give their staff time off when they ask. especially when you’re young. I do still remember when I was 17 and 18 and your friends were at 18th birthdays and you couldn’t go to them all or you went at one in the morning when you’d finished work and everyone was hammered and you’re sober and you also had to get up at seven in the morning to go to work again. I always try and be nice to them.
But definitely, work hard. Read a lot of cookbooks, look at them, basic recipes. There’s a lot online now, Instagram and so on. There are thousands of pictures of presentation and plating, which helps. Choose wisely places to start. It’s always good to aim high but sometimes if you aim too high too young in your career, you might not develop the bones and structure you need to understand cooking fully. You could work at a very nice top end restaurant for a year but you might just learn how to pick herbs really well and slice a few ingredients well and cook a specific dish or two whereas if you work in a kitchen which is not quite as high as that, you have more chance to move around.
I was very fortunate in my career. The place I started my career was a seafood place in Southgate. I started in the larder section and six months later I got moved to pastry and then I got moved to fryer and then to grill, so I’d been cooking for 15 months and I was on the grill section already. I thank the head chef for allowing me to do that because I think back to some of those services and it wasn’t always fun, I wasn’t doing a great job initially. But a couple of months, you get it done. I was fortunate. But trying to employ older chefs now, chefs who have been cooking for seven or eight years, if I ask them whether they have any experience on grill, and they say not really. They are definitely skills to pick up.
Start somewhere good but it doesn’t have to be two or three hat standard and then try and get a couple of high end places under your belt when you’re young as well. It will definitely instil a lot of precision and perfection into what you do. And you need to get used to working the hours required. You realise it’s not for money. It’s about passion. You do it because you enjoy it. You’re never going to be rich being a chef. It’s very rare, anyway.
115 Bay Street, Port Melbourne