It’s always great when you start a conversation with a chef with the words, 'I’m not really a chef'. Matteo Bruno may not have chef qualifications, but he does know food, and with several successful venues already under his belt, , the latest addition to his wine bar Monopoly board, is ready to woo a whole new following.
I’m not really a chef. I mean, I cook and I’ve put out a cookbook but I didn’t train as a chef.
Is your involvement with food because you’re Italian? I don’t mean to be culturally insensitive and clichéd in saying that, but a lot of Italian people say food and hospitality are in their blood and passed down through Nonnas and mothers and so on.
It’s second nature. Food is one of those things I’m totally familiar with. It’s a focus point at any sort of family gathering. It’s the only thing that people really talk about. My mum is a fabulous cook. My memories are of watching her cook and enjoying her food. There are four brothers in the family and we are all big eaters. She would feed armies with all our friends over every day. There was always a lot of food around.
This new place, called Inès, that’s my grandmother’s name, my mum’s mum and I’m giving homage to her because that’s where my mother learned what she could do. All my influences are either from the Venuto or Piedimonte regions.
Your background is really film and television. Did you just have the idea to share your love of food with other people and then set out to do that?
After doing a bunch of feature films, I started doing some food shows for Foxtel, SBS and ABC. I travelled all over the place with various chefs doing behind the scenes, going into kitchens and seeing another side of things. I did that for a little while and really found that I loved styling food and being around the food. I realised that I had a fair amount of knowledge and understanding of basic flavours and I was able to converse with chefs really well and I really enjoyed it.
Then, I live on Flinders Lane and there was nowhere really along the lane six years ago where you could go and sit at a bar and just have a really good glass of Italian red and some simple homemade food and still have good music and ambient lighting. So I decided that I would open my own. That was a complete risk, but it went well and progressed to a point where having done that for a while, I was ready for something else. Although I haven’t exhausted the meatball thing, I’m more interested in slightly more sophisticated feeling venues now.
Inès definitely has that feel.
I really wanted to bring that old world charm to the venue. It all ties in with the name, Inès and my grandmother. I still want a bit of sass in the venue and we don’t want to take ourselves too seriously. We want to have really fun music. Everything is really simple but it should be the very best of everything. If it’s charcuterie, it’s the best we can find, and that’s all that will be on the plate. Just that beautiful meat and something else simple to accompany it. Likewise with the wines and cocktails, we’re sourcing the best we can find.
It’s a big wine list.
Yes, it’s pretty extensive. I’ve brought on some help to curate that. I’m predominantly used to Italian varietals but this time we’ve reached out into a pretty extensive international list, which will be exciting to try them all.
I have millions of lists. My life is dictated by my To Do lists and they are all meticulously put together for the first few days of the week and then they are all over the place and then half a day is spent reining them in.
Do you bring any of the skillset of producer, writer and director in film and television to your hospitality venues? Is there a crossover of skills?
Absolutely. In developing a script, you call it a property. That can be a book or an original piece you base your work on. That’s like finding a location. You pick your genre, whether it’s horror or romantic drama, and for me, it was an old world Italian wine bar. That was my theme. Then you assemble your cast: your staff and chefs and all the team on the floor. That’s similar to casting your show. Then you go into the writing part, which is the menu, you do a few audience screenings, some test dinners. Then you have the same thing with critics. They will tear your film apart and tell you how much they hated it or loved it and the public will form their own opinion. There are huge parallels. I’ve absolutely drawn on my experience as a producer in setting up restaurants. There are a million moving parts and a lot of people involved, with all aspects of the business to look after. It’s very much like putting a film together.
I like that. Just to get back to the cooking side of things, is it hard being a chef under you, given your knowledge and ideas about how it should be done? Do you come up with the ideas or do they have some say? How does it work?
I come up with the ideas and then I think the part I love the most is meeting with the team and showing them what the next special or new menu will be. They take everything on board and I ask them to come back with any feedback or suggestions. Then we tweak things and that forms the basis of any dish.
How do you keep a handle on all your different venues and projects?
I have millions of lists. My life is dictated by my To Do lists and they are all meticulously put together for the first few days of the week and then they are all over the place and then half a day is spent reining them in. There’s a level of compromise I have to live with with all the venues because I’m not there. That’s not really what I ever wanted to do, live in a venue. I put a lot of trust in the senior people in my teams and rely on the to keep an eye on things. Sometimes it will be over a year until I go into a venue. I generally set it up, spend a hundred per cent of my time there, all my energy and effort and then I’ll leave it. This is the first venue where I’m going to cook in the kitchen full time. I’m really excited to do this one for that reason.
You are certainly very busy. You are quite newly married too, aren’t you? Your wife will have to come down to Inès just to see you and have you cook for her.
It has been torture for her because we are 6 or 7 months pregnant.
And you’re launching a wine bar? You really love a challenge.
It’s good to be under the pump. I test all the recipes at home so between Alice, my wife and Hero our dog. They sample everything but because Alice is pregnant she can’t eat everything so she’ll see me making me things and ask me all sorts of questions; is it pasteurised or not? That’s raw I can’t eat that. It has been torturous for her.
But probably quite good to have someone asking those questions. There are all sorts of allergies and intolerances out there now.
I totally agree. I’ve learned a lot from her questions and been able to adapt things. Whereas before I may not have been aware of so many of the things people have issues with. I feel as though I can be much more flexible now.
Inès is launching this week. What are you hoping for?
Hopefully we hit a chord with doing something a little bit different on the street. Were not going for anything ultra trendy or trying to be anything in particular. Stefano is front of house and is someone I sponsor from Rome. He comes over a s a cocktail maestro so it is something he has always wanted to do and I’ve known I’ve had a guy like that in the team. The bar is really built around him.
We are really focussing on on good quality drinks and amazing good quality food.
150 Chapel Street, Windsor