Daniel Livingstone

It’s lovely to be here, Dan. I did speak to you on the night I came, which was a few weeks ago now. It was such a fun night. Obviously it was about the wines, but the food was is delicious, and I really loved listening to you talk about the way you approach food and your philosophy as well. So it’d be great to talk about that. But maybe let’s situate ourselves in The Chandlery. 

This was a ship’s Chandlery. We dated it back to the 1860s, and it still has its original bluestone. When we arrived at a place of wanting to get our own venue as caterers, we had a look around and we were Port Melbourne locals, so we chanced upon this space, and we were aware of it already. It’s had various iterations of restaurants for a number of years, and it’s a tricky place to do business as a restaurant, and I think that, given its size, it’s struggled. We decided, hey, this could work really well as an event space and the base for our catering. We did some research, we went to the Port Melbourne Historical Society at the town hall, and had some chats with them and they were super helpful and unearthed a number of interesting photography pieces and bits of history on the building and what it’s been through. It’s got a bit of a storied history. It was a wine bar 100 or so years ago. Or whatever a wine bar might have been back then, I think it was just red or white. It was a pretty busy and raucous space, tending to the marine industry, which is right here next to us on the docks. We discovered a number of articles about fights that have gone on and interesting characters who’ve run the space. And even as late as the sixties, it was home to a prominent restaurateur who was doing flashy food. We thought all the history was interesting, let’s lean into the history, let’s go back and call it The Chandlery and embrace what we’re all about, which is connectivity, community, and consider its history as this kind of port where people arrived and started their lives in Melbourne. 

You do catering and welcome events here. How often is that happening? 

We do our catering from here, which is predominantly offsite, as a business called Muse Events, that my wife, Fran and I have, and that’s been going on for about eight years now. But we also have this space as a stand-alone venue called the Chandlery. Similar sets of food, the same kitchen, but we wanted to have a venue where we could walk out five metres from our kitchen and put a plate of food down rather than drive two hours, which is our usual you know, type of setting. It’s been fun. It’s great to be in a stand-alone bricks and mortar business as a catering company and test ourselves. We’ve enjoyed it so far. 

Do people come in with their events, like the winemaker or whoever else, and do you sit down and discuss the menu or do you already have a menu that’s in place? 

It depends. We have a default offering, which we have for small weddings or birthday parties, engagements and so on. But through winter, especially we’ve really embraced trying to connect and collaborate with others in the industry, especially shining a light on smaller scale producers, winemakers, and those who are seen as the small guys and I find that a really enjoyable experience and it doesn’t come with a set template. We’ll often just have a really organic discussion about what we might want to put out and show people, and then we’ll allow it to go from there. We have a set of events that we’ve been rolling out for the last two years, which we’ve called the Makers Table, and that’s been an opportunity to connect with really small scale, either farmers, producers of wine, distillers, and give them a platform to come in and showcase what their product is with us supporting it on the kitchen side. We try not to throw our weight around too much and actually allow for those small-scale producers to inform what we’re doing. 

How do you get in touch with them or do they get in touch with you? 

It has been a bit of an organic process, often of me reaching out to people. My background in this industry is one that’s a little bit left of centre. I was a professional singer in my 20s and songwriter. I was a pop songwriter and producer. I fell into cooking at the end of my 20s when I met Fran, who had an events and catering business. I didn’t really come with a network and colleagues, who I could lean in on and contact. I am very much a self-taught cook, and I reached out to others and expressed my interest, I’d ask to jump in and lend a hand and volunteer and that’s given a bit of goodwill to allow some trust and to connect with suppliers that I might not easily have been able to access being a small business myself.

This is fascinating. What was the crossover into food? What sparked that? 

I spent my 20s singing here and in the US and Europe in a number of different settings. I started as a jazz singer as a teenager, and then merged into pop music, jazz didn’t pay so well. For a lot of my 20s I spent time as a songwriter, so jumping into studio sessions and performing and recording songs with publishing companies. That’s all good fun, and it’s funny because you express and you test the same muscles in cooking as you do in music. I feel like my cooking career started before it started in some ways, because writing music, you are considering elements and textures and how people feel. I met my now wife, Fran, at a time when writing pop music, getting into sessions, as fun as it was, I felt like I lost a bit of a sense of myself through it, and I wasn’t feeling like I was able to inject my true self into what I was doing. I took a bit of a break at a time where Fran needed a hand with cooking. Cooking, for me, had always been something up until that point I used as a de-stress after writing music. I’d often get home from writing a pop music song with this thunderous bass beat in my head and I just wanted to have a break and my way of switching off would be getting in the kitchen and having a cook or reading cookbooks and emulating dishes. So, at a time when Fran needed a hand, I put my hand up and said, I’d love to just take a break from music altogether and just jump in. And at the time, it was a pretty basic offering that she had attached to the small events business she had. I began just cooking sausage rolls and some pretty basic things. And eventually, as I threw myself more and more into it, I realised that, actually, I could see myself doing this full time. I put the pause on writing music, at least. I continued to perform up until about three years ago, while I learned how to cook. I found it was a pretty seamless thing to transition into in terms of a skill set of trying to be creative, connect with people. I still even think about when I make food, I think in terms of music terms; bass notes and treble notes and you think about a vinegar or an acid, being a treble note and a base being something savoury. It’s a bit of a funny thing, but, I don’t feel like it’s been a tremendously different jump of skill sets. 

I wonder, where does technique fit into that because you mentioned creativity for sure, cooking’s about creativity and palate and all of those things and being really aware and observational. Was it easy to take on board technique as well? 

That was certainly something that I had to work at. I took my time. I was really honest with myself, and there were many conversations about, you know, I’d like to jump in and do some stages in kitchens to strengthen things, but I found myself in fortunate positions where we’d connect with various chefs of 10, 20 years experience, and collaborate and I’d get advice, and reach out to people, and a lot of generous people in the industry were able to aid me in putting me in the right directions of books to read and areas to work on. I slowly but surely just honed in on some of those more discipline-based things required for technique. It’s still a journey. In a lot of ways, I wish I’d had the chance to start off with a proper three years. working in a school and doing an apprenticeship. But this is where I’ve found myself. And so I work hard to just lean into the fact that it’s a bit unorthodox, my beginning with it, but I use that to my advantage in some ways where I don’t necessarily have the parameters that a classically trained chef might have, but I’ve still got those people around me who’ve been able to lead me in good directions. 

I guess when you come at something a bit later in life or when you’re older and you’ve had other experiences, you are more aware of what you want to know or need to know to do what you’re doing. So then I think you really hone in on those things. I like to hear that you use books in continuing to learn as you said, you’re doing, would you do you look at what other chefs are doing on Instagram and YouTube as well? 

Certainly. I try and be a sponge across everything. Obviously, being careful to not get too lost in absolutely everything you see and have a critical lens when you see how people are going about things, because there are plenty of people doing things in odd ways or not necessarily the right ways. Not that there is a wrong and a right way, but I’ve tended to look to some of the more classic based chefs, for either inspiration or some technique-based stuff. So Adam Byatt from Trinity in London. He’s got some great YouTube videos which I really enjoy. I certainly do jump online and get stuck into that. I think you do have to be very careful, though, that you don’t allow yourself to start negative talk by seeing all of the perfectly curated stuff online and allow it to make you second guess how you go about things. I think you’ve got to cook with instinct. 

And comparison is the thief of joy, and I think we find that social media can really take us down that track, but that’s right, if you can keep to the inspiration and have your own confidence, then it can be a useful tool. 

For me, the reason I enjoy cooking is not for any vacuous, selfish reasons. I’ve tended to do it from a place of just wanting to bring people together and have connection. I don’t feel like that’s as view-reaching online as the more exciting content is. In that way, I struggle with social media a bit because I often feel like it’s not really celebrating the things that I want to celebrate about food. 

Food originally was all about bringing people together and still is, but community and sharing across a table is really what hospitality or food is all about. I think that’s really lovely that you’ve tapped into that and that you have created a space for people to come as well. 

How do you feel about social media and its place these days? Is it in a healthy spot? I guess it’s what you go in and look for and if you seek out things that are going to piss you off or frustrate you, or that it are going to feel self-serving, you’ll find them, and if you go in search of inspiration and people doing great things and forwarding cuisine, it’s there as well. 

That’s right, I feel lucky. I think my algorithm is quite a positive one in terms of following the chefs and restaurants that I really admire. So I feel like I’m seeing good things and some other food writers that I really admire. I like to follow them and they pop up and so on. I’m a lot older than probably the demographic that really gets into social media. So I guess for me, it serves my purpose. I probably don’t really know how to use it probably. I noticed downstairs as we were coming in, that you’ve got some big jars of preserves and pickles and those kinds of things. I remember you talking about how important it is for you to use everything and to have zero waste. Perhaps you could talk a bit about that.

Look, it’s become a bit of a buzzword, ‘sustainability’ and can often be thrown around without deeper thought and actual execution of it. But we’ve tried to be very considerate about what our industry is known for, and how it’s regarded, and I feel like catering, even the word is a bit of a dirty word, it’s seen as a bit of a second class citizen to restaurant cooking and I’m very much keen to try and change that. I think changing that isn’t necessarily just about food tasting great and being contemporary. It’s about the processes and methods that underpin what you’re doing, and a big reputational issue with catering is wastage. And deservedly so. It can be pretty heavy how easily, waste can be generated in the catering space, especially with big events. A lot of that stems from people just trying to be quite generic and please the masses in terms of not really thinking about the seasons and just putting on a Dutch carrot and an eye fillet and a mash because that’s what people expect at an event. We’re really excited about where food comes from, and the people who make it, and so if you are connecting with where your food’s coming from, and if you’re connecting with how it’s grown and the effort it takes to get there, then you just naturally respect the product, and you want to really work with that, because it’s the most exciting part about cooking, not necessarily always the cooking itself, but it’s the opportunity to go out and see these hyper-seasonal things being grown by super passionate farmers and producers and hear about the lengths that they go to to make that happen and all of the challenges they come across. So it’s just a natural progression, once you’ve seen that, and you’ve heard the stories of how much sacrifice and hard work goes into making a new season potato or a winter heirloom daikon, you get it into your kitchen and you don’t want to put any of it to waste and you want to take care of it and celebrate it and do the bare minimum in terms of taking it from its bare essence to the plate. So for us, we started thinking about all the ways that we could preserve things at their best and looked into a number of different techniques. So for us, the primary ones are obviously just straight fermentation via salt, but also from there, we discovered cheongs and being able to make sugar syrups from almost any new product, and that’s led us into creating vinegars, macerating various things, all the way through to lately, we use barley koji to create kojis that then flavour sauces and help with marinating meats. This is partly why I love cooking, there’s so much to learn, and there’s so much out there to discover, you don’t get bored. And having the parameters of, “I can’t waste any of this,” gives you that ability to have a tunnel of creativity, which I really enjoy. 

I am always impressed when I hear how chefs use the peelings and the lemon skins, and all of those things in other ways. We could all do with learning a bit more about that. But also allowing for that time, I had a really lovely conversation with Chae up in the Dandenongs and embarrassingly for me, I hadn’t realised really what soy sauce was how it was made. And they say it’s made with soy beans, purified water, salt, and time, and it takes two years until it’s ready. That to me, was so groundbreaking because I was thinking, gosh, when you go to the supermarket and there’s all these different soy sauces but when you’ve got a product and you know how much time and effort has gone into it, then you do use things really wisely. 

It’s that thing of multiple products becoming the greater the some of their parts. I think fermentation can do that and preservation. I just think inherently it’s that effort and that show of love in putting effort into preserving something it’s just a good thing to do. When you love your cooking or you love people, it comes out in the food. For me, that’s the ultimate addition to that process to say, hey, let’s not waste this beautiful thing that Matt and Jo, my friends might have pulled from the garden, but let’s celebrate it, and that’s going to flow onto the final dish. Even the process, whether it be taking lemon peels and making a cleaning agent or whatever it is that might not necessarily end up on the dish, it just contributes to, in a sometimes tough industry, a sense of joy pride that you can have in what you do. 

How great are Matt and Jo? I had such a lovely conversation with him. We walked around their farm and it was really interesting speaking to a chef who had crossed over to being a producer. The amount of work they’re doing with heirloom and growing all those great vegetables. 

They are a standout for me. Jo, in particular, Matt just works so hard, it’s hard to get him to stop. Jo is so generous in her time with me and probably was one of the main people who kickstarted my real want to connect with small scale producers, because of her enthusiasm and passionate for what she does. We’re doing a morel dinner next month with them here. It’s not just about the act of growing early vegetables and the hard work, but I just love being out in the fresh air and you head down to their farm in Romsey, and you see kangaroos hopping past and the birds and I just love that. And I love it more and more. For our catering company, we predominantly use custom grills and woodfire grills and we head out and often these days, we cook for a lot of weddings in vineyards and on farms, and I love that feeling of no day being the same and the challenge of cooking not being the same, and the wind is going this way and the rain’s going that way or it’s a hot day, that just drives my passion for doing this outdoors. For some reason it just elevates the cooking and eating experience, as far as I’m concerned, being out in the elements. I’m keen to do more of that. It’s hard in Melbourne with the weather that we have, but I just think that adds another level of joy when you sit down with friends and family and have a meal outside. Even if the weather’s crap, you put up an umbrella and have a little bit of extra wine to stay warm. It’s a good time. 

I’ve just been reading one of Stanley Tucci’s books and the way that he talks about food is amazing. He’s not a chef, but he’s a really good cook and really appreciates food. He has a great descriptions of his father-in-law in Maine, and how the whole family gets in a boat and buys the lobster from the fisherman and then they go to this island and light a fire and there’s this particular way he does it with putting seaweed over the lobster. It sounds amazing. I’d love to be a part of that. New Zealand pre-COVID, I don’t know if it happens now, near Christchurch, there is this amazing vineyard area and also really great growing area. And they’d get together, a collection of producers, chefs, winemakers, and food writers, and they all converged on this vineyard, and one team would go off foraging greens and mushrooms or whatever they were doing. Another team would go to the river and catch trout. And another team would go and hunt and get boar or whatever. And then they’d all come together and celebrate and feast together. I just thought that would be for me a dream coming true to be part of that. 

Absolutely. I think Rene Redzepi did a similar thing where he invited a number of chefs over to Copenhagen and they do a thing of foraging and they go and do the fishing and it’s a great way to celebrate everything that’s in front of you. There are a number of people who are leading the charge in terms of shining a light on why hunting and meat sustainability with pest control is a healthy thing. It’s something that I’ve got involved in in the last couple of years. Before we were at The Chandlery, we were predominantly doing catering out of the Middle Park Bowls Club, which is a great bowls club here in the southern part of Melbourne, and we were doing a lot of meat, barbeque style, smoking. We weren’t doing American barbecue, but we would utilise big American smokers. Some days we would do 2000 to 3000 people through summer. It started to weigh on me how much meat I was cooking and how out of touch I was from the process of where it was coming from. I really felt like I had to face up to that and at least become familiar with where meat’s coming from in the process. It has been a really important journey for me as a chef, just to get an understanding for mass industrialised meat production and try and shine light on the smaller guys. I’m really still only just connecting with some of these producers. But there’s a number of people really trying to do things the right way and have a higher welfare raising of meat. Or go down the route of Anthony, who does venison in the Otways, just trying to find ways to source meat more sustainably. And for me, that became learning how to hunt and coming to grips with taking a life and facing up to what it means to eat meat, seeing that square in the face. So, yeah, and there’s plenty of work being done and I don’t know if you’re aware of the Jonai farm in Daylesford and Tammi, who’s currently at work creating a micro-abattoir on their farm. But it’s really hard for small scale farmers to take their animals to market. There are two big players who are currently blocking out smaller scale farmers from being able to process their meat. There are a few people, and I’m not the one to talk about this, because I’m still in my infancy of getting to know the industry, but there are a few people who are starting to fight that and try and make sure that people are getting the chance to eat meat that’s local to them and raised humanely and is dispatched humanely. I’m very keen to continue to look for those sustainable options. It’s pretty easy to just turn your eyes away from it and just order from the markets. And even the great markets in Melbourne are often just supplied with some pretty industrialised stuff. This is part of my grappling with the industry of catering and the battle between trying to handle my margins and make sure that I can keep my staff paid and the lights on, but also sleep comfortably knowing I’m doing my absolute best to provide the best possible product. 

Well, it’s about respect, isn’t it? You mentioned that with the vegetables that when you’ve seen the effort it takes to grow carrots and peas and all those kinds of things, then you’re less likely to waste those, you want to use the whole vegetable. It’s the same with the respecting the meat that you’re cooking. A long time ago when I first came to Melbourne, possibly 2012, I went on a weekend run by a guy called Rohan Anderson and he was very much about getting city folks in touch in more aware of the meat that they were eating. It was the best weekend. We first of all made a pesto out of nettle, which was incredible. Then we had to dispatch a chicken, which was a loss of innocence, I have to say, but then we had to cook the whole thing learn how to butcher it and do all that kind of thing; get rid of the cloaca bit and all of that. scary stuff. It was so confronting, but it really made me look at chickens differently. I think that it’s important in terms of awareness, for sure. And respect. 

Absolutely. It’s not easy. It’s not for everyone, but I do think if you freely eat meat all the time, it’s a healthy thing as a human to face up to it. And if not, learn how to hunt yourself or be involved in an experience like that, at least discuss it with someone who does. 

What’s your current favourite thing to cook? 

That’s a funny one. At the moment, it’s actually cooking vegetables over a fire. It is something really special. A lot of people presume that we cook very large pieces of meat over fire and it’s that real kind of butch thing and primal thing. But actually learning how to cook vegetables and coax out the best of their flavour on fire is a lot of fun. I really enjoy getting in super fresh vegetables, and more and more from people that I know and I’m cooking them over fire. We’ll often cook radishes on the coals and various things like that. Other than that, we’ve also been enjoying doing some pretty old school traditional style cooking. So creating farces and stuffing, doing ballotines, embracing that kind of nose to tail style eating by using up everything that we can. Another area is trying to, as everyone knows who’s in the industry, you’ve got to watch your costs and try and get the most out of everything. So coming up with techniques which enable you to create really special flavours without the price tag. So, for example, duck confit, we get really good quality duck ribs, and we’re able to confit them much like you would a duck leg and you’ve got incredible duck meat for half the price of a duck leg. It’s funny, there’s little cheat codes to delicious things, which can help you give out a great meal, but also keep your costs appropriate. Something that we’re grappling with as caterers and in the event space is being reactive to prices and inflation. As a restaurant, you can pivot a little bit faster and change things, but we’ve discovered that doing weddings, especially, often you’re booking two years out, trying to be reactive to price points, and project what something might cost can be really tricky. It forces us to look inwards and consider how we can cook with some efficiency and creativity, but also give people a great thing at a price point that we can trust will be okay in a year and a half, two years’ time. So, it’s certainly a challenge for our events industry is giving someone a price in two years and making sure you can do it without going out of business. 

I was just thinking about what you said about, you know, what you love about cooking is bringing people together and community and obviously making people happy with your food. Is it the same thing? Are the things that you enjoy cooking, are they the same things that you love to eat yourself? Or is that different? 

I like to keep things pretty basic. So often there’s probably a few more flourishers when we’re putting on an event. But I really like that sense of celebration or connectivity when you sit down with five or six people and have something shared. That’s why we embrace a shared style of eating when we do events. Especially in a wedding setting, and you still have people who want the alternate old school way of doing things, but I really feel like it’s a great way for people to pass a plate to someone else and strike up a conversation, and the fact that you’re all eating the same thing gives you a chance to chat about that and have that shared experience. For me, it’s all about that. We’ve just had our birthdays and gotten away for a trip and I caught up with some friends at Daylesford and we got a fire going and we all jumped on a few different things and had a big shared feast and you know, it’s often less about what we’re cooking and more just about how we’re enjoying it together. 

That’s right. I guess with all that in mind and the fact that you’ve come to this through a slightly different a slightly different route, what would your advice be to a young person starting out in the industry? 

Well, I think it has to be said that it is a tricky time in hospitality, just in terms of its reputation and how it’s perceived. I would say to people to not be put off by that, but to also have their eyes open and make sure they’re being respected when they get into it. Once they’re into it and they know that they’re enthusiastic about it, I would just keep your eyes open and your ears open and be a sponge and learn as much as you can. It’s just as important to see people make mistakes and to see bad attitudes in the kitchen as it is to follow the people who do things with good intentions, because it helps you to determine how you want to be and how you don’t want to be. My advice is to essentially be a sponge and just to continue asking questions and don’t feel silly in asking those questions. Because I had to, at an age where most of the people I was working with around have 10 or 15 years experience on me, and I’m not going to get anywhere if I just keep my mouth shut and don’t ask questions that might feel silly. You’ll get better at something, but always be humble and be hungry to learn more. 

The Chandlery, 67 Beach Street, Port Melbourne