I sat down with Culinary Creative Director Michael Stolley and Head Chef Hung Hoa Duong at Disuko, the new terracotta-glowing, disco-ball-speckled takeover of the old Madame Brussels space. Michael is the big-picture force, the one thinking in concepts, mood, music and menus, while Hoa brings a grounded precision shaped by Nobu, Kisumé and a long, steady engagement with Japanese technique. Together they’ve built a venue where omakase discipline meets Shibuya-fun dining, where a fillet-o-ebi sando with prawn katsu, tartare, and American cheese sits happily alongside chicken wings painted in black garlic schmaltz and an udon carbonara. They’re honest about the grind, the joy, the burnout and the strange compulsion that keeps chefs in kitchens long after logic tells them to leave.
Watch the chat on Youtube
Michael Stolley: I love what you do with the podcast. I have a few chef friends who have been on there.
Conversation with a chef: Great. I saw that you were at Ish, and I spoke to Sainyam Kappor just before you were there.
MS: I’ve been around Melbourne, yes.
Michael, I was really interested in your title of Culinary Creative Director, and that means that you oversee several venues. What’s that shift like going from being a head chef to being more of a concept maker?
MS: It was quite natural for me, that transition. I’ve been trying to make sense of it all since lockdown, which was the first period where I hadn’t worked full time. I’ve been cooking since I was fourteen. So my body is tired. Lockdown really pushed me to explore my other interests and skill sets, while trying to still work within hospitality. I tried to escape many years ago. I cannot. But I definitely wanted to do something more than just cooking food and looking at things holistically and solving problems with the invoices. So that transition was natural, but I still have to get better at it, because the habit of needing, or wanting to be physically cooking is still there.
Hello to you Hoa. How are you? I was interested to know how that title works when you bring a head chef into one of the venues. How does the relationship work and how do you delineate between the roles?
MS: It’s very important for me that the chefs have both their hands on the food, that it’s not just from me. Because I don’t believe just handing over a recipe makes a good experience for the chefs or the customers. It’s more about helping to guide and push their skill sets. As well as saying, this is awesome, also asking: how can we make it better? What’s the technique we haven’t used?
Hoa: I feel like Michael has been handling all of the paperwork side, so then it allows me to think and work the team and see where everyone should be at, and then ideally guide them towards a certain direction.
When it comes to menu creation, is that something you worked on together?
MS: Yes. I started out with building out the framework, some of those ideas that have been floating in my head for a while. Then when I came on board, we sat down and thought through the concept, the general direction we wanted to head in: this is where I am at now, please review, and what are your ideas? Is there anything that you wanted to do? We both got into the kitchen and started R&D and playing around with dishes and just trying to create a menu that we wanted to eat.
This is a big venue now. It used to be Madame Brussels, and this area was behind a wall. Now you’ve got this large dining room with a beautiful terracotta glow, which I really love. You’ve also got the rooftop and there’s an omakase bar. Looking at the dining room menu, it is quite playful and fun, and you’ve got that 1980s Tokyo vibe and so on, how do you balance omakase and the Shibuya fun vibes?
MS: I’ve been obsessed with Japanese food since I was really young. I guess one of the things I didn’t like about some of my experiences of Omakase is how long it is. There’s a lack of being relaxed and feeling in the moment. Sometimes they go on for three hours, which is good sometimes, but we wanted to bring a bit of fun into that space as well. We do get to be a bit more playful for the rooftop bar menu, because I feel that’s the energy that it’s looking for. But we do believe that good techniques, good flavours should be across every section. As long as everyone’s having good food and a good experience, that is the baseline.
Can you give me some examples of some particular dishes on those menus then? I know that the sando is a popular one, which is a bit of a riff on a McDonald’s style sandwich? Maybe Hoa, you could talk to that.
Hoa: I believe this is more of Michael’s idea where he’s wanting to bring in the Japanese McDonald’s standards we would like here and alter it in a way that we would enjoy it.
Is the rooftop menu more snacky finger food? What are you eating out there?
MS: I didn’t want to create a dining experience where you’re waiting on courses. The way I like to experience a space like that, it’s enjoying some sunshine, a good drink and tasty bites. No fuss. You still have items like sashimi, which I guess can be finger food if you want, but just making it a little bit less fussy. Wea re still expanding on that menu. But we want the team to gradually get there. We want to make sure that they’re scaling up correctly and not having too much on their plate going into a launch. We still have a few dishes in our back pocket for outside that we will get through once we feel the whole team is comfortable.
In the dining room, what would be the ideal way to get a feel for your flavours? Do you start with some smaller things and move into some larger dishes? Is it shared?
Hoa: I would do small things and then approach the larger things. It is a shared style, so we always try to incorporate enough for two people. I think everything on the menu we have right now is quite tasty. There are just slight tweaks that we are doing to make it a little better.
Do you have some favourite dishes on the menu?
Hoa: I do like the chicken wing skewers. We’ve got our black garlic schmaltz that we’ve worked on. It’s pretty much oil. Garlic rendered down to make it a little crispy. We do have a few other dishes that are very nice as well. Everyone’s been loving the carbonara we’ve made lately. It is soy-based cheese with pesto and then incorporated underneath to kind of give it a bit more of that carbonara style as well.
You’ve got some interesting desserts as well.
MS: Yes. The desserts have been fun; playing around with currently what’s in season. We are bringing the fruits in and breaking them down into a sorbet, very light, very refreshing.
Typically, all launches do not have the same album. It’s always one new album for that launch, which helps define the sound and emotions that I want the food to express. This this one I actually had two: Paid in full by Jessie Reyez, which just had this energy that I really loved. As it echoed off the stoop by Jimmy Nice and The Know. I wanted to try to take customers on somewhat of a journey that is possibly introspective. The music helps. The chefs haven’t had to deal with it much here because I am not in the kitchen 24/7. But sometimes where they have to listen to that same album every day for the R&D, definitely, I imagine it would get frustrating if they’re not ADHD.
Michael Stolley, Disuko
Hoa, you were at Kisume before you were here, when did you feel drawn to Japanese food?
Hoa: It would have been pretty much when I started. The first place I went was half Japanese French cuisine and the other half was Chinese. It was called Duck, Duck, Goose, which was probably twenty years ago. They were a small business that opened up. That’s where it kind of started my journey of doing Japanese food. I left that to go into more of a faster paced, casual restaurant before I got into Nobu. Nobu built that foundation, whereas the other places started me off understanding it.
How did Nobu refine your understanding of the food?
Hoa: I believe it was having the resources of all the products, and then learning and developing those skill sets and incorporating certain flavours and styles of food techniques.
Have you been to Japan?
Hoa: I did go about eight years ago with a couple of friends. We went on a three week trip a bit everywhere. One of my friends is a tour guide as well, so it was great help. It was just constant eating.
Michael, you’ve been there as well?
MS: Yes. I am also just booking a trip now for April. I am really looking forward to exploring some of the areas that I’ve wanted to go to, especially on Tsukishima Island, which been on my bucket list forever. I am trying to get a bit out of the main cities and explore some of the other areas. I am very excited about that.
Sometimes when you enter into something, I feel as though you then know what you want to know. There are possibly different things you want to try now because you’ve been exploring a bit more.
MS: That’s definitely true, because I feel there’s a lot of the base things that we’ve had a lot of exposure to, especially Japanese food in Melbourne. We’ve been going through that third wave recently, and it’s been amazing to experience. So to be able to go there and then get a bit more off that beaten path and explore a few things that haven’t had some limelight, I think is really fun and tasting what is around. Like any country, regionality does change so much and so understanding how the produce is different, how the people are different and how that affects the cuisine, I think is a very interesting aspect of the culture.
Absolutely. There are so many traditions around Japanese food and cooking. Are there rules around how much you can play with things as a chef. Often we talk about authenticity and the dirty word, fusion, I don’t think we talk about that anymore, we just talk about playing around with things.
MS: Now we call it Modern Australian.
That’s right. How much can you play with tradition without being disrespectful?
MS: I definitely think there is somewhat of a line. However, there’s also not when you’re talking creatively and with art, you can put out whatever you want, that is your expression. However, I do believe, depending on what you’re trying to do, you have to pay respect to the food and the culture that comes behind it. At the same time, you’re allowed to do anything in the world. But I do think that for my personal journey within food, it is about exploring the authenticity and the history behind food and then adapting that. At one point, all dishes are new or fusion. For example, look at Japan, with tempura at one point where they didn’t have oil and the Portuguese didn’t introduce it, that dish didn’t exist. It was new and was considered at that one point, a fusion. Then trying to find out at what point does that become a national dish or become ingrained in the culture? There’s always this little split and that really interests me because the way food moves around the world and gets introduced really shows the culture and the history and the history of the people too. There’s a line somewhere.
Do you think about food 24/7?
MS: I know I do.
Hoa: I feel like there’s always something in your head, either a dish or something you want to eat or something you want to build. It’s always there in the back of your mind, whether you’re doing something else completely different. There’s always something you want to do and then you forget about it and then it comes back again.
MS: Yeah, because if it isn’t about food, it’s about organisation or systems or something.
Are you writing things down: ideas or things that inspire you, or is it just on your phone? Are you spreadsheet guys? Maybe you have to be now you’re a director.
MS: I’ve built a lot of spreadsheets. I don’t really write anything down, but going into menu development, I typically will have two months where I choose one album and then just absorb things around me. I go and eat out. I typically look at things outside of food to gain inspiration and outside the cuisine itself to see what others are doing. But ideally, I try not to write anything down for at least two months and then get in the kitchen and see what comes out from that experience. Sometimes I feel like if at a certain point I’m writing it down, I’m blocking myself off from some possibilities. But then it gets to a point where you’d better write it down, or else there’s too many moving parts. Some things that would have been real gems get lost, which has happened to me. Trying to do ten other things at the same time, and because I didn’t write it down, it’s lost.
Did you say you have a certain album when you’re in prep mode?
MS: Yes, yes. Typically, all launches do not have the same album. It’s always one new album for that launch, which helps define the sound and emotions that I want the food to express.
I love that. What was it for here?
This this one I actually had two: Paid in full by Jessie Reyez, which just had this energy that I really loved. As it echoed off the stoop by Jimmy Nice and The Know. I wanted to try to take customers on somewhat of a journey that is possibly introspective. The music helps. The chefs haven’t had to deal with it much here because I am not in the kitchen 24/7. But sometimes where they have to listen to that same album every day for the R&D, definitely, I imagine it would get frustrating if they’re not ADHD.
Not everyone’s on that same journey. This is a vinyl bar with disco balls. So that’s really interesting that you have that way of processing things. I wondered, obviously the menu reflects the environment and the vibes and so on. But does it affect the way you approach cooking?
Hoa: I don’t think so. No, I think it’s just more in terms of the kitchen, the understanding the concepts, the processes that you do is how the kitchen will work, whereas the vibe outside doesn’t really match with what the kitchen energy is.
So you don’t walk in and see the disco balls and then shimmy into the kitchen?
MS: The kitchen sets the vibe. The only thing that changes is how we present food to match the environment, because obviously there will be a bit of a disconnect if you’re getting this highly intricate plate in a setting that’s meant to be more relaxed. I guess that’s what changes that flow of the kitchen. But I think in general, whether this was a burger shop or fine dining, I think we would still have the same expectations of the chefs in the kitchen that the food has to be good. The produce has to be good.
High highs and low lows. The hard work does make things worth it. I think probably similar to you, one of the things that I think is magical about hospitality is friends and family sitting at a table eating food together. I think that experience is a very magical experience, especially the Chinese round table. I love that experience. For me on my birthday, the one thing I would do if I could, is just sit at a round table, have some good food, have some good wine and good people. That’s one of those experiences that keep drawing us back in, even outside the kitchen when we’re cooking for our friends and family, those are some of the highlights. Time in the kitchen feeds that skill set, not just in terms of making tasty food, but providing hospitality to the people we care for. Eating and drinking.
Michael Stolley, Disuko
Michael, you said you started you started cooking at fourteen. Is that because you just always knew that’s what you wanted to do?
No. Not really. I think it was high school, Year 9 or 10. It was the last day of school for the year. I found out from someone that there was a traineeship program that would enable me to work two days a week and get paid and get Certificate II. I was already doing cooking in school and doing well. My father was a chef, so I had been in hospitality forever. I don’t think I ever thought, this is what I want to do in life. But it was an amazing creative outlet that especially for a kid. It filled up my time, gave me an outlet, introduced me to people, and then I also did an after school program. We had a masterclass where we had a chef from the industry come out and teach us each week. I just really focused on food and music. Those were the two classes I really enjoyed. Then I just kept working. I was working three jobs throughout high school: McDonald’s, a Japanese restaurant and an Italian production kitchen. That’s why I’m tired.
You mentioned that you have tried to step away from hospitality. What is it that keeps you in it?
MS: Partially the chaos. There’s so much of a creative outlet than just the food. Because even, say, in the kitchen, the systems are their own thing that is a great mental exercise. Then there’s the people aspect. There are so many factors in being a chef. We were talking last week about the skill sets that you acquire as a head chef these days versus what we actually get taught. There’s a very big disconnect about the skill set that is actually required. I do really appreciate how much we have to learn and how much that it helps us in the rest of our lives. But the disconnect between what you get taught in TAFE or even just to get certified is really large. Especially in Australia, because of our wage costs, we have to wear multiple hats. I’ve found this ultimately a good thing. It can be frustrating, but again, the skill sets that we have to walk out with and when you go to work overseas, you definitely start to see how many tasks we’ve had to do ourselves, without twenty people in the kitchen and hiring one person just to come pick herbs. It’s definitely a big skill set.
What was it for you, Hoa, that drew you into being a chef? Was it something you aspired to be or.
Hoa: Not really. During my high school years, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. People were pushing me towards certain different things, like career counsellors guided me to different directions. But I really was just at school for the sake of being at school because I felt like I wasn’t ready to actually leave that space because I was too comfortable where I was. Eventually I decided, oh, let’s just do culinary school. Eventually it got to a point where I thought, this is what I want to do. What I feel is, when I go out to eat, I like to sit down and just enjoy food and the company and have that conversation with anyone, whether it’s a friend or a relative, and enjoy the space and food and have a good time.
MS: It’s actually crazy that they always expect us to know what we want to do in high school. We were absolute idiots back then. We didn’t know about the world. We didn’t know ourselves. You haven’t explored the world yet.
Without being exposed to things, you don’t know what the options are, do you?
MS: Exactly. You get put on that path straight away, which is understandable, because good things do take time, but for me after so many years in the kitchen I think, oh wait, I actually have all these other interests. Especially if you go straight into cooking, that is your entire world, which I definitely started learning with that lockdown period. I wondered whether I had any friends that aren’t chefs or bartenders outside of my high school friends? That is something that happens to a lot of chefs. I think Covid helped that. I stepped away from head chef and just went around helping other chefs, just being able to step out of your own venue and work with others was an experience that actually did more for me than ten years of cooking before that.
Maybe that is also because of maturity and also knowing what you needed to know. As you say, when you start off in TAFE or doing apprenticeships, you’re not necessarily being taught some of those business skills you need as a head chef and people management. But maybe you can’t learn that at that stage either. I usually end with this question, and maybe it’s a good one to ask now, what would your advice be to a young person starting out in the industry?
Hoa: Honestly don’t do it.
MS: That is a true honest reply. Only do it if you’ve got a passion for it, because I don’t think it’s an industry that is suitable just to pay bills. There are a lot better ways to pay bills. Even if you want to work with food. There are so many other ways to work in food without being in the restaurant industry. But you need to be passionate. That’s the only way to survive. And just listening and thinking. The number one thing that I always advise the chefs: if they think about what they’re currently doing, whatever task, and then think about what they’re going to do next, that solves so many problems. Autopilot is the death of the chef. Once they stop learning, stop thinking, that’s when they think, I might as well just be home.
Hoa: I wouldn’t recommend anyone become a chef. Having a little bit of passion towards cooking can help guide you through it, but you need to have a strong mindset, a strong backing and to be open to these ideas before you can actually jump into a kitchen and be happy to do it and enjoy it because after a certain period of time in your career, you start asking whether you really want to do this? Was this the only option? Should I have thought of something else to do? It comes back constantly, especially when it starts dragging out in a specific kitchen and you’ve been there too long. If you’re not learning anything, you’re not developing a certain skillset, you start feeling all these things and you wonder whether you should leave this job.
MS: I know I definitely had that question many times: oh, what if I just did something different? Then there’s those moments where it’s, oh, I love this, this is amazing. High highs and low lows. The hard work does make things worth it. I think probably similar to you, one of the things that I think is magical about hospitality is friends and family sitting at a table eating food together. I think that experience is a very magical experience, especially the Chinese round table. I love that experience. For me on my birthday, the one thing I would do if I could, is just sit at a round table, have some good food, have some good wine and good people. That’s one of those experiences that keep drawing us back in, even outside the kitchen when we’re cooking for our friends and family, those are some of the highlights. Time in the kitchen feeds that skill set, not just in terms of making tasty food, but providing hospitality to the people we care for. Eating and drinking.
Disuko, Level 3, 59-63 Bourket Street, Melbourne