George Calombaris is back in Melbourne with Auto Greek, a pop-up at Bar Yarra in the Ovolo Hotel in South Yarra. A week in, the room is full of familiar faces and new ones too. For George, the project feels a little like bringing the band back together. In this conversation he reflects on nearly three decades in hospitality and what he still believes Melbourne can be as a food city. He also talks about the food itself. Neo-classic Greek cooking that is simple, generous and deeply personal. Think watermelon with feta, lamb chops over wood fire and vegetables grown from heirloom seeds. George is thoughtful, philosophical and still completely animated by the power of a good plate of food to make people happy.
Hi, George. How are things going with Auto Greek just over one week in?
It’s been an overwhelming, amazing first week. To be back in Melbourne, in my own town, where it all began is always a little bit emotional and obviously means a lot. It’s so nice to see a lot of new faces as well as amazing guests that used to frequent all of the venues from Press Club to Gazi to Jimmy Grant’s. It’s pretty cool. I’m very grateful for it.
How did it all come about?
As I always say, hospitality is not about how outrageous a venue can look and how much money you spend, it’s all about humans, and Christos Pavlidis – who’s the General Manager of the Ovolos both in Melbourne CBD and in South Yarra and we worked together back in the day – he reached out and said, we really want to do something in South Yarra, we want to do something Greek and I’d love to do something with you. For me, it was not really much of a conversation, because I love Christos, and I believe in a lot of my ex crew that used to work for me, and now that still work for me. It was an easy yes, and I love the position, love where it is, so it all made a lot of sense.
I guess pop-ups are interesting because you get to try things out and you get to catch up with old friends, as you say. What do you love about the pop-up model?
I’m not going promote pop-ups. For me, it’s different. I’ve owned over 20 venues throughout Victoria for a very long time where I’ve owned leases and paid a lot of money. I’m 47 and it makes sense. What I don’t want is every chef out there, just doing pop ups, because it doesn’t make sense. But for me, it makes sense to be back in my hometown and to be able to give the guests, and also the team members a lot of them used to work for me that work there now. We’re bringing the band back together in a weird way. I’m grateful for it, but it’s a different time in my life, that’s why I’m saying, I don’t want you going out there promoting that everyone should do a pop up. Hospitality is great. Melbourne is great. We need to be the custodians to re-energise this world city to where it used to be, because it was the envy of the entire country, and the world, in many ways. Obviously, we are a little bit gruesome at the moment. Let’s call it as it is. But it’s up to us to stand tall and strong and make it wonderful again.
Yes. As you said, you’re different, older, do you get a sense of what’s different about Melbourne’s appetite now compared to 5 or even 10 years ago?
There’s no question about it. I don’t want to use that word again that happened seven, eight years ago, the whole pandemic stuff. Because I feel like it’s like our thing in Victoria, we keep mentioning it, but enough’s enough. We’ve got to be forward thinking, we’re going to be progressive. Melbourne is a great city. It’s one of the great cities of the world. We’ve got to build on what we’ve done in the past, focus on the incredible stuff we’ve done, but focus on the future, and the future is the fact that we have got the most amazing peninsulas in Australia, think about Mornington Peninsula, think about incredible produce that comes from there, the great wine. We’ve got to celebrate all these things, but also think about incredible hospitality, roots, and standalone restaurants that do amazing stuff. There are amazing young chefs out there that are pushing themselves and working hard to do great things in this great city, so it’s up to us as consumer behaviour, to support that ideology, and tell the world how great we are.
We’ve got to build on what we’ve done in the past, focus on the incredible stuff we’ve done, but focus on the future, and the future is the fact that we have got the most amazing peninsulas in Australia, think about Mornington Peninsula, think about incredible produce that comes from there, the great wine. We’ve got to celebrate all these things, but also think about incredible hospitality, roots, and standalone restaurants that do amazing stuff. There are amazing young chefs out there that are pushing themselves and working hard to do great things in this great city, so it’s up to us as consumer behaviour, to support that ideology, and tell the world how great we are.
George Calombaris, Auto Greek
Let’s talk about the food. I always like to hear about the food. You’re describing it as neoclassic Greek cuisine. What does that mean for you?
I had another great four or five weeks in Greece on the mainland in January where I got to go and do something I’ve never done before. I got to go with my son up to the north of Greece, far north into an area called Mt. Athos, where, it’s only monks. You have to get a visa to get in there and get approved. I got to experience, from a spiritual point of view, the food of this region. I then got to go into the Peloponnese, where we went and saw the olive groves, that we use in our olive oil, and got to understand how, why, when. I call it neo-classic because it’s classic dishes. It’s just done in a modern way. We’re cooking lamb chops using the most incredible wood oven grill with the most amazing olive oil to flavour those chops. It’s nothing new in terms of, oh, my God, I’m, pushing the boundaries of cuisine, but all we’re trying to do is accentuate that, whatever we put on that plate, we’re cooking it in the best possible way we can.
Delicious. And I feel like it’s quite a challenge to do dishes that are under $30. What was your thinking around that?
It’s very true. I think 95% of the menu is under 30 bucks or around there. As a consumer, you can come in at 2.30, 3 o’clock, order yourself a beautiful roasted beetroot and feta dip. Have a glass of chardonnay. Maybe, you only want one lamb chop. You can have one lamb chocolate and pay $12.50 and enjoy that, and it’s all good. If you come in with, me and my four burly, built mates, and you want to have a whole chicken, 20 lamb chops, and loads of chips cooked in olive oil, and all the trimmings, you can but you’re not going to walk out spending a lot of money. That was the whole thing about Auto Greek, the whole brand and ideology of it. Auto, in Greek, means, always on, always available, and we’re not about fanciness. When we say watermelon and feta, we literally mean that. We’re going to give you a chunk of watermelon with feta on it, because that’s what I would eat as a youngster in the afternoon, that was our snack on a summer’s day. It was watermelon and feta and it was yum. And that’s what you’re getting. We’re not compressing the watermelon, we’re not doing anything fancy. We’re just getting the best watermelon we possibly can get from our farmers. We use a young kid called Nikos, a really good friend of mine, who’s inherited a lot of these seeds and plants from his great grandad. He grows a lot of our vegetables. We do a plate called boiled vegetable of the day and they are all Nikos vegetables and we are dressing it with olive oil, lemon juice. So, again, trying to work out how we can just put simplicity on the plate, without fuss and trying to keep it as value driven as possible.
I guess you’ve already touched on this a little bit with some of those scenarios of the kinds of people that might come in, but what would be your ideal experience for a diner? How would they really get to understand the concept of Auto Greek?
It’s going in and just eating the way you want to eat. When I’m in Mainland Greece, the way I like to do it is to have a couple of salads to start with. I like to have a couple of appetisers, maybe some barbeque corn, a couple of roasted prawns in the oven, and then finish with a little bit of protein. It might be chicken. It might be soutzoukakia. The soutzoukakia recipe is from a little taverna in Thessaloniki in the north of Greece. This recipe was gifted to me, and I’m very grateful for it, and I’m never going to claim it was my recipe, but I have taken this recipe, and I’ve paid homage to the guys that gifted it to me, and it’s basically these barbecued beef and pork, we whip it with ice cubes, and herbs, and all these other stuff. I sit and have a couple of them with some tomatoes, that’ve just been chopped up at a room temperature, and dressed with extra virgin olive oil, and a little squeeze of lemon, oregano, that’s the way to eat.
It’s never going to challenge, this food. You’re not coming to the Louvre, and you’re not looking at amazing pictures on the wall. I always said, The Press Club: you’re going to love it or hate it. You’re going to come there, and it’s a bit like an art gallery. Some pictures you are going to hate. You’re going to come to Auto Greek, it’s definitely not an art gallery. It’s just a place that’s going to feed your soul, and when you walk out, you’re going to definitely be full in your stomach.
It’s so good. I love hearing you talk about food. It’s really great when people are passionate about what they do.
Food is pretty peaceful, and in a world that we live in right now, this crazy world, where it’s definitely unhinged in many ways, and certainly it’s putting a lot of people on edge. Food is a grounding wonderful thing, and I’m grateful that I’m part of it.
George Calombaris, Auto Greek
What do you still love about hospitality? You’ve had a lot of different experiences and what keeps you in it?
I’m 47, I’ve been doing this for 29 years and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I love it. It’s given me so much. I’ve travelled the world. I’ve met the most incredible people. It still hasn’t stopped for me, thank God, and I’m very grateful for it. It’s this idea that you could instantly gratify someone and make them happy through what you put on a plate. There’s nothing else better in the world. Think about bread in its simplest state. It exists in every single country in the world, in a different way, shape or form, it could be pumpernickel, in Germany, it could be ciabatta, in Italy, or lagana, in Greece. Food is pretty peaceful, and in a world that we live in right now, this crazy world, where it’s definitely unhinged in many ways, and certainly it’s putting a lot of people on edge. Food is a grounding wonderful thing, and I’m grateful that I’m part of it.
That is so lovely. Just to finish with George, what would your advice be to a young person starting out as a chef?
Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Your mistakes will be your biggest achievements, as long as you can learn from them and not make them again but walk out on a limb. Try and have that impeccable sense of balance on that tight rope for life and just go for it.
Don’t be scared. Don’t take the easy route. Take the route, that’s a bit itchy, it’s difficult at times. It’s confronting, it’s challenging. I wouldn’t change my life one bit. I’m very grateful for what I have and what I’ve achieved: the good, the bad, the ugly. It’s the step that we take next that’s the most important, and the lessons that we’ve learnt along the way.
Auto Greek at Bar Yarra, Ovolo Hotel, 234 Toorak Road, South Yarra