Shane Reeves

Conversation with a chef: Hi, Shane. I’m very happy to be sitting here in the window of The Gilroy, looking out onto Bay Street.

Shane Reeves: It’s a very picturesque spot that we have in the Paris End of Port Melbourne, I like to call it. Away from the beach. I ideas about this place from a very long time ago when it was Harry and Frankie. I brought my wife here on our second date. We used to come in every week. Tom who used to manage here would let us take the chicken liver parfait home and we thought we were special, but as I’ve discovered from talking to past customers, he did it with a fair few people. I’m pretty impressed with that. I’m usually pretty good on picking up sales tactics, but hey, it made us come back every week. We just absolutely loved the architecture and I said, if I ever do a venue, it’s going to be this one.

We moved to Port Melbourne three years ago, more Fisherman’s Bend, so when I walk down, I never walk down this section. I got to Baba’s Deli, and I go to Pilates, right there on that corner, and then I walk back down towards the beach and I feel embarrassed, because I never came to that wine bar and I’ve never seen this building. It’s very narrow, with that stunning arched ceiling.

It reminds me of the old maintenance sheds in Banana Alley. The architecture always appealed to me, and I knew that this was being so under-utilised and could be so much more. But I understand why you don’t walk down this part of town because, besides Hurricane Handsome…unless you want to drop your clothes off to the dry cleaners, there’s not a lot to pull you down here. I haven’t invested any time in the outside frontage. But I’ve just engaged Cocolea Furniture here in Port Melbourne, another local supplier. I like to support our locals. George down at Hurricane has supported me a lot with recommending us. We are going to put out some outdoor seating and some new signage. We’ve been here five months now, so we know what works and what doesn’t work. I created the canvases I like to describe it, and now it’s time to finish the canvas. All the soft furnishings, the 20-metre long curtain along the wall have been especially designed for the for the space. The ceiling is actually cork.

The acoustics are amazing. It’s like being cocooned in here.

We’re very early on in the night now, when we get into our busier service, it is very warm, it’s very lush, you sink into the couches, and it feels like a second home. I say to some of our regulars, if you keep on coming, I’m going to have to get a special pair of slippers for you because you come in and I’ll see you at the end of the night.

It’s almost Wes Anderson, isn’t it? Did you do the tiling on the bar?

Yes. There used to be a 12-metre-long bar on the right-hand side where the brickwork is. I recommissioned some of the old bar and made that into my new bar. I saved a bit of the old to create the new. If you haven’t been here before, it wouldn’t be out of place overlooking the harbour bridge in Sydney. The best thing about it is, it does look lush, it does look up market. It does look like it’s a fine dining venue, but the thing that sets us aside and gives it its personality is the people. Connor behind the bar is from Ireland. David, is very French. He did 10 years as Gordon Ramsay’s ops manager in his restaurants. Then he was at France Soir, then he was at Bistro Thierry. He’s got an unbelievable world of knowledge. My kitchen are all 24, 25 years of age. They’re very young in their culinary journey, but the thing I love about that is, I saw talent, and I’d worked with Derek in another project I’d done, and I thought, this is a kid I can hang my hat on. It’s going to take him a little bit, but he’s got the foundation of someone who’s got work ethic, he’s got skill, he’s got a flair for food. For a 25 year old, what he is putting out on a plate is pretty phenomenal.

You were saying off mic, that you are very hands on with the menu creation, and I guess then it’s an intentional choice to have a young crew that you can work with.

No, 100%. You’re absolutely right. In a sense that, myself and David have put our imprint on the menu, but that’s not an egotistical thing or anything like that. It’s purely, when you’ve been in the industry 30 years, like we have, and you hire a young, aspiring head chef that has only been in it for six, that’s an investment that you choose very deliberately. You’re sacrificing a wealth of knowledge and getting someone that’s 40 that has 20 different techniques and tricks and styling and whatnot to invest in someone young. But the exciting part of this project is where it’s going to be in two years’ time. It is absolutely limitless and such a phenomenal thing to think about from where he is now, to where he’s going to be. And then in another 10 years time, I’ve set this up for him to buy off me whenever he’s ready.

That’s incredible. That’s lovely foresight, and I think it’s what we need in hospitality right now.

I think the big thing that’s lacking in hospitality is, the big players are buying up everything and a little bit of the personality has gone missing. Have a look at, say, the Graham Hotel, for example, or Village Wine Bar. The boys used to own that and they’re both workers. They still work in the industry because they’re passionate about it. I find that inspiring and truly incredible. I see what they’ve created for themselves and their families. I want to create that and give something back to Port Melbourne because we’re so lacking for options here. I say we because I’m a local. I wanted a dining destination, right on our front doorstep, that is true to the values of being European dining, French, and Italian and really true to fresh produce. I make sure that the guys order enough to get me through Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then we do another big prep day on Friday, for Friday and Saturday. That’s really important: the super fresh produce. I know it’s more work for the kitchen, but as I’ve tried to describe to them, being a chef is not about the glory. You get it when you when you put up something that’s amazing and you’ve worked hard and you’ve put in the time. I say to them constantly, the big thing about being a chef is not the 10% you’re cooking, it’s the 90% you’re prepping. That’s what makes a chef great. That’s what makes you understand the produce and how you can use it in different seasons and when it’s near the end and when it’s coming back into season and how you can flip a dish from being one thing to completely changing going into another. They’re the unspoken things. The customer sees the end result, but they don’t see the creative process. They don’t see the hard yards and toil that’s gone into creating every single dish and every single aspect of it. They’re doing an absolutely incredible job out there, and it’s only elevating each week. That’s the exciting part.

The best thing about it is, it does look lush, it does look up market. It does look like it’s a fine dining venue, but the thing that sets us aside and gives it its personality is the people. Connor behind the bar is from Ireland. David, is very French. He did 10 years as Gordon Ramsay’s ops manager in his restaurants. Then he was at France Soir, then he was at Bistro Thierry. He’s got an unbelievable world of knowledge. My kitchen are all 24, 25 years of age. They’re very young in their culinary journey, but the thing I love about that is, I saw talent, and I’d worked with Derek in another project I’d done, and I thought, this is a kid I can hang my hat on.

Shane Reeves, The Gilroy

Speaking of produce, I saw on your Instagram that using local suppliers and seasonal produce is really important to you as it is to many places. When you open a place, how do you choose your suppliers?

Tenure. In other words, being an old hand in hospitality, you learn all the players. It’s building relationships through that. You would know as well as I do, people move around in the industry and generally speaking, there’s not too many different wine suppliers. No one new really comes up. Produce, though, is very different. Because, now, you’ve got 50 different fruit and vegetable suppliers. They don’t only provide to hospitality. They provide to supermarkets, fresh food markets. So there’s not really just two avenues as there is with beverage companies. There’s so much more competition. You learn who are the good ones and who are the bad ones, who gets the really good produce and who doesn’t. Working with different chefs across the period of time, and signing off on their invoices, you see who the good ones are and what they charge and the quality of their produce and the care they take to deliver it. The funny thing for me is what I’ve found in this industry is the guys with the most beaten up vans have the best produce.

What’s that about? Are they pushing their way through all the other traffic?

Pretty much. But I think they’re all very tight. They put their money into their staff and they put their money into their produce rather than buying a fancy new van. Their cars are usually pretty well serviced, but they just look like they’ve been around for 15 years. But their produce is phenomenal. Look at Regal Seafoods, they’ve gone from being a very big player down to a small player. But they’ve done that strategically because they just want to concentrate on a select few number of hospitality businesses, and concentrate on quality produce rather than quantity of produce. The industry has really changed and flipped on its head in a lot of ways. I guess a lot of that comes down to the quality of staff there are around now. Cafes, for example, there used to be two great cafes in your neighbourhood and now there’s 16 cafes, not all great, but there’s still 16 cafes diluting the talent pool of people that come work for you. That’s really no different to our suppliers, our chefs, our front of house staff. The reason why I have the staff I have is because I build relationships. The people that are working for me now have followed me from another business, which I don’t really recommend, because you don’t want to leave a business struggling for staff. The condition that they came on board was you can’t leave until they have your replacement. It doesn’t matter what happens in hospitality, integrity to me, how I leave a business or how I start a business or how I deal with suppliers and staff and my clientele is all important.

You said you’ve been in the industry for 30 years, have you always been in hospitality?

I got out of it to do some other things. I was in the fitness industry for a couple years. I’ve done a lot of consulting over the last 10 years for businesses up in Sydney and Queensland, also Melbourne. But hospitality has predominantly been my jam. I’ve always liked the human side of it. I love the interaction with whoever comes in. If you can improve their day by 1%, if you’ve got one customer in or you’ve got 100 in through a day, if you can leave a mark on each and every one of them, then that’s your job done. And that’s fulfilling.

I don’t think everyone remembers to do that. It can be hard some days because it’s very obviously very front facing and you do have to be on all the time. And, you know, I’m a teacher by day, and that’s also the case. And sometimes we have to remind ourselves, don’t we, that that’s what our job is: to be a people person? Obviously you get a lot of joy out of hospitality to have come back to it and to have been in it so long.

There are some really tough days. The industry is hard. But being in it for as long as I have, you learn to compartmentalise things and you have to do that because you can’t pass on your bad day to your customers, otherwise they’ll have a bad experience. So, no matter what’s happening, the supply hasn’t turned up, if a wine hasn’t turned up, or whatever it may be, the minute I walk out past that bar, it’s smile on, customer facing, we’re into it. That can often turn around the bad day for me into being a really good day because the jokes you have with the customers and getting to know their story and what they like make a difference. We have a couple of customers that when I see they’re booked, I know that one likes a Bowen Estate Shiraz, so we decant that for him because he has two bottles with his family, every single time he comes in. Those little touches make people feel part of your journey.

How do you negotiate the unhappy people, or people who complain?

Number one rule is, never ask a person how a day has been. My mentor is a gentleman by the name of Bobby Zagame. He taught me two things. Number one was never ask a person when they walk through a door, how their day has been. Because you don’t know if someone has passed or they’ve been fired, whether they’ve split up with their wife or their partner. You don’t know. So it’s always ‘Welcome,’ and then that can lead into conversation. The second thing was to always answer the phone, not by saying, Hi, thank for calling the Gilroy, Shane speaking. What’s the last thing people always remember? How would I know? I’m 19 years old. Your name. Thank you for calling The Gilroy. This is Shane. From there, they’ve got that cue because it’s the last thing you said, Shane, can I do this or can I do that? He taught me all those little things: finger marks on the door and look at the skirting boards and look at the legs on the chairs. Look at the things that other people don’t look at. Anyone can look at the tabletop. Anyone can look at dust on top of this, but no one looks on the floor. That stuck with me for 28, 30 years. Have a look where he is now, a massive landlord, a car connoisseur, and owner of prestige vehicles, and, just an absolute unbelievable human being on top of that.

When you were 19, were you working for him?

Yes. Basically, I didn’t like my teachers at school. I couldn’t imagine another five years of having someone tell me what to do. I wanted to get into an industry where I wasn’t in an office, where I was around people. I loved being around people because I was in sporting teams and I loved the culture of having people around and being a part of something. Bobby and Zagame’s were my first employers. He taught me the foundation of what I stand for today and, have a look at him: he still goes on to his showroom floors and goes through his garage and picks up a rag and fixes up the oil on the ground, backwashes his coffee machine. He doesn’t have to do those jobs. He’s close to being a billionaire and he’s still doing that stuff. There’s nothing more admirable than that. How can you not learn from that and go, that’s how I’m going to run my business?

Have your roles in hospitality been front of a house and operations?

Very much so. I oversaw Milk the Cow Group for about two and a half years before I exited that business to go and open up Gambino. That was a very challenging business. There were four different businesses: online, the cheese shops, the wine bars, and the Peruvian restaurant.

Is this the first place you’ve owned?

No, I had a cafe in Elwood about 2012 to 2015. Tiger Bar and Eatery. It was a little breakfast and Spanish tapas place. We had a wood fire pizza oven in there as well. There were about 40 seats outside, 60 seats inside.

Oh, that’s quite substantial. I lived in Elwood for two years when I first moved here from 2011 to 2013.

It was on Ormond Road where the old car repair place was. Before that, I owned a little pizza shop in Dingley. That was my first business I ever owned. Dingley village. My old stomping ground, that’s where I grew up.

I read that you have over 200 wines at The Gilroy?

We’re up to about 215 wines now. All the wines I have on my list, you could literally go anywhere else and be getting charged anywhere from $20 to $400 or more. I don’t charge 400% on wine. I’ve charged what I think is appropriate for the area. And the turnover will dictate my percentages and viability. I’ve got eight wines by the glass in reds and six in whites. A couple of Proseccos and champagne. They’re all 15 bucks. Champagne’s $23, but even so, that’s more reasonable than other places. And it’s bloody good champagne, too. I try and pick small batch operators in that come out of France. Everyone knows the big boys. Everyone’s had a glass of Moet. Everyone’s had a glass of Veuve or Bolly or Dom. I try and go with the little less knowns. But quality over quantity. That’s the key: everything here is the quality, not so much the quantity of it.

Talk me through the food. So, French Italian?

We’re more French in winter and Italian in summer. In summer, we are more seafood forward: Moreton Bay bugs, kingfish crudo, tuna, oysters. We do two different kinds of oysters: a Sydney rock for our natural, little bit smaller, fresher, a little bit more flavoursome. And we do St. Helens for our cooked. We definitely champion seafood and our fish of the week changes every single week. That gives the kitchen a little bit of interest instead of cooking the same thing day in, day out. Our fish is always different. This week we’re doing a garfish with a Cajun crust and a crayfish beurre blanc sauce. Our risotto today is a is a squid ink risotto with all sorts of seafood.

I’ve seen that steak is big here too.

We very much champion our steak. We’ve got a Scotch fillet MB9 on at the moment. It is pure black from Echuca and the Murray Downs, the other side. It’s grass fed for three years, put on the grain for 120 days to get that marbling through the cow. And then the way they slaughter is incredibly humane and sustainable. So they’re the kind of things that I look for in our suppliers. They’ve been around for 50 years. Our supplier is actually Flinders and Co. They’ve got a wonderful portfolio of like-minded suppliers. They’ve got their own farms, Roaring 40s down in Bass Strait and they’ve got a partnership with Cape Grim as well. Our T-bones are from Bass Strait. And then we champion Cape Grimm. Our porterhouse and our ribeye is all Cape Grim; minimum MB4, so you get that nice little bit of marbling. It’s tender and beautiful to cook. People talk about grass fed, grain fed. The reason why Australian beef is up there with Irish beef and some of the best in the world is because of that mix of grass and grain fed.

Looking a at the menu, what’s the ideal way to approach it? If you want to come here and make a night of it, would you have some snacks and starters first?

Generally I’ll run through the specials, and then moving on into our pastas, I’ll explain what our seasonal pasta is, and that changes weekly. Then I’ll move into our large format, secondary main meals. The other thing we do a little bit differently is we do two sizes of the eye fillet.: a larger 280 gram, and smaller 220 gram. I’ve often found that there are people that don’t want such a big steak, but they still want a steak. Having two sizes really gives them different options. Everything with the exception of the veal coteletta, the tortellini, the risotto, can be gluten free.We’ve got gluten-free pasta, and with our chicken liver parfait, and our cheese platter, we can do gluten-free bread as well.

Are all your pastas made here?

Everything’s made in house. We hand fold all our pastas and make focaccia in house too.

What are you looking forward to over the next few months?

We’ve got our oyster and champagne night coming up in August, which we sold out in 24 hours. But the following month, in September, we’re going to be launching our burlesque night. The first Thursday of every month will be a little ticketed event, so $40. Three hours of burlesque. For me, the key to this place is it’s not the furnishings, it’s not the plush surroundings you’re in. It’s myself and David and Connor and Rebecca, that make it what it is, because someone will be eyeing off that bone off the ribeye and we’ll come along and say, how dare you not pick that up and eat it? And the amount of women that actually go, Oh my god, and pick it up and start chomping into it. I want to be casual and relaxed and your home away from home.

The Gilroy, 317 Bay Street, Port Melbourne