Mike Jacques

Conversation with a chef: Hi Mike, it’s lovely to meet you. And it was lovely to arrive and see you in the full thrust of service.

Mike Jacques: It was a busy one today.

It’s a Monday. Is the busyness because it’s school holidays?

School holidays plays a part. One thing that we really pride ourselves on is being for the locals. So we’ve got all sorts of offers that attract the locals. This time of the year in winter, a big part of our trade is our locals. Over summer, we pivot a little bit and we’ve got a holiday crowd down and we offer a slightly different menu for that kind of thing. But it’s the locals that keep us going through the winter.

How long has Tarra been here?

Tarra’s been here for about three years. It’s still a very new building, a very new entry to Queenscliff. Queenscliff’s one of those historic towns where it takes a long time to be part of the fabric of Queenscliff. It’s something that I’ve made a big part of my job; to make sure that we do engage the locals and to get them to use this beautiful building that we’ve got. I think because it is so striking and so new and so different to anything else that’s in Queenscliff, there was definitely an element of trepidation about it. But when we get people in to experience it and they see that view and they have that experience of dining right on the waterfront, we’re turning them around, one by one, I think.

What’s on the menu at Tarra?

I like to think of Tarra as a postcard for the Bellarine Peninsula. We want to make sure that when you walk into Tarra, you have an expectation of what you’re going to see on the menu. I think you think seafood, local produce, that sort of thing, the view does so much of the talking for us. I just want to make sure that the menu reflects that as well. We’ve got beautiful local fish: our fish and chips is flathead, which is caught locally. At the moment we have some King Dory, which comes from around the east coast of Victoria, right on the borderline with New South Wales, and lots of local produce as well. We work with some really great suppliers and farmers down here. This time of year, the Dory is served with roast parsnips and pickled green apples and a dill sauce. We’ve also got a beautiful braised lamb neck on at the moment, which has got a garlic caramel glaze, roasted sweet, a black garlic mayonnaise, and crispy kale chips as well, really leaning into that winter stick to your ribs kind of food at the moment. Because we do honestly get people who are out for a bracing walk on the beach and then they come on into Tarra and they want something to warm them up and feel nourished.

It’s very cosy down there as well. Having the sea right outside, I can’t even believe it. You were saying that at Onda, across the water in Sorrento, it’s even closer to the water.

That’s the only way that you can be closer to the water is what we’ve done over in Sorrento, where the whole ferry terminal is actually over the water on stilts. It’s tucked into the Sorrento pier, so it really feels like it’s floating alongside the pier. It’s a bit of a different offering over there. A big part of what we do is that the trip on the ferry is not just a transport, it’s not a bus ride or a train trip. It’s a journey somewhere. We love to think that we’re part of people’s holidays. What I want to make sure is that people who are in Queenscliff or in Sorrento and going for a day out get a very different offering at either end of the ferry journey. In Sorrento, we have Onda and the name and the concept for Onda came about because when we stood there in the building site and they had the big glass windows just going in and there were people fishing on the pier, I just thought, this really feels like you’re in a little fishing village in the Mediterranean somewhere. We’ve got a pizza oven there. And there is a great tradition of these little restaurants where they’re serving up what’s been caught today. They’ve got a wood fire oven, and it can be small plates of fish or a pizza or something hearty and braised in the oven. That’s very much what we do over there. But yes, if possible, it’s an even more spectacular view than here because it’s 180 degrees. It’s a curved building, so 180 degree views completely over the bay. You get everything from Mount Martha, Melbourne on a good day and everything in between.

I’ve seen a lot of photos on Instagram. It looks beautiful and the food looks amazing. How long have you been involved with these venues?

I’ve been here for about a year and a half. When I came on board, it was just Tarra. Tarra was sort of due for a little revamp. The previous chefs had just finished and they had a bit of an Italian style for Tarra. But I really just wanted to lean into that sense of context and that sense of place in the menu. We changed that up and I got that settled and then we went straight into opening Onda in March this year. It’s been crazy. Really, really busy.

People obviously want that, and maybe it’s because, as you say, it offers that sort of holiday feeling without having to get on a plane.

That’s right. Another cool thing is that I think it’s the only operating restaurant venue in Victoria, which is completely over the water. It’s really unique. You literally walk out onto the pier to access the restaurant. I think the people of Sorrento have been watching it be built as well. It’s been a three year building process. It was an incredible feeling to open the doors on the first day and we didn’t advertise that we were opening. We didn’t tell everybody, oh, today’s the day. But the people who had been watching it be built just came wandering in and said, right, we want to see what it’s all about. It was super exciting.

Congratulations on the Golden Plate Award.

Thank you. The restaurant got a few awards and I won the chef of the year as well.

That’s amazing. The Golden Plate is a regional award?

Yes. Restaurants throughout regional Victoria can apply. It tends to be quite a few from the Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo sort of region at the moment, but it’s expanding every year and this year it’s going to be much bigger than it was last year. It’s a really nice thing to be involved in, especially the chef of the year competition when we do a cookoff. It’s a great way for me and the other chefs to sort of get to know each other a bit more. It can be quite an isolated job where you’re head down, bum up in your restaurant all the time and you don’t get that much opportunity to get out and meet other chefs who are working in the industry in the town. I love being able to meet a few more chefs and to hang out together on some of the days that we had out. So it was great.

What did you have to do for that?

Well, first of all, the nomination comes from the inspection of the restaurant. We applied for various awards for Tarra. And then when they come out and dine in the restaurant, the judges put forward eight chefs from the restaurants that are in contention for Chef of the Year. You go up to Melbourne for a day where you bring a dish of your own and then there’s a mystery box. You cook both with 45 minutes of prep time followed by 45 minutes of cooking time and you present the two dishes. Then it’s judged by a panel of judges on the day, and there’s a short interview afterwards and that’s it. It was really interesting. It was quite high pressure, but really good fun.

What was in your box?

It was an odd one. We had whole flathead, which I filleted in the prep time. We had leek, hazelnut, mandarin, honey, eggs, butter, and curly bitter lettuce. It was pretty eclectic, but I fried the flathead with a Mandarin and honey sabayon sauce, grilled leek with the shaved hazelnuts and things over the top; a bit of classic French from my from my background.

I’m just always amazed at chefs with those mystery boxes, how you can come up with things and under those stressful conditions?

You just need one thing to get you started. As soon as I thought about how I was going to prepare the fish, then I thought, okay, well, that would be nice. One thing leads on to another leads onto another and you start to put bits and pieces together. It comes spur of the moment now. I wouldn’t have been able to do it 15 years ago in my career, but now it’s second nature.

I think curious people are attracted to the industry because it is so temporary, I guess. People who build things or artists who make a work of art of things, and it’s there and they can look at it. Whereas with us, every plate is destroyed in the act of enjoying it, where you make something really special and you give it to someone to enjoy it, and then it’s gone. You never have a portfolio of work to stop and admire really. It’s just the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. That’s definitely something that drives me.

Mike Jacques, Tarra, Queenscliff & Onda, Sorrento

What’s it like being an executive chef when your other part of the venue is across the water? How do you manage that?

I’m really lucky that I’ve got a fantastic head chef over at Onda. He takes the reins day to day a lot. He and I are on the phone every day. I go over there a couple of days a week, but realistically, he’s the man on the ground most of the time, and a big part of my job is just trying to support him in his role. We work really closely together. I was hands-on in the kitchen today, but usually my role is to get that synergy going between the two restaurants. So, rather than seeing it as a challenge, where are the opportunities of having two different spaces, two different restaurants, two full teams of chefs that we can draw upon to make both restaurants work better? We’ve actually even just taken on a third project, which is the general store in Tidal River and Wilson’s Prom. So now it’s three venues at once where sometimes it’s a bit like spinning plates where you get to touch points in each restaurant, every couple of days and make sure that everything’s ticking along. I’ve got to be able to switch my thinking between, because they are very different venues as well. I literally have different t-shirts and sometimes I look down to see which t-shirt I’m wearing, then I’ve got to be in that frame of mind.

What’s the offering at Wilson’s Prom?

It’s very much a kiosk. We’re in the process of renovating at the moment. Once we’ve renovated, there’ll be a bit more of an interesting menu, but it’s what campers expect: fish and chips and burgers and that sort of thing. We’re working towards having the team at Onda produce wood fire pizzas to be reheated down there as well. We’re looking at a few months of renovations and then when we get back in there, it will never be a fine dining offering, but just a more quality grab and go style.

When you came on board here, did you know these other things were in the works?

I knew Sorrento was in the works. I didn’t know Wilson’s Prom was in the works. We’re a growing company. We’re an ambitious company, so we want to make sure that we’re taking opportunities where they come. I find it really exciting and I think there’s some comfort in having business as usual, but it’s also very exciting to have new things on the go all the time. I learn new skills every time I do it. A big part of me stepping away from a small fine dining restaurant into a large company was that I wanted to expand my skill set in a corporate environment and in lots of different offerings. Now I’m overseeing two restaurants, two cafes, a general store, and two kiosks on the boats. Very different offerings, and hopefully in a good way with my fingerprint on all of them in a certain way.

That’s incredible. That’s a lot. But I think it’s always interesting talking to chefs because the chefs that I speak to always seem to be so curious and so desiring to learn more and keep going. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to a complacent chef. I think that’s really exciting for you, but it’s great for the diners as well to be having those kind of people behind the plate.

I think curious people are attracted to the industry because it is so temporary, I guess. People who build things or artists who make a work of art of things, and it’s there and they can look at it. Whereas with us, every plate is destroyed in the act of enjoying it, where you make something really special and you give it to someone to enjoy it, and then it’s gone. You never have a portfolio of work to stop and admire really. It’s just the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. That’s definitely something that drives me. Although I can look back on my career and think about restaurants that I’ve worked in and things like that, but it’s always very much what’s the next dish that’s going out? What’s the next menu? What’s the next season change.

I’ve actually never heard anyone put it like that before, and it’s so poetic and beautiful. That ephemeral nature of things, though, means that sometimes, though, they live in your memory. If you’ve had a really amazing meal, people will talk about that for a long time.

So true. Something that I really thought about as well is that I’ve worked for some amazing chefs who have really guided me a lot. The best ones always think more about the experience than just the act of eating. There’s always an element of theatre in how things are presented and how the service flows and there’s an element of surprise and delight that you try and go for because I think food is such an amazing trigger of emotion and memories. If you do it right, you can cause people to have an experience from dining out rather than just, well, I was hungry and now I’m full.

Where did it all start for you?

I was quite late to it. I went off  to uni and struggled a bit at university and then started working in food production. I worked on an oyster farm in Chile in South America for a little while. I just didn’t know what I was going to do and that popped up and I thought I’d give it a go and I’m still obsessed with oysters. Oysters always appear on any menu that I’m offering. Eventually I was 24 when I decided I’d go to TAFE. I did my apprenticeship. I was lucky that when I started my first job was at The Press Club back when it was two hats and in the big room and it was right at the time where MasterChef was just starting and George was on MasterChef. That was quite crazy, but really it was a great opportunity for me to start my career at such a high level, and have really good standards set from the start. I worked there for about a year and a half  Then that group opened a restaurant with Philippe Mouchel, and he came and did their pre-opening dinner to announce that they were going to be doing a restaurant together at The Press Club, and I met him and I was totally awestruck by him and by his food. I went and worked for him for a year and a half and that was amazing. Still to this day, he is a huge mentor for me. While I worked for him, he was so generous with his knowledge and with his time. Then I met my now wife while I was working there and she’s English and her visa ran out and I said, okay, well, Chef, I think I’m going to go to London for a while. He sat me down and we had a couple of hours conversation about, Well, if you want to achieve this, then you should work in these kind of restaurants, and if you want to achieve something else, then this is the path and he really helped me to map out my career. Since I’ve been back, we stay in touch a lot, we’ve done dinners together, we see each other. He comes down on his day off and has lunch. I was very, very fortunate to land with him early in my career. Then I went off to London. I went straight to a Michelin star French classic style restaurant. It was a very small team and working for the youngest Michelin star chef in London at the time, it was all the gory stories that you hear about, that kind of restaurant. That’s what it was. I jumped into that. I was very much in that frame of mind where I’m going to go over to London and get my arse kicked and become a great chef. It was really, really tough. I did just over a year of that. Al the all the cliches that you can imagine happened during that time. Then I decided to move on from there. I worked in a really fantastic gastro club, which is run by an Australian chef called Trish Hilferty. It’s called the Canton Arms, and that was brilliant, just a completely different style of food that I’d seen, but a really a great way to fill out gaps in my experience. It was whole animal butchery, lots of slow cooked dishes, lots of really interesting ways of using cuts that I had never heard of, and a real traditional English style of cuisine, which was brilliant. I had a fantastic time there and then I landed at Claridge’s. I was at Claridge’s Hotel for five years in a couple of restaurants there. The first one was called Fera for a chef called Simon Rogan. He’s gone on to have multiple Michelin stars, including three stars at his place in the Lake District called L’Enclume. That was an amazing experience. I’ve been lucky in my career to have what I call a couple of dandelion restaurants where there’s just this concentration of talent, and then they all drift off into the industry, and then become head chefs and executive chefs. That was one of those; just an incredible team to work with, some of the best chefs in England, all working in one kitchen, pushing each other. I remember when I started there, I came home to my wife and I said, oh my god, these guys are just a different level. I don’t know how I’m going to keep up. Then after three years in that restaurant, I was sous chef, and then they closed. Claridge’s just decided they were going to have a different offering in that space. So they closed that restaurant and then the new team that were coming in decided that they wanted me to be part of their opening team, but there was a year of renovations in the middle. I became head baker at Claridge’s for a year, making all the viennoiserie, all the bread, all the little bits for the afternoon tea. That was a year of night shift baking. I had stupidly said, well, I’d really like to work on my pastry skills and then that was that. That was while we were renovating. Then we reopened that restaurant with Daniel Humm, the chef from Eleven Madison Park. I was sous chef in the opening team there. That was a very different style of food; very refined, very polished. The mentality was that everything we did was to be the best in the world. There was no near enough. The question for every time you chop chives, every time you bake bread, every time you cook a duck, was: is that the best in the world? They had the ambition of three Michelin stars there. Unfortunately, Daniel Humm decided that he was going to be a vegan and Claridge’s just didn’t like that idea. They closed that restaurant and then I decided we’d move back to Australia. But that was during COVID.

What would happen, though, in a place like that if someone did make a mistake?

It depends what kind of mistake. I think there’s something that I’ve learned through my career that I really try and hold onto is that there’s no real point in criticising or punishing skill errors. People don’t want to burn things; people don’t want to cut things wrong. If they’re concentrating and they’re doing the process right, and something goes wrong, then you have to be able to accept that. If someone’s deliberately taking shortcuts or wants to do it their own way or whatever it is, then that’s a systematic problem. So there’s a real distinction and working with those guys was a great way of refining that distinction in my mind where mistakes happen, and no kitchen is made up of all superstars. You have people of every level of experience in all kitchens. Every kitchen has an apprentice and moving all the way up to the head chef. I say it to my apprentice all the time here, apprentices don’t make mistakes. They just show where they need more training. If someone makes a genuine mistake, then okay, let’s move on. But if it’s a systematic problem where someone’s not using the resources that they’ve been given or someone’s not doing what they’ve been shown, then that’s a different problem and that would be treated very differently.

So you come back and it’s COVID?

My wife and I have two boys. We decided that we wanted to move back here in time for my oldest son to start prep, because he was going to be the kid at school with an English accent anyway. We thought the best time would be to start him off when everyone is starting off new. That was Christmas 2020. Australia was not in deep lockdown when we decided to move. Then we moved out of our flat, shipped all our stuff, and then we had flight after flight after flight cancelled. We ended up being in an Airbnb for about four months just living out of suitcases. Luckily I could keep working. The team at Davies & Brook, which is the Daniel Humm restaurant now, they were really understanding about it. I’d given my resignation, but they just let me keep working until I could actually leave. Then we got here and I was lucky that Tulip were advertising for a head chef at the same time as I was looking. I got that job via the phone from London. I was super lucky that Graham at Tulip at the time was able to wait for me because I think I signed a contract with them in August and my first shift was New Year’s Eve. We had to hang on for a bit. We did hotel quarantine with a five-year-old and a two-year-old. I was a Tulip for four years: a year and a half as head chef, and then two and a half years as one of the owners. It was great. We got our chef’s hat and retained it and lost it and got it back and all those kinds of things. It was very fun, very exciting, but terrible for family life. Just a lot of long hours and I realised at the end of that that it wasn’t really me who was making the sacrifice. I was doing what I wanted to do. I was chasing my dream, but it was the the family who were actually making all the sacrifices and so I decided I wanted to change. I was approached by Searoad Hospitality. It was good timing. They knew about me and knew about Tulip, and approached me, and I was in the right headspace to give it a go.

That’s really great, and it speaks volumes, I think. We were saying off mic that Tulip has come up quite a bit for me recently. It sounds like it was a bit of a dandelion restaurant for this area as well.

Absolutely. A lot of great chefs have gone through there. I think what Graham and Matt Dempsey, so Graham Jeffries and Matt Dempsey, who started Tulip and Tulip was Graham’s baby for eight or nine years. He’s an incredible guy and again, a really fantastic mentor to young chefs. People who have worked for him have gone on to do a lot of great things as well. His restaurant now in Torquay, Samesyn is just phenomenal as well. I was very lucky to get in there and made some fantastic relationships from working there.

Did you originally come from this part of the world?

Well, no, my dad’s from Geelong, but I grew up in Woodend about an hour north of Melbourne, on a sheep and cow farm up there. I was definitely around food a lot and dad’s a good cook and has a nice little herb garden and things up there. I think I was probably the last person in my family to realise that I was going to be a chef. When I started at TAFE at 24, I said, do you know what, I think I’m going to be a chef. Everyone said, obviously, we’ve been waiting for that.

How amazing to go from London to Regional Victoria.

There was a little bit of trepidation about what I was going to find. As I said, my dad’s from Geelong. I spent a lot of time there. I had spent summers down in Ocean Grove and things as a kid, and my wife being English wanted to live by the beach. So we moved to Ocean Grove and I thought I’d been in these amazing restaurants and seen all the best produce of the world and things and I was thinking, what am I going to find in Geelong? I was very lucky to have landed in a fantastic team of people who were really keen for me to just express myself and make my own menus, when I was working for a terrific chef. He was happy for me to just take the restaurant in my own direction and build relationships with our suppliers. I remember the first week that I started at Tulip. A friend turned up at the back door of the restaurant with this enormous tray of incredible vegetables, and she explained that she worked at a place called the Paddock in Leopold, between here and Geelong. It’s owned by Give Where You Live Foundation, and essentially, it is a disability support centre, but it’s an organic farm. It’s operated by seven disability support workers, and they have about 30 participants who do their support sessions by working on the farm. They go through everything from working the soil, planting things, trimming and harvesting. They cook with the veg, they pickle it and they supply some restaurants around Geelong. Everything that they grow is organic, biodynamic, they grow things not for any commercial reason, just because they taste good, because they’re exciting, because they’re interesting. I used to go out there once a week and collect produce and talk about, wouldn’t it be cool if we could grow this or, those carrots are nice, but I’d love them if they were that big. They have interesting, unique produce, but also, from the best people around. That was a really incredible relationship to build. Just as I was thinking, am I going to be able to write a menu that says something about my philosophy of food, how I like to cook? And then this relationship just materialised straight away. It’s really changed a lot about the way that I cook in the same way as moving down here and having that real coastal influence has changed the way that I cook. I would hate to think that at the start of my career, I said, right, this is my style and that’s it. It has been a constant evolution throughout 15, 16 years of working as a chef.

You have done a lot in that time.

Yes, I’ve bounced around a bit, but I guess it’s like you said, that curiosity just drives you onto the next thing and the next thing.

With all that in mind and your experience here and overseas and your curiosity, what’s your advice to young people starting off as chefs?

Well, normally my advice to young people thinking about being chefs is don’t do it, but I think it’s one of those things. If you discourage someone and they still want to do it, then it is the right job for them. The first bit of advice is to make absolutely sure that it’s the right thing for you. The second thing is to get that real breadth of experience. My career has been, I don’t want to say roller coaster because it sounds like it’s bad things, but a real range of different styles of food and different markets of the industry: some super fine dining, some casual and wholesome, and everything in between. I think that’s really important to get a broad experience, to really challenge yourself. No growth happens in the comfort zone. I say to the young chefs who work for me, if you, if you give me a year, then I can set you up in London, if you give me two years, I can get you a senior position somewhere. You need to start your career with that ambition of: how far can I go? That’s what’s really exciting in the industry is there is definitely a direct path from any cooking job to the highest of cooking jobs, if you want to take that hike. With the apprentices that I had at Tulip and I do it a little bit here as well, is we do Chef of the week homework where we give them a famous chef and they do a bit of research. Who are they? Why are they important in the industry? What’s kind of restaurant do they have? Style of food, that sort of thing. The reason I do that with them is because I want them to understand that cooking at Tarra can be the first step in working in a Michelin star restaurant or running a five star hotel. This industry is so brilliant in that, the opportunities are there for the people who want to take them. I always say to people who think, oh, could I get a job in London as a chef? You can get a job. Then it’s your job to keep it. There’s opportunities for people, but it’s not easy. It’s a really, really difficult profession to be in.

What do you love about it?

I love that experience of being able to give someone a really memorable moment. We do a theme dinner at Tarra once a month. It might be beef, it might be seafood, we do one which is based on traditional techniques of preserving and curing. I go out into the dining room and I’ll explain the dishes as people are eating them. I really love that moment being able to give people more than the experience of just eating. I think food is overlooked in a way that, with wine you have a sommelier who can tell you all about how it’s made and what kind of things you can taste from a different variety. Coffee is the same, beer is the same where people go to a brewery and they’ll explain to you all about the different techniques of making it. Food can be the same. When we do themed dinners here, I spend half the night out in the dining room talking to people about the food because I really believe that the more you know, the more you taste. When I can do that, people come up at the end and they say, oh, the food was great, but it was better because of the explanation. I think that’s a really, really cool thing to be able to do.

Tarra, 1 Wharf Street East, Queenscliff

Onda, Esplanade, Sorrento