Jeremy Sutphin

Hi Jeremy, it’s so lovely to meet you. I’ve come down to the village that is the Fifth Province in St Kilda. I’ve been past this so many times. I live in Port Melbourne, but I came in and had lunch today before I spoke to you. It’s so cool in there. I imagine it’s probably quite different on a Wednesday lunchtime than on a Friday or Sunday night. But you’ve had a whole renovation and there’s a lot going on here. Can you talk me through what’s on this property?

The vibe is different, for sure. The venue started almost 12 or 13 years ago. This one side of it was just a pub, which was your standard kind of Irish pub. I don’t like to call it dingy, but just a really ‘pub’ pub.

Is it an old railway station?

It is. The whole building is an old railway station, and the Fifth was originally one part of the station. Over the years it’s just expanded. Two years ago we did a whiskey bar and veranda renovation, and this year we’ve just completed the veranda going further down the strip. Now we have an outdoor bar, a bigger beer garden, function space and two kitchens. It’s quite a beast now.

My goodness. It’s huge. And you’re the executive chef, but not just for this area. You oversee all of the venues in the group. This group is amazing. They’ve got places on the peninsula, one in the city, one in Windsor and then St Kilda?

Correct. Now we have the Fifth, we have our bar across the street, which is Freddie Wimpoles, and then a new function space in the old Snake Pit at the old George, which is almost finished renovating. When it’s all said and done, six venues and two function spaces.

That’s a lot. It’s an empire. Obviously you were on your computer when I came in. How do you oversee it? Is it different food in each venue?

It is. Pubs are what the director and owner, Liam, likes. He’s a foodie, but he’s a pub guy. He’s Irish and he likes a good pub. The group is known for finding heritage buildings and old buildings. He likes to restore them to their former glory and put a lot of love into them, making them what they used to be.

Kind of like the Windsor Castle now, which is under renovation. That was originally a pub from the late 1800s. It’s undergoing a full rebuild right now, so that’ll be a really cool building. The same with the Carlton Club Hotel in the city on [check] Street. Very old building also. That’ll probably start renovation mid next year.

Pubs are kind of our thing. Angus & Bon is an old post office. The steakhouse is kind of our flagship for dining. That’s a wood fire grill. I actually started there as head chef about six years ago. Since I joined the group, there wasn’t a lot. It was just the Fifth Province, Freddie Wimpoles, which is our bar, and Angus & Bon. It’s just grown and grown, and I took over as executive chef when we were big enough to facilitate that, over three years ago.

I feel like sometimes the name executive chef gets used a bit lightly and it might just be one venue that has a slightly different offering, but yours is really a huge role. How do you describe a typical day for you as an executive chef?

The venues all run well. I’ve got head chefs in every venue. Most of the venues are pubs. The Bay is more of a…I don’t like to use the word gastropub, but it’s more of a gastropub. It’s higher-end food, lots of seafood. The Fifth is an Irish pub. The new venues are run as Australian pubs, I guess. Bonds is a woodfired grill steakhouse. They all do their own thing. We use the same suppliers, though. We use really high-end quality suppliers. Even though it might be a pub, we still use the same brioche buns that everyone uses, the same meat suppliers, the same eggs and beef.

My day consists of, even though they are different venues, looking at a lot of the same product and the same suppliers. A lot of my day would be on the computer, seeing what my chefs are buying. I’m talking to suppliers, brokering deals, going to finance meetings, that sort of thing. Not as much cooking as I used to do, which I do miss. It can be a bit full-on. You’re always doing photo shoots, there’s always an activation, there’s always something going on.

I was just talking about this with another chef yesterday, that it has to be sustainable. You have to think about your own sustainability as a chef because you can’t be on your feet cooking forever. But if you are still in touch with the food, I guess it must be amazing to find a role like that.

It is. A mate and supplier of mine from Simplot just came by with some products and we were talking about chef life. He said, “Hey, you’re looking good.” He asked about my back because I had spinal surgery a few years back. I said, “You know what? I would probably not be in very good nick if I was still in the kitchen on the tools.” It is a very demanding job. Over 30 years of doing that for me, it takes a toll on you mentally and physically, and it’s not a young man’s job.

To be in the role I am and work the kind of hours, I’m almost working bankers’ hours. I do some shifts at night here and there. I like to keep in touch with what’s going on, but I’m very hands-on and involved in menu changes and product development. It’s good. I get the best of both worlds. I can still get in there and run the pass if I want to, but I spend a fair bit of time sitting down, crunching figures and talking to suppliers and growers.

What drew me into cooking? I don’t know. I just liked to cook. I liked the smell of food. From growing food, picking a tomato off the vine and slicing it. Nothing’s better than fruit or vegetables straight out of the garden. When you cut them, the juice is just pouring out because they’re so fresh. The minute you pick something, the sugars start to break down and, as time goes by, they just don’t taste the same. If you eat anything off the vine, it’s at its optimum.

Jeremy Sutphin, The Ganley Group

And the new Carriage Bar, that’s more of an event space, so that means catering as well. Have you had much involvement with catering before?

I’ve done a fair bit. Not bulk catering, but I’ve done on-site canapé plating. That kitchen on that side does the events for the Carriage Bar. I have an event chef who has a lot of experience doing that. Then, obviously, with the Snake Pit opening across the street in the next month or so, he’ll be doing functions for that too. If I’m lacking in a certain area, I’ll hire chefs who might have a bit more knowledge in that area than me. Especially if it comes to an Irish pub — I’m from Texas, so my head chef’s Irish. If I’ve got a function space, then I’ll find a really good function chef. It’s about finding the right people, putting them in the right spot, and that’s part of the position of an executive chef, making those decisions.

And then I guess you have to really know about spreadsheets.

IT is not my strong suit because, as a chef growing up, I started cooking in the ’90s. Computers were barely a thing when I was in high school. I told one of my young chefs that I learned to type on a typewriter. They were just blown away. They were like, “Typewriter?” That’s how old I guess I’m getting. But you learn. You can adapt, and we use some programs that are purpose-built for running kitchens, especially multiple sites. It helps with stock control and inventory, watching prices, costings and recipes. Now that AI has become so big, you get those tools and it really helps get your day going in that direction.

You grew up in the South, in Texas, and the food is so good down there. What are some memories of growing up and eating in Texas?

I was born in Alabama and spent a lot of time in the South. I spent most of my childhood, until my early 20s, in Texas, in and out. I went to culinary school and worked in different places. I was on the East Coast, I was in Chicago, I was in Boston. I moved a bit as a young chef. You travel because you want to experience different things.

Growing up in the South, the food’s different. It’s not for the health conscious. A lot of heavier foods, fried foods. At Thanksgiving we deep-fried turkeys. Smoking meats, briskets, pulled pork, ribs, lots of fried stuff, heavy stuff. It’s food that I love, but if I was eating that every day I’d probably be dead. But really good memories of being around my mom because she was a great cook. We spent a lot of time in the kitchen and always had big gardens. In the South it’s very humid in the summer, so it’s easy to grow really massive garden tomatoes, corn, squash, okra, all that sort of stuff. We were always spending time in the garden and eating. Just good memories of heavy Southern food and smoked meats especially.

I feel like hospitality is really big down there as well. There’s a lot of coming together over food and that kind of thing. What drew you into hospitality enough that you wanted to have it as a career?

Southern hospitality is a term we use a lot in the South. You would invite neighbours over. A guy might be delivering a package, and you might have some food and just be like, “Hey, you want something to eat? Come on in, have a glass of iced tea.” That’s just how it was.

What drew me into cooking? I don’t know. I just liked to cook. I liked the smell of food. From growing food, picking a tomato off the vine and slicing it. Nothing’s better than fruit or vegetables straight out of the garden. When you cut them, the juice is just pouring out because they’re so fresh. The minute you pick something, the sugars start to break down and, as time goes by, they just don’t taste the same. If you eat anything off the vine, it’s at its optimum.

It was my love of ingredients too, growing and farming. I’ve always been fascinated with cattle and pigs. Even as a kid, a lot of my friends were farmers or their parents were farmers. I would go to their houses and watch how they tended the cattle and milked the cows. Even when they slaughtered them, how they cleaned them. I was really interested in that.

I think it was just the love of that, what you can do with the bounty of the earth. Taking something that the earth’s giving you and making it even better by cooking it, respecting it and making something tasty.

When you were starting out, did you ever imagine you would be living in Australia? What were your hopes and dreams when you started out?

That’s funny. I never really thought about it. I came here to open a restaurant, actually, but it was only because I’d met a restaurateur. He bought into a group where I was a sous chef at the time in a casino in the States. He was Aussie and his wife was American, and he had previously been a big nightclub owner here. That’s how I ended up here.

Before that, no, I never imagined I’d be here as a young chef. I just wanted to travel. I loved to cook. I loved the lifestyle, though it was a hard life. We were doing 60, 70 hours minimum. In some of the bigger cities, you lived with two or three other chefs because you had to share apartments. It was hard. We got paid nothing, peanuts. And the lifestyle too. You’d go out all night drinking after work. You’d spend all your money on booze, drugs. That’s how it was. That was the lifestyle. I wouldn’t say that’s what drew me in, but I liked that sort of lifestyle. I liked the action.

Yes, a bit of rock and roll.

Service would just annihilate you. It was full-on, and then you’d go out all night. It was a hard life, but it was fun at the time. I wouldn’t recommend it now.

When did you come to Melbourne?

2006.

Oh wow. Okay, 20 years. Things have changed a lot. I remember reading something you said, maybe around 2013 or so, that Melbourne didn’t have good sandwiches. I feel like that’s changed.

When I first moved here, I said Melbourne was missing three things: tacos, barbecue and delis. It’s funny. I think if I’d opened all of those and got my foot in the door before anyone else did, if I’d nailed all three of those, things would be a lot different.

But it has changed. There are fairly good sandwiches now. I follow a guy. I can’t remember what his handle is Bangin Sangas. A lot of the sandwiches I haven’t tried, but I’ve had a few. I actually didn’t mind some. I liked some Hector’s stuff, Hector’s Deli. The sandwich scene has definitely gotten better. It used to be horrible, actually.

I only moved here in 2011, but I think the barbecue scene too. We used to live not very far away from Le Bon Ton, and when they opened it was amazing. Then more and more people started doing that American-style brisket and pulled pork. A lot’s happened in the last 20 years.

I opened Le Bon Ton in 2014. I was the executive chef for that group because we had a taco joint also. I worked for a couple of brothers from New Mexico. Then we had a saloon called Longhorn, which actually didn’t do too well in the end. We had a taco joint up in Brissie too. We used to do all the prep here and fly it up. Things have definitely changed. Barbecue took a while to take off. It’s still kind of there, but I don’t feel there are a lot of people in Melbourne really doing it to my standards personally, as a Texan. That’s just me because I still smoke at home. One of my favourite things to do is smoke.

So you’ve got a small smoker?

No, it’s an offset. When I talk about offset smokers, the offset is the fire chamber there. It looks like an old locomotive. Big iron. I had a buddy build one for me years ago. It’s probably about 17 years old now.

That is, to me…pellet smokers and all the electric this, that, hopper-fed stuff…it’s just fire and skill. Build a fire. Use proper wood. Ironbark is probably the best. Sit there and watch it. Watch the smoke come up the flue. You can tell how the fire’s burning by the colour of the smoke. Just sit down, relax and enjoy. Enjoy the smoke, enjoy the quiet time. To me, that’s the best part of barbecue, the time it takes.

The smell’s always so good.

Yeah. The smell. It’s a craft, though, that’s dying, I feel.

I was talking to a chef yesterday and they’re using Japanese grills, hibachi grills. He was saying they used to be all ceramic and now they’re made with metal because a lot of the people making them in Japan are getting older and no one’s taking on those artisanal trades of making the grills. They’re coming up with different ways of doing it. It’s scary, isn’t it, when something changes because a craft dies out?

You see that in what’s happening today with AI and a lot of different skill sets. The old crafts and making stuff, whether it’s pickles or fermentation, you have a handful of people that do that.

Even, like I said, when it comes to smoking, I believe in skill, time and keeping it very basic. It’s man, wood, fire. Just like you said, the craft of making ceramic hibachi grills — which we use at Angus & Bon as well — a lot of those crafts are dying because of how life’s changing and convenience. Nobody wants to take the time, and certain things are just not getting passed down because no one’s got the time.

I guess I’d like to think something like being a chef is protected because, as you say, there’s all that craft of working with fire and knowing when to switch the wood around or the charcoal, and understanding flavours. I’m trying to think, how can AI replace that? But then, we were talking about how there’s so much good food in Japan, but there are also a lot of vending machines selling food. It’s all about convenience for people in a rush. They’ll probably accept something that’s tasty and hot, but it doesn’t have that level of craft. Hopefully the chef’s job is safe.

It’s hard. I’ve had this conversation several times with other people in the industry about chef jobs being secure. You’ve got to wonder how far AI is really going to go and what kind of role it’s going to play in the future of restaurants in Melbourne. I really can’t see a robot working the pans or grilling. Maybe for a novelty thing, but surely you can’t.

No, I don’t like to think about that either. So, Irish food. There are a lot of ties between America and Ireland, I guess. I was seeing a few things on the list there. Did you have to do a bit of research when you came on board here to find out more about Irish food, or is that something that came naturally to you?

It’s not bagging the Irish, but their food’s not that complicated. I think it’s about getting certain ingredients right. If you’re making a beef and Guinness stew, cooking the right cut of beef, using the right amount of Guinness. It’s very uncomplicated food.

But at the same time, it’s about putting the right things together. With bacon and cabbage, there’s been a debate between the Irish chef and the Irish owner and the Irish office manager. What’s the best bacon and cabbage? Some people like pickled pork. The head chef wanted smoked pork loin. Someone wanted sautéed Savoy cabbage. One of them likes the cabbage boiled with the pickled pork in that liquid. So there are different traditions, depending on where they grew up and how their mothers might have done things. For me, it’s not too hard to figure out. We do stick a bit to traditional Irish food in an Irish pub, but we still do some Australian mainstream pub grub.

You have to have a parma, don’t you?

Parmas are one of our top sellers, actually.

Of course. And steak?

Steak’s good, burger’s good. We do a really good wagyu burger.

I had the salmon and the brown bread. That was with cream cheese and those little capers. Maybe they were fried off or something. They were crispy. They were so delicious. That’s very Irish, smoked salmon and brown bread. It was really good.

That’s actually Liam’s recipe.

Well, hats off. Chef’s kiss.

His brown bread’s good. I’ve had a few in the past that were kind of stodgy, and I’ve had a few that were dry, but that recipe is really good. Everyone seems to like it.

I always think with pubs, can you really change the menu? Do you do a seasonal change?

We do. A lot of things don’t change. For now, we’re using [check] grilled asparagus with a Green Goddess. We try to use seasonal fresh ingredients where we can because a lot of stuff doesn’t change. The parma doesn’t really change. The fish and chips doesn’t really change.

So you have your mainstay classics: beef and Guinness stew, carrots with that. We try to incorporate elements of seasonality into the menus where we can.

We do change seasonally in that we might put a new dish on and it might have asparagus in it, or radicchio, or a peach or some berries. It’s not a full seasonal change. It’s more changing some classics and slipping in seasonal ingredients where we can.

I feel like you’ve had a really rich and varied experience over the course of your career. My last question is usually: what would your advice be to a young person starting out as a chef?

Wow. How much time have you got? I think you really have to have a love for it.

For me, and I think for most chefs, it’s never really about earning a really high wage because it doesn’t really happen, unfortunately. There are no unions for chefs. It’s a pretty hard life.

I think you really have to have a love of food. I became a chef because I like to eat. That’s ultimately what drove me to become a chef, because I like to eat.

I really enjoy eating, and I love ingredients, cooking, smells, gardening — anything involved with ingredients, from start to finish.

The best advice I would say is: be patient. Learn as much as you can. There’s always someone to learn from.

You can learn from a kitchen hand. I tell my chefs, just because maybe he was working at some little café that didn’t work with the sort of ingredients we do or wasn’t at the same level you’re at, doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them.

Be humble. Never think you know it all, because you never will.

That’s what’s good about this industry. Food is culture.

I travel a lot and that’s part of the reason. When I travel, I travel to eat. I like to go to the nitty-gritty, off the beaten path, go to people’s houses. I never go anywhere where there are a lot of tourists. Always off the beaten path. Because it’s all about culture too. You’ve just got to have a really open mind and love food, love culture, love to eat. Be patient and humble, and respect people and the earth.

The Fifth Province, St Kilda

Angus & Bon, Prahran

Freddie Wimpole’s, St Kilda

The Bay Hotel Mornington

Windsor Castle, Windsor

The Carlton Club, Melbourne CBD