Daniel Migliaccio

Conversation with a chef: Thanks for your time, Daniel, and for agreeing this time around to talk to me.

Daniel Migliaccio: I’m not a media type person.

Chefs often aren’t, and then often these days you are asked to speak to us and I do appreciate that it’s not your number one thing to do. But you’ve had a leading role in a number of Commune restaurants for some time now.

Yes, almost coming up seven years now. I actually started at Neptune seven years ago with a friend of mine and then met Anthony, our executive chef and they were ramping up for the tennis. They were doing Beijing Betty at the tennis in 2018. They were rounding up the troops to try to get people to come in on that and I stupidly agreed. No, it was good fun. We did Beijing Betty there and it was a hectic two weeks, but a really fun experience. I hadn’t done anything that big. I’d done big functions, but not for two weeks straight.

Had you been at Hanoi Hannah at that stage?

No, so that was pre-Hanoi Hannah. Anthony Choi was the executive chef of Commune. So, after we did Beijing Betty, he pulled me over to Hanoi Hannah in Elsternwick. They were across the road from the train station at the time. They were then building the new site that they’re at now. He pulled me over as sous chef there, and then once we got into the new joint, I became head chef there and it just kind of shot off.

Had you had much experience with Asian food before then?

No, I was working with a friend at St. Cloud Eating House in Hawthorn, Frankie Pham. Frankie and I are good friends. I was helping him out heaps there and at the time I was working at Neptune, St. Cloud and another cafe trying to get back on my feet a little bit. Just doing long hours. It was all pretty basic. It was a very strict menu and it was more about training to be more of an operational chef than cooking Asian food and leading the charge on that.

In Hanoi Hannah? When you say an operational manager, that’s about bringing people on board and making sure there’s consistency and so on?

Yes and focussing on the boring stuff for COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) and the labour costs and that kind of stuff, making a profitable business, more than just doing food for fun. Other chefs strive to make a name for themselves for the food. I’m good with the numbers. I enjoy that.

How did you get into cooking in the first place?

Back when I was 14, coming up 24 years now, my parents in Ferntree Gully, used to have a party shop in Mountain Gate there. Next door was a cafe called Montania Cafe, I think it’s still there. I always cooked with mum, food is a part of our life, being Italian, I suppose. I just fell into it naturally. And then I wasn’t the brightest kid in school. It didn’t really appeal to me, as much as I was a book nerd, at the same time. Cooking interested me. I probably illegally got a job at Montania when I was 13, washing dishes. Then it was just felt like home, it felt natural to me. I started wagging school and going to learn how to cook, and there were some really good chefs there. It just grew from that. Then going into year 11, they had the VET course in hospitality, but I skipped that because I was already working in the kitchen. I just excelled at that really quickly, and then fluffed out of school a little bit and just stayed in cooking.

I was talking to Adam Sanderson at Maison Batard, and we were saying that, you can be drawn to the adrenaline, you can be drawn to the fun of the kitchen, but you still have to have the skills, right, that technique.

I wasn’t very good at the start.

No, but you stayed in there. When you were first learning, you were doing dishes, then I guess you jumped into kitchen.

There was always dishes and they always, as we all do, try and get them to do little jobs all the time. Responsibility starts to grow, right? They start saying, youre in charge of this now while we’re doing that, and there’s extra jobs on top. I just took that on board, you go home and start buying cookbooks and so on.

Were you drawn to, or would you focus on Italian food at that stage?

No, that was real cafe, basic stuff. Which was good. Like I said, we had some really good chefs and I learned the basics really well. I grew out of that and moved on to Sapore in St. Kilda. That was early 2000s. That’s where my Italian cooking started to grow. Lots of great chefs came through there, and I was there during the period when they sold to Greg and Kim. And Greg Feck, as you would know, is an amazing Italian chef. I was with him for a little bit there, and then, just as apprentices do, just wandered off and went over to Grossi in my third year. My apprenticeship got stuffed around a little bit, I was in limbo with my end of years, and never really finished. But in my early 20s, I went to Grossi. I started upstairs. That was a whole different world again. It was a levelling up constantly with the skills and produce that we were using and even just the equipment and the calibre of people you were working with. There was a lot to absorb.

Was it a welcoming team or did you have to prove yourself?

Definitely. But as much as it was a welcoming team, you definitely had to prove yourself.

What do you have to prove when you walk into a place like that?

You’ve just got to prove hard work. It’s a hard place to work. They’ve got a lot going on. There’s people coming in and out and it’s a high calibre of food. You’ve got to be able to keep up. I suppose that’s what you have to prove and attitude is probably the big on.

Do you work around sections there?

I started off in the larder, as you do. Moved around to the pasta and the vege section, they had at that time. Eventually got to move down to the downstairs salad bar and I got to run that by myself on Mondays. I moved up pretty quickly. I didn’t work much on the grill, but every now and then. I just floated up and down and around.

How long were you at Grossi?

Three years.

That’s great. There must be something about this group that you’re with now, that you’ve hung around so long. Is that the opportunities that have given to you?

I think it’s a combination of age and stability in life. During COVID they were phenomenal in looking after us. They really put us first. It was always staff first, keeping us employed. Also trying to feed people during those times. Anthony is an amazing mentor and a best friend now. Just the way they operate, they’re always just challenging, quick to pivot with the seasons and the social economics around the world that’s happening with restaurants. And then we’re just a very tight knit group. We all work together on a problem. It’s not always just being told what to do. We’re given a bit of autonomy and they always listen to you and.

What’s on the menu here now with the changing seasons?

We focus a lot on antipasto. Thats our style. We always think of it like a Sunday Italian lunch with your family. Lots of small plates fast. We make all our own hand made pasta, extruded downstairs. And we’ve got a wood fire grill that we chuck a couple of options on, but quickly found the crowd around here doesn’t take to it as much. They love their small plates and pastas a lot. So we just focus on that. Then a couple of little fun pastries that we do now. At the moment, we’re just in the middle of a change. Keeping cost of living affordable for everyone and trying to find a middle ground, not using high end ingredients. I think that’s where it’s a little bit more fun and it’s actually kind of harder to execute.

Is that what you like?

Yeah, I think it’s the challenge of finding that balance of making the business money and producing good food.

Are you still in the kitchen?

Yeah, I’m in there every day. We do a four-day roster here. Guys work, 38 to 48 hours. and I’m here Wednesday to Saturday, on the line every day. I try to knock out some admin stuff in the morning and then just hang out with the guys all day. It’s nice.

Is that your style of leadership to be alongside the team?

Yes. To lead by example. You can do all the admin stuff you want, but if you’re not there in person, then there’s no point, for me. That’s my thought. Be with them, be one of them, clean up with him every day. It’s great.

It sounds like you have a really good handle on the admin, but it might be a bit joyless if it was only admin.

I find joy in it. But I just like to knock it out quick. I don’t like being on it too long. It’s great, though.

What a nice variety to have.

I think it’s a really important core part of the business here.

Absolutely. It’s an open kitchen. Is that easy for everybody to adapt to. I guess you can’t yell out.

We’re a loud kitchen. We always focus on loud energy as well. So we bounce off that. It’s a loud restaurant as well, so that filters it out a little bit.

Okay. I feel like it’s quite long, but narrowish, isn’t it? So is there a bit of choreography that has to happen?

You have to be a bit aware of each other. On Friday and Saturday night, we do the pass from the front and we yell out orders, so there’s a bit of theatre to the dining room. But then during the week, were just there, on the other side. You forget people are there. It’s like a an invisible screen goes up.

Maybe it was in the Mount Zero olive piece, which is maybe from a couple of years ago, you spoke about having a child and a new business and that you were striving every day to be a better father and a better chef. What does it mean for you to be a better chef?

Chefs put everything in, always 110%, I think, into their job and what they do. When we opened this, I actually had her a month before we opened.

That seems to happen so often with chefs.

I think it just teaches you to slow down. It’s a hard one, because you want to be there to support your wife, but you’ve got a new restaurant, then you’re trying to do 90 hours and then go home and take over the shift for them. Finding that balance was critical. What does that mean now? Just being a bit more present to come in, be with the guys, make sure they’re all right, not take a step back, but let it go, give more autonomy to your next level senior chefs to take over.

That’s a good call, being present. You’ve got two sides of it now, you’ve got home life and work life that both need your presence. Is your little one eating things yet?

She eats everything. She’s amazing. We threw everything at her while we could. We thought she had a bit of a tomato and eggplant allergy at one point. Which was shocking. I didn’t know how to handle that at the start, but I think it’s just when youre introducing new food, they rash up a bit. I freaked out for a little bit. You cant not eat tomato, were Italian.

What part of Italy are your family from?

Dad’s from Naples. Mum’s from Abruzzo, but I suppose I’d tend to take over more of Dad’s side and the Napolitan style of cooking, that southern style of food. Mum came over when she was quite young, so we didn’t really get a lot of that Abruzzo food, and I suppose the difference between the families was mums side were more farmers. And they used to do a lot of hunting and stuff. I remember when we were young, coming home and they had a small farm and they were hunting and killing chickens and bringing home dead rabbits. That just felt normal to us as well. “Farm to table.” They used to grow everything until recently. Dad’s side was more cooking pastries and sweets and Napolitans do a lot more festive kinds of foods.

Do you still look at cookbooks?

I’m always buying them every week. There’s no where to put them at the moment. Theyve come off the shelves and there’s big stacks on the floor. It’s fun. I still enjoy it. It’s nice to look through.

I always feel like I always love buying cookbooks as well, and do I actually ever make any of the recipes? Hardly ever. But I think it’s beautiful to look through and get the stories.

If ever, God forbid, my daughter wanted to be a chef one day, she’s got the biggest head start.

Well, I guess then, with all that in mind and your various experiences, what would your advice be to a young person starting out of a chef or to your daughter should she become a chef?

Stick to it. A lot of the advice out there is, switch up every year and go and absorb. We’re in the golden age of being a chef at the moment. You’ve got the internet. You’ve got Instagram. It’s in your face, YouTube videos. There’s thousands of cookbooks that you can draw from. Stick it out somewhere, find somewhere good and stick it out and learn the harder part, learn the operations of the kitchen. Anyone can learn to cook, right, and you’ve got all that at your fingertips. Learn the operations. There are a lot of places not willing to teach it as much as they used to, and I think that it’s really a core part of being a chef nowadays. Learn how to operate and food COGS and learn the boring stuff. Stick it out a little bit, and then once you feel comfortable, you’ve learned what you can from that place, then move on and find your niche that you want to cook, and then follow that. That’s my advice.

Is there anything else you’d rather do, or are you happy with your choice?

I’m not sure. I’d stay in food service, but I do like science. Maybe I’d be a health inspector.

Studio Amaro, 168 Chapel Street, Windsor