Callum Nugent

Conversation with a chef: Hi Callum. Thank you for getting in touch, it's nice to know that chefs feel like talking to me is a valuable thing to do. For me, it's all about uplifting hospitality.

Callum Nugent: It is it about uplifting hospitality and getting that insight into the kitchen.

How long have you been at Stokehouse?

Literally only been here about four months now. I started mid-December and was thrown in the deep end a little bit with how busy we were in the kitchen. But everything is going really well. It's absolutely stunning to work here. It's awesome.

Is this your first head chef role?

First official head chef role. I've done stand-in, acting head chef roles. I did that for about three to four years.

And something like Stokehouse, as you say, its so full-on, so busy and it's got such a name as well.

It's got a really big name, and I don't think I knew how big it was until I came here. I've been here before and I've had the shared table luncheons as a younger chef. But I think just seeing the Van Handel group and knowing what they did in the past and what they're doing now and what they're planning for the future, I think it's just really cool. It's a very inclusive and very modern business, which is really good.

That's great. What's the process if you apply for a as head chef and you haven't been working in the place working your way up to that. What do you have to show them?

It was very interesting because when you are going for a chef de partie role or a commis chef role, you go in and you show them your skills. You show them how to cook. For a head chef, you still need to know how to cook, but you need to know how to manage people. You need to know how to do your timesheets. You need to know how to do your roster, you need to know how to manage people. You need to know your team environment and whether you're good with people. You need to know budgets and numbers and all these types of things as well. For here I had four interviews before the actual job. So it's about knowing, have you done this before? Yes. What did that entail?Did you do your labour reports? Did you do your stock track every month? How do you handle your wastage? All those types of like little questions.

What style of leadership do you think you have? Is that something you've had to cultivate or has it come naturally to you?

It was very strange. I have worked in a few places before this and they were very high-profile restaurants and places like Blumenthal and overseas in San Sebastian. It was knowing from those experiences what I want and what I do not want to be like. When I look back to my nineteen-year-old self in Spain, which was amazing. But the way they managed people was just ridiculous. Then you go somewhere like Hestons where it's such a positive culture, but the hours are long, you're doing 15, 16 hour days and for me, it's about seeing that and going, cool, and this is what I want to do: I want to make sure they have their lifestyle or they do their 38 hours and they go home. For the more senior guys who want to work towards something fantastic, they still need to have a life outside work. Jason, the executive chef, and I have a very similar mindset on how to manage people and a very modern chef mindset because there are restaurants out in Melbourne and quite a few of them who still have that older chef mentality and older way of managing people. I think seeing a business consultant or something like that to know how to manage people was one thing I did and still do that really helped solidify how I do it.

In that heat of service, youve got your own pressures, how then do you manage other people feeling stressed or anxious?

For me it's about communication. I've only been here four months, but I'm getting to know them and I get to know their patterns and what they do and when they do it. And if they go quiet or I don't hear anything from them, that means that they need some help, they need assistance or they need that pressure taken off them. I think it's about making sure, and I still go around to my team. I go around to every single person and go, Hey, how are you? How'd you go today? I debrief with them, make sure they're good and then they tell me all the issues they have and that's my responsibility to fix those things for them. So then they don't have to think about that. I want them to be cooking and I want them enjoying their job. I want to take that stress away from them. But during service it gets difficult, like just yesterday we did 350 people all day. 220 of that was a dinner service. So, I think it's just about managing your team the best you possibly can.

How many in the team?

There are 17 at the moment. At any one time there's probably about four to seven on at once.

It's a lot of people to get to know as well as an problem solve or to anticipate what might come up.

That's what I like about my role is that I get to be around the different people and I get to know the different personalities in the kitchen. A lot of managers I've worked for have that one size fits all approach where they don't tailor their management style to that one style. For me it's about getting to know what works for that person. One of my team members is absolutely amazing and he does an amazing job and, but if I need to have a serious conversation with him, if I sit down with him, he won't talk to me. But I can have serious conversations during the middle of the service and get the answers I want, so it's about adapting what I would normally do to what they need and it's about making sure they have the support they need and the guidance they need as well.

Have you done a menu change since you've been here?

So many menu changes. Down here it's about every two weeks. Not the whole menu, but at least two to three things every two weeks.

Is that something that you take care of solely or do you work in with Jason?

How it goes is I come up with an idea or my team does as well and we just work together with Jason. I come up with a dish, I set a time that tasting happens, everyone tastes the dish, everyone's happy. It goes on the menu. Its a collaborative approach. At the end of the day, Jason does have that sign off. But the ideas and their creativity really come from my team and myself, which is really cool.

What are the parameters? When you come into a new restaurant, there's obviously a template of the kinds of dishes and flavours or ingredients that you use. How do you get to know that?

It is so hard. I worked at the RACV Club and I was managing the fine dining restaurant there, a wine bar and Sojourn, which is a pop-up restaurant, and all three of them have very distinct personalities. I came up with three buzzwords for each restaurant that made mefocus in on what that restaurant was about. And then that defined its clientele and then it defined its menu and then it defined the creativity and the menu development. When you had a fine dining restaurant up in the main building and it was members only and their demographic was your fifties to seventy-year-olds. They come in, they have their classic French meals and then they want to go home. Whereas Sojourn is more of a 25 to 40 demographic and you can be a little more experimental with food. You can be more colourful and out there and you can pair flavours, which people might think are a little bit strange, but it tastes amazing. Here, Jason said to me, it's Italian in feel, but it's Melbourne. It's a Melbourne restaurant, but it is Italian in feel and Italian in flavour. Knowing that demographic is also really important to create a menu. There's all these things we do, menu engineering and menu analysis, which basically tells you how much of every item is sold. If I want to do a menu change, what's selling really well, I'm not going to pull that off the menu because everyone loves it. But something that's not selling as well and is not being received as well by the customers, I'll change that one instead. I think some chefs have that ability to do that and that's fantastic. That's where I reckon some restaurants struggle, is having that ability to step back and look at the situation and go, that's actually not working. And it's okay to say it's not working and to modify it and to go have that humbleness to go, actually no, it doesn't work. I understand because I had multiple times where my old exec chef would come up to me and say, can't do it. And Id get so frustrated, Id get so annoyed and I wouldn't understand why. But at the end of the day, if the customers aren't going to pay for it, it can't be on the menu. It takes a little bit of time for that mentality to sink in.

In in terms of changing the menu every couple of weeks, is that because of the produce that's in? Or how is that driven?

At Stokehouse upstairs and downstairs, Pasta Bar as well, it is all about the seasonality of things. Its more about making sure we are working with sustainable farms and smaller businesses. Seasonality changes quicker and sometimes slower. It'sdependent on the season. But at the moment, pine mushrooms are coming into season and then things like quince and stuff like that. Youll see the really boutique suppliers coming in and saying, we've got 20 kilos of peppers this week. Do you want them? I'll be like sick, absolutely, and we'll put them on a special. It supports that small farm, but it also gives us amazing projects at the same time. Its about communicating with those suppliers and getting the best from them.

That's so interesting though, isn't it? And it must be fun to come to work when it is changing all the time. You're not just having to do the same thing over and over.

That was one thing which I really liked about here was, Jason said to me, it's your restaurant. I'm here to help you and support you, but at the end of the day, it's your restaurant, your team, your kitchen, and you can do what you like. To me, the team don't want to be cooking the same thing for three to four months and just doing specials. Having that ability to change that menu so frequently is something that keeps everyone really interested. They walk in and go, cool, what's happening this week? I think the week they have off of menu change sometimes they're like, thank God, because they dont have to do anything different. But I think a lot of the time, my chefs come to me and ask, can I do this? And I say, give it a try. It's recipe development and trials and tests. Every single time we turn out a pasta, we have to taste it. It doesn't matter how many pastas you do, you might have forgotten to season that one correctly or the fish stock wasn't as reduced down or something like that. So it's all about making sure it's right.

And I see your tweezers. What are you using those for?

Everything and anything basically. I'd be putting things on plates, I'd be picking up scallops off the grill.

That says to me you that you're quite a precise chef, are you?

Yes. I'm a bit of perfectionist, sometimes it is to my hindrance, I think. But it's also a good thing to make sure that we give the best we possibly can. We have a function coming up and it's the biggest function that Stokehouse has ever done, and the Pasta Bar has ever done as a business since we opened. It occurred to me after the tasting we did that, I'd never done anything of that magnitude before. I did the tasting, and I didn't get it right. In my head I thought, how did I not get this right?

What is the function?

It's canapes and a seafood raw bar and the canapes just weren't quite right. They just didn't fit the vibe of the restaurant and they didn't fit the clientele. We had this vision and sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get there. And the perfectionist in me when I didn't get it right, was so annoying. Jason saw it and he said to me, it's fine, that's why we do tastings. Then I did it the second time and I thought, yes, this is what I want to be doing. This is exactly right, and Jason came in and he said, this is a thousand times better.

Well, they're all learning opportunities, aren't they?

Exactly. Right. Even no matter how far along you are, you want to still have those moments of being humbled a little bit to take stock of things.

Where did it all start for you? Did you always know you wanted to be a chef?

I knew I wanted to be a chef from a young age. I was about three, four years old and I was literally always either in front of the TV watching cooking shows with my mum or with my nonna when she was cooking and I'd be in the kitchen with her and my godmother. They were probably the three biggest influences for me when I was younger and still are. I loved food. My nonna was Sicilian Italian, she was all about food and so was my family, my godmother and my mum. I just grew up with that food right in front of me. You can't get away from it. I think there's an element of that which I brought into my role now, I still do the same thing. Food brings people together. It shows them how you love them and if I cook a really nice meal for my partner, he knows it's my way of saying a lot. But I might not be able to be there that weekend because I'm working. To this day I still make all my nonna's dishes at home and I cook a lot on my days off too.

When you're doing that cooking on your day off or when you're experimenting with things, do you take notes or is it all mental notes? Or, is it a feeling thing now?

It is more of a feeling thing now and it gets quite frustrating to be honest, because I'm not very good at taking notes when I need to. I think its more about feeling, but when I'm in the kitchen, in a professional circumstance, I have to write it down because it's a recipe and I need to replicate it. But I think some of the best things I've done are things that I just come up with in about half an hour and for some reason they just work.

What are your favourite things to cook?

Honestly, pasta. And I'm in a pasta place. But, honestly pasta and probably Italian food for me. And having the wood fire grill here, a lot of chefs dream of having that kind of thing. Its such a cool thing and it's a hands-on approach to cooking. You are controlling the fire, controlling the heat. During a busy service, like last night, it does get a bit difficult because you can't just turn down the dial and turn the heat down.

No. Is that the first time you've used one of those?

No, there've been in a few places.

You have to really learn how to use them, don't you?

You do. It takes a while to learn. Because it is such a different approach to cooking. Like I said, you can't just turn down the dial and the heat goes down. We've got a big wheel and you turn the wheel and the tray goes down and you move the poles around and that's how you control it as well. We had a lot of steaks last night. Steaks use up twice the amount of fire that we normally do, so it's about knowing, cool, I have to put more fire on if I get more steaks.

So much to think about. So, just going back to younger you when you started out. I know you had that amazing experience really early on. How did the San Sebastian stage come about?

I was doing my apprenticeship at Holmesglen. I started there and then the top two students of our class went to Spain. It was myself and another guy. He went to Mugaritz and then I went to Arzak and my stage there was about 18 months.

That's a long stage.

It was very long stage.

And that's unpaid?

Yes it is is unpaid. Holmesglen did have a fundraiser for me at the time. And my parents did help me quite a bit whilst I was over there. The guy I went with, Liam, his stage at Mugaritz was three to four months. He came about right in the middle of my stage. I was beginning to miss home and wanting some home stuff. Then he came and it was, thank God theres someone from Melbourne. It was just a, a whole different world for me. 19 years old, never been overseas before, never spoken Spanish. It was the world number six restaurant. I got chucked into Petits Fours, which you think would really be easy. They were doing chocolates. It was like an Arzak toolbox and it had all these tools made out of chocolate. You melt the chocolate, put it in a mould, demould it, put it on a plate.Nice and simple. I'm like, cool, this is easy. Then I had to communicate with the waiters and the waitresses and the front of house. I'm like, I can't do this. I don't know, Spanish. I think it was like my third or fourth day and I rang my mum and said, get me home. I was on the phone in tears saying, I don't want to be here anymore.

It's funny that you weren't like picking herbs or something or washing vegetables. It feels like you were thrown in the deep end.

Well, yeah, a little bit. I think all the stagiaires who were there for that long, they do have their three month ones six month ones. And I was part of the longer-term team and I think I went to every section in the kitchen, from cooking meat, fish garnish, everything. That's where I learned the precision and the attention to detail and all these things that I now know that sometimes I forget and is common sense for me. I want to teach my team members those things.

How did you get through that toolbox scenario?

And being dyslexic, it was quite difficult because there was writing involved as well. Fortunately there was a guy in pastry who was American and I teamed up with him and another girl who was Mexican. They spoke some English. So I was like, cool, I need some help. Language immersion, you are chucked in there every single day. I was fluent in Spanish in three months. So it was just more about trying to understand what they wanted. Then when I didn't understand something, I'd go to those people and be like, look, this is what I need. I need to know how to say this is sent to a table, this is away, this is a hold. Can you just teach me the main words to get through this period of time.

Necessity is such a good teacher, isn't it?

It is. It really is. And having that immersion into that culture. By the time I was needing to leave, I said to my mum, the only reason I'm coming home is because I don't have any money. In had friends, I had my own little family. I was in my own apartment. It was absolutely awesome. The team I worked with over there, there were 50 chefs and 40 of them were stagiaires. So we all bonded together and went out every weekend. Every Saturday, Sunday we worked till three am. That's what we did. I look back at it now and I go, how the hell did I do it? But I wouldn't have traded it in for anything.

What did you do when you came back?

That was my second and a half year of my apprenticeship. I finished my apprenticeship at Chateau Yering with Mathew Macartney. I finished there and then I went on to some other wineries around the Yarra Valley. Then I went to Heston Blumenthals in Melbourne.

Gosh, some amazing people were there, weren't they? I've spoken to a few chefs that worked there, Garth Whitton and Aidan the pastry chef. Did you finish there because of Lockdowns?

I was part of the opening team. So I was there for about a year and a half, two years. Knowing what I know now about the industry and thatlifestyle, it's only sustainable for a certain period of time. And I think for me, I reached my time there at that year and a half, two year mark. I needed to just step back from that level of cooking for a while. Being the best and having that attention to detail and the long hours and the mental load it takes on you, I was used to that and I think I wanted to go back to that because I had had a little break. I went to some wineries, but I missed the fine dining and I missed the attention to detail. I missed the tweezers, I missed the herbs, I missed learning how to do things and the precision and the fact that it has to be done like this because for this reason, learning all the science behind cooking and all that stuff was really fun. It was one person's job to do triple cooked chips all day long. And one person's job was actually to toast bread during service. And that's all they did. That was for the meat fruit that was shaped like a mandarin. That's all they did.

What did you do there?

I did both of those things and I did larder, hot larder and garnish. The head chef was a really nice guy. And the sous chef Max, was awesome. I think it was the first place I worked where you could be at that level of fine dining and be so captivated by what you knew that actually had a good staff culture and was good to their staff. We were in the right environment basically. It's such an important thing, because if you don't have a happy team or a good team, you can't function.

How did you go over lockdown? What did you do?

I had literally just started at the RACV Club prior to lockdown, about a month before lockdown I started there. Fortunately we were doing community meals for the homeless and the less for about the first part of 2020. I was extremely fortunate where I wasn't one of the team members stood down throughout all the lockdowns. I think I wasn't working for about three months. Really, really fortunate.

You said that you like love looking at home. Where do you get your inspiration? Do you look at Instagram? Do you do lots of cookbooks?

I love cookbooks. I flip through them. That's what I want for dinner. And I think that's where I get my inspiration. But sometimes like today, it's rainy. I want to go home and have nonna's ragu because that's what makes me feel good and happy. I think for me, I am looking for something to eat or make that would make me happy? Eating makes me happy and cooking makes me happy.

So good. Well, with all the experience that you've had and now in this role, what would your advice be to young people starting out as chefs?

Oh wow. That's a very good question. I'm not sure to be honest. I think it would be to find a place that you are comfortable being yourself in. I think a lot of chefs try to be the best and try to be everything they possibly can and try to fit in a culture. But for me it was more about making sure that I can be myself and if I wanted to do something that was a little bit out there or a little bit different that it wouldn't be looked at weird. There's one dish I did, where I paired Great Ocean Road ducks, with strawberries. I would've never have done that. I would've been too self-conscious. But now I think, go with your gut, because you'll learn from it. You'll learn what doesn't work and what does work. The workplace you go for, for the interview, if it doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel right. Even if it's the best place in Melbourne. It's okay not to go to the best place in Melbourne. It's okay to go somewhere that you feel happier and it's okay to make sure you have a life and chefing doesn't become your life. I think a lot of chefs make it their lives and it's always like that's their world. I think it's important to have that balance and for the younger chefs in the industry to find that balance. Because more often than not, when you go for a job at a place like Society or something of that calibre, it's a lot. That's work is my life and I don't do anything else. Well no, you need a life to function, you need life to sustain you and you need friends and a partner and your family.

Stokehouse Pasta & Bar, 30 Jacka Boulevard, St. Kilda