Michael Demagistris & Ryan James

Michael: Hello, welcome to Max's. Obviously, it has been here for 30 odd years and Max has built it up and me and Ryan have come along and want to give it a bit of an edge and take it into a new direction. Ryan and I want to elevate it to that next level. We think the food's more based on a simple approach, but there's a lot of technique behind it as well. We're making all our own charcuterie and a lot of our own cheeses. We work with a lot of farmers and really trying to connect with producers that are around and get that story that is authentic.

I saw the Instagram post with Karl.

Michael: We used to work with Karl and we said to Karl, that we wanted to come together and work together again because we're all chefs working in that similar environment. Karl said, awesome let's make it a real true story now again because I'llgrow what you want. In other places we have worked, the farmer would grow whatever he wanted, but didn't really try liaise with us in talking about our growing pattern. So we would have all this produce that really made no sense to the restaurant and there was a lot of waste. But if you look at Brae, Brae is a classic example of a restaurant that's doing exactly that. We're growing. We're not using chemicals.

There's O.MY as well.

Michael: There are a couple that are doing it really well, and you can tell that the story is authentic. And that's what we want to do again. We just want to get back to traditions that have been lost.

Ryan: Especially with social media. Now that we're in a time where everything is social media, all you need to do is put up one thing, and it looks as if you're doing it,whereas you're not really. So it's quite an intriguing movement into that progression of how people are trying to sell their stuff.

Michael:We are now working with Karl. We're trying to do a growing pattern for the next six months. We're going to try transport you to his farm with eating the dish. We want you to eat something and go, oh my god, I feel like I'm in the farm. I feel like I can taste the soil that Karl has used.

So do you talk with him about the kinds of things you want to grow as well?

Ryan: Yes. We go there every Wednesday.

Michael: We've only been here for a month now. So, we're not saying we've changed our philosophy, we're adapting our philosophy to what we're doing. We feel like this is the place where this is it. We feel like this is the last dance, let's say. We want to stay here for the next 30 years. We want to build this into one of the best, if not the best regional restaurants in Victoria, Australia. We really do. We think that we've got a good team that can do it.

That's amazing, though, to make that statement "30 years" because you've worked in lots of different places. So you must really feel it here.

Ryan: It's about personal connection.

Michael: Well, the reason why we've moved is because connections. We have to connect with someone that is there too. Ryan started at Max's. He was an apprentice working here.

Ryan: I have come full circle.

Michael: That's where that ties in. Ryan and I were just pestering each other going, when's Max going to take us on? What are we doing? And then we were finally here.

So who is Max?

Michael: Max is the Don.

Ryan: They call him the Godfather of the Peninsula. Essentially, Max was the first restaurant on a vineyard to open anywhere in the whole region. He's always had the philosophy to utilise local produce. And I know it can be used very loosely, but with him, he does everything: he has cherry farms. He has his own olive groves. You can see here a lot of the things he produces. He is very business savvy with that, but he is also trying to link up with everyone as a community as opposed to just using Great Ocean Road duck because it's the new thing. A lot of people do this. Trust me. They're the best of the best, and they're great. When I worked at Port Phillip, we used it, but there was no real connection to why you used it. It was just because the label sounded good, whichis fine for back then. But I think people now have to reintroduce that community concept to be able to draw it all together and let the ones who are doing it well, do it well. Even down to black garlic. We produce our own black garlic, but we have people that grow the garlic on the peninsula. That's just more about being true to ourselves. It's not necessarily a wrong thing or a right thing. It's just about us being true to who we want to be.

Michael: We're hoping next year to do a full revamp of the place as well to bring it back to its former glory.

Ryan: Max, 30 years ago, a young boy, started this, and everyone laughed at it because they wondered who would ever come up the hill.

It's actually such a great vantage here, isn't it? More so than lots of other places.

Michael: Our story is the sea, the land.We work off our landscape, because that's the inspiration. It also ties into places where we've worked before. I was lucky to work at Noma for a little bit. Noma was a real inspiration for the whole foraging concept, and foraging is again a huge aspect of what we do here. It really ties the guys into, for one, getting outside and being with nature and being inspired by nature. But also breathing in the fresh air. When you work in a kitchen long days, it becomes very exhausting and draining. So we also try to enforce that if we can go out in the mornings and get that breath of fresh air and pick some seaweed and then figure out what we can do with it. Then we have a big open discussion. We're a small team here which I love. It's more of an open discussion of what we can then do with the food. We've got seaweed, weve got shells. What do we want to do? We're running with a set menu at the moment, and we will be doing that moving forward. We'll probably change it every couple of months, but people have asked us, would you change it more regularly, and we'd love to, but then the people that see the things that go online, they miss out. If we posted something and then they want to come and it has changed, thats disappointing. There'll also be a few signatures that probably never change because we just think that they're fun and it's engaging with the customer too. Ryan and I have worked together for a long time. I opened up my own business. It was called East Bar and Dining in Mount Martha. We did that, and that's where I first met Ryan, and that's where this love affair with me and Ryan began.

Ryan: Our wives love it.

Michael: We've worked together for a long time, and I don't think we could find a better combination, because it's pretty much best mates coming together to sell a dream, and we just feed off each other.

Ryan: It's ever changing in the way that we do it, and that's just based on different flavour palates, what actually comes in, whether it tastes right or not, and then you have to adapt to it. So for us, it keeps us on our toes and we believe that we can elevate what we need to do and keep it extended and enjoyable as opposed to just stagnant. It's a big thing for us.

There are a few things as you were talking that made me think. I spoke to a chef a few years ago at a place in Saint Kilda, and he was very ambitious about going foraging and making everything from scratch, and the restaurant didn't last very long. But great idea, having everyone out in the water getting the seaweed and sea urchins. But I guess there's a lot of factors that come into that. It's a privilege to be able to do that, isn't it? To be able to work with your team in that way and to sustain that.

Ryan: 100%. But that comes from passion too, doesn't it? If it's something that you actually enjoy, some people might go play a video game or someone wants to go play football or something like that. For us, it's the same. It becomes a hobby opposed to a chore. Which I think is a big focus.

And also Max is into it. So you've got that support.

Michael: Well, that's the first time I've had the support. When we came here with Max, Max said, let's go, boys. I love the vision. He's eaten our food. He's followed the journey for such a long period of time. We're lucky here too because not only do we do our set menu, but we run a lawn bar offering as well. People can actually come in and sit on the terrace and enjoy. We'll be doing a lot of weddings. Restaurants are getting harder. You're seeing a lot of restaurants close these days but we think we've found a really good balance here. It is only $120 a head for a set menu, which is very cheap. It's probably one of the cheapest going around for the number of courses that you get. We've looked at our competitors, and they're up around the $150 mark. We're not going to move on our price. We just think it's pretty good because we want to give back to everyone again as well.

Ryan: And we want to allow people that probably are a bit scared of the whole fine dining word and thinking about the price tag and everything to actually draw them in to see what food can be, as opposed to going down to the pub. Because you go down to the pub and you spend the same anyway. My wife and I will go down to Portsea and we walk out around $240 later and not even batting an eyelid about it.

Michael: And the biggest one that gets thrown around is this fine dining word. It's sucha loose term. We are to what we do, but we don't want to say that's what it is because we just think, you come here, it's relaxed. The service is really fluent. It's all about some local wines and then doing a few other things. It's about trying to get Max's original thought process of what he wanted here and us to join into that. And that's where we were joined into his whole range of olive oils and dukkahs and we're tweaking a few things but still staying true to what he originally was doing and then bringing in the charcuterie, which we've been doing for nearly seven years. So that, I'm telling you, is an art within itself. I don't get why restaurants don't get more acknowledgment for making it because it takes so long to do. It's such an art. You have to know the meat. You have to know where it's coming from. You've have to understand everything in fat ratios, salt contents, the humidity, the temperature. Oh my god. It's a full time job just looking after that. We keep throwing things in, and we keep adding more to the business. This is only the beginning for us because this is a month in, but I feel like we both know it pretty well together, and we just feed off each other and figure out where we want to go with this and we know money. We know our numbers inside out. I think that's key. I think a lot of chefs probably don't know their numbers and they're probably a good thing to talk about as well. A lot of chefs will go in and just want to sell the dream and they want to cook what they want to cook. I get all that, but there's a point where you have to look at the business for what it is. We're perfect because it's a winery and we've worked for wineries for such a long period of time. Everyone's always wanting to go to a winery. They want to try the food. They want to look at the ambiance, the surroundings. They want to understand the vineyard. They want to understand why we are putting something on. One of the best compliments we got yesterday was from a group of six and there was a lady, 82 years of age and she pretty much said it was the best vineyard she's ever had. So if at 82 years of age, you can get that and you would have eaten at a of places over the years.

Ryan: People can sometimes be sceptical about it, not really looking at it and understanding it, but then the idea is that when it comes out, it tells its own story.

Michael: Since Covid hit, I guess that ruffled things up to look chefs working long hours. I agree with that. I didn't really like the long hours. I did like working it at the time because you're learning, and that was because everyone did it. That's all we knew. But there's a point where you get a little bit older and think, I do want a little bit of a work life balance. I don't want to just throw everything into my work life and my home life suffers and we end up divorced or whatever it is. We hate seeing our friends change careers and not be in it when they were brilliant chefs.

Ryan: A lot of good friends who are chefs have completely gone away from it.

Michael: We still want to be recognised because we need to build the restaurant, but it's not the be all and end all. We've known this for a long time, but it's the customer that we're trying to draw. Thats who we're trying to share our stories with, our passions, what our nonnas or our grandmothers taught us when we were young kids growing up, what Max has been teaching us for the last month. We're trying to engage all those things and really bring it into one. We want to put Max on the map, because we believe that he deserves it.

Ryan: He has created such a great empire himself. Now, the next 30 years is what we're playing to. I grew up across the road. My parents always had their horses on this property before it became the vineyard. Mum and dad nearly bought that cottage up there. For me, I suppose it feels like a homecoming. To be able to do it with Max and Michael as my mentors, it's a really nice feeling. To be working alongside them to create something. It's a real honour.

Michael: We want to be mentors for the next generation as well. We want the young kids that are coming through to re-inspire them to pretty much want to cook again. They come in and everything's in bags again. We're trying to really take everyone on that journey again, anyone that comes through our kitchen. Max is lucky because Max has a farm. So we'll be using that farm with all the cattle and all that sort of beautiful produce that he has around too. We've got a young guy, Tom and he's only 20 years of age. And every time we show him something different, the smile on his face and, oh my god, I didn't know you could do that.

It is tricky though as you were just saying with having to work a certain amount of hours, and we agree with that and being paid the right amount of money. But as you say, to learn to fillet, to butcher, to do things from scratch takes a lot of time. How amazing to be in this position for Tom, to be working with you guys who want to take the time and who have that passion, where other restaurants can't afford to teach that to people. Touching the produce, knowing where it comes from, gives you more respect,doesn't it? You don't waste it.

Ryan: And for us too, obviously, two or three weeks ago, we went down, and we have a look at the cattle all the time. But actually feeding the cattle and being embedded in that, seeing what it is from little to big, then on the plate, it's a real nice story too. A lot of people have forgotten what that is all about. They see a bright red piece of meat in a supermarket with cling film over it, and that's what they think meat is. The health benefits are terrible. We have that at our disposal, thanks to Max, to be able to then push to the next exciting level of what we want to do on the menu.

Michael: It's a really good point too talking about ingredients that when you buy off someone, we're trying to work as closely as possible with who we know because we know what goes into the soils and we know what it's being sprayed with and we want to keep as organic as possible. Ryan and I have been saying this for the last five years. Why does everyone have an allergy these days? We believe it's because the food that everyone's been eating is so processed. So, people like Tuerong Farm with their own wheat and working with Karl, there's no spray. We really want to work hard on that. Even with some of the dishes, we've put a little bit of pine into the potato. Pine has really good health benefit as well for the brain and things like that too. We cook the potatoes in some pine water and then that flavours it all up. Black garlic is really good for the gut. What can we pick that is basically natural medicine that will help people again. We're not just cooking food. We think about what we're doing, and I think that's quite important when creating a menu. You have to think and preplan what you're going to do. What do we want to give back to the customer? What is going to be our story that we can get across? What is going to make their experience at Max's so that they walk away and go, jeez. You have to go to Max's because the story over there is so unique. One awesome thing that we're going to be doing is foraging tours. We're going to take people down on the cliff sides and we're going to get them to pick their own food again and, again, reconnecting them with some different sea herbs, literally bring them back to the restaurant and then give them this beautiful spread. There are so many things that we want to do here, so many different elements, charcuterie classes, we'll probably do some classes with some kids. Ryan and I have kids and we want to have that whole side of things too. It's all about family too.

Ryan: We're bringing back things like 'Return to Tuscany'. Max used to always travel over to Italy, create inspiration for himself with different people that he knew over there, and then draw that back to the restaurant to then recreate it for people who can't go to Italy.We're very playful in what we do in our menu, but then sometimes it's nice to do heartwarming food too. It keeps up us on our toes too to try different flavour profiles.

It must be fun to come to work. There's always something going on.

Michael: It's good what you just said then too because its the first time in a long time we have felt that fun and excitement. We want to be at work. It's 10 hours a day.

Ryan: We used to get on the train in the morning to the city and feel physically ill.

Michael: You have to want to come to work. With the apprentices, they have to actually want to stay back and learn. They're going to want to be paid for it, but that experience that they're going to gain, you can't get that anywhere else.

Just looking at the menu, do you get everything on this menu?

Ryan: Yes. You do.

It feels like there are a lot of ingredients to wrangle. I guess these are the main flavour points, are they? It's a small kitchen.

Michael: It is a small kitchen. The way we do the menu is there's a salumi and farm course straight away. With our Italian background and Max's abundance of good food, that had to be the focal point of coming in. That's what you want to see on the table. We want to also show how we are working with the farms. I've also got a bit of Ukrainian background in me too. And also Ryan has some Dutch heritage. We said that it was always potatoes that they used because they was so poor. Potatoes were always a common thing. What could we do with potato that was going to be something definitely different and unique that no one was doing? We wanted that crispy element, and then salt and vinegar is always a hit because it wakens up a palate, and that dish had to be the first thing that had to go on. Then the cigar, a beetroot. We get the beetroots, cook them down, blend them. We use a little stencil, and then we turn it into a little rectangle, and then we dehydrate it. It is such a long process. I think it takes about three days to make.

Ryan: Most things we do are about three or four day processes. You have to be really on top of your game.

Are you at the point where those timings all just fall into place, or do you write down timings and so on.

Ryan: It's all in our head. It's just processes like driving a car, once you get used to the processes it just becomes natural, which is a nice thing.

Michael: In any sort of starter in a meal, you want something where you're constantly guessing, oh, you've got a cigar, I've got some potato, I've got salumi. I've got the handmade ricotta that we make.

What's cashmere?

Ryan: Two streets back, it's called Main Ridge Dairy, and we use their cashmere, again, trying to utilise everything on the peninsula. Its a goats curd, which is so beautiful, super earthy, it works really well with the beet root, and it still has a bit of a punch to it. It's not what you think it is. When it comes out, it is very different.

I love all these little teaser flavour points and imagining what they might look like. I love just putting myself in the hands of the chef.

Michael: Well, the biggest thing is we have to work this way because, looking back at a la carte menus, it's really hard because you have to have a menu that has around 25 different items on there. So as your customers come in, you have to take a guess constantly of what you're going to use. It was a no brainer for us to come back to the set menu because we can utilise what's best in season. At the moment, we're using some peas but they're just coming out of season. The ones that are coming out of season, we're using for a chimichurri but the ones that are still very young, we're putting into a tart. So we're constantly thinking about how we can use things that Karl can give us or suppliers can give us and how to best utilise it during this time and then when it runs out, we have to be on our toes to quickly flip it, change that dish and then figure out what is going to go in as a replacement to make sure that the menu flows 100%. And that's a cool thing for us. We get to change things so many times.

Ryan: Also working with a farmer. He might have new things that he wants to try and then he can come to us and tell us, in a month's time, I've got this coming. Then we can start thinking about what we can put on.

Michael: We have a vegetarian menu. We have a pescatarian and then, obviously, we do gluten free, so we still cater for a lot of a lot of needs.We've gone a little bit different for dessert. We've called it Indulgence, because we want our own words. We don't want to copy anyone, and we want to finish on a high. You're not going to get a traditional dessert that that sits in front of you in a bowl. You're going to get something that's a little bit more playful. One of the ideas that I've never forgotten, I worked at Alinea and that was phenomenal. There was a dessert in a test tube. I thought it was just so fascinating how he did that, and we had to bring that back. Me and Ryan started working on it to make it our own. We don't want to copy what anyone's doing, so we changed all the flavours. We got rocks from the land as well. We went home and my dad used to be a builder, so he had a drill there. We drilled all the rocks and it took a whole day because the rocks were so hard, and we broke about 15 drill bits. But then that made it our own. So as the dish comes out, it's a little tube. It sits in a rock, and then you basically suck out this dessert. It's the look on people's faces when it comes out and the laughter and connection. Everyone copies something. No chef can say that's their own dish. They've got it from somewhere as an inspiration, but it's how you take it and how you turn into your own and it's just sharing ideas.

You also have to have that knowledge base, don't you, to be able to take an idea as an inspiration and not copy it? You use things to inspire you.

Michael: You have to make it your own. Chefs really need to connect to the food. They need to connect to their customer. They need to connect to the surrounding area, and maybe not everyone can do that. It's about who you are and what you've learned.

Talking about dessert, because I know dessert, or pastry is a lot more precise a science, and you've got to measure your ingredients and it can be quite complicated. I was just speaking to Kay-Lene Tan, who's now at Omnia and Yugen, and she was saying it's the last 10 minutes of anything that are the most memorable. Dessert is the last part of the meal, so it needs to be amazing. But then if you've just had a big dinner, you don't want to feel sick. It's such a fine balance with dessert.

Ryan: It is something we've always had to adjust to because I'm not a big eater. When my wife and I go out to degustations, I always get to a point where I actually get towards the main meal and think, oh no, I actually can't fit it in. Im very lucky because obviously with all our chef mates, they just keep bombarding you with food. We're very grateful, but you get to that point where you think, now I can't enjoy the rest of the courses. So for us, it's very much about using smaller elements, which are more taste and bite sized, asopposed to going, here's a whole of this. It's about breaking it all down, utilising flavours, concepts, talking points where people can actually look at it and go, oh my god, what is this? And then they talk about it, as opposed to knowing exactly what it is.

Michael: One thing we haven't got on the dessert menu that is coming in. We're running a business called Fusione, which is our chocolate business. We run that on the side still, but we're going to make a chocolate here where we will highlight Max's Morello cherry balsamic that will go into the chocolate. It gives you a bit of that vinegar acidic hit at the end, it's not so sweet. I think that's just a nice little touch again that we're adding in.

How do you get all these ideas?

Ryan: We wing it.

Michael: I'll be honest. When we come up with menus, we basically just sit together and Ryan normally will pump some ideas to me, and I'll have a bit of a think.

Ryan: I like to be seen as the architect. I did architecture before I did this. And I've grown up in the art world with my father. For me personally, it's very much a bit of fun trying to connect to it.

Michael: That's why it works so well. He'll start throwing out ideas, and I'll have a look at it on paper and maybe say, that looks good, what about this and we just work it out. Then once we have a menu that's fully done, there's never any testing because we're such a small team. We'll literally put it together and surprisingly enough, I don't know how we do it, but we always get it done. I'm getting a little bit older. I'm learning more about food and understanding a lot more with food. So that's what we talk about; what can we add and how can we amplify the flavour ten times more. We'll constantly keep evolving. But with menus, it's just pretty much what's in season. The season directs us.

And if Max goes to Tuscany next year, then he'll come back with some ideas and he'll go, guys, I've eaten this, and can you do something with that? We're constantly learning and getting new ideas and putting our own spin on it.

What made you change from architecture to cooking?

Ryan: Max. The master, the godfather over there. I was doing dishes here as a 15, 16 year old. Probably when I was about 18, 19, I started going on cold larder and then hot larder. And then I think week after week, Max kept pushing me and saying, you need to start your apprenticeship. I would say, no. I'm never doing it. But I actually never wanted to do architecture. I never wanted to be a chef. I wanted to design my own restaurant and own it. That was my thing. But, obviously, this is better. It was really good to learn from Max about the business side, the food side, things like that at an early age. That was really very lucky. But that's basically how I got into it. He pushed me. Which is good.

And, Michael, you off the bat, knew you wanted to be a chef?

Michael: No. I'm learning more as I go now, but no. I've always been around food because Nonna had big gardens and things like that. I was always in their garden and mum pretty much every weekend was cooking new dishes and so I always had that love affair with food. But, it wasn't really the path that I wanted to go down. I actually loved pulling apart various things like microwaves and I wanted to be an electrician of some sort where I could pull things apart and try to fix them. But I remember one day sitting in the bedroom and I was pulling apart a shaver and it was plugged in and the circuit board was showing and I remember accidentally touching that and screamed and dad was like, what the hell are you doing down there? I nearly electrocuted myself. I maybe changed a little bit, but there was too much maths. I wasn't really a school orientated person. I was more into the sports and I loved cooking. I remember dad one time was working at a restaurant and fixing it all up and he basically just threw a joke out to the owners and said, look, can my son come and have a trial and because he wants to be a chef. I didn't, but dad just said that because I needed a job because I was turning 18 and had to do something. I went into the kitchen and I just felt like it was where I needed to be. So I literally just stayed with it and loved food.

I guess theres that problem solving aspect in the kitchen as well. I mean, you're constantly, well not putting out fires because there'd be no fires in the kitchen, but problem solving and having an end point you want to get to and working out how you're going to get there.

Michael: Absolutely. Food is so rewarding. Food will never go out of fashion. Everyone has to wait, and it's all about a celebration. It's enjoying with your family. I guess where we're going with this and why we enjoy it so much is because when we see people come and it's like a big happy family and that's what we want it to be.

Ryan: It's nice too, coming out to the dining room and people actually want to talk to you about it. You see their reactions and how happy they are, and it makes you think, oh,it's nice.

I was just in Copenhagen and I ate at Restaurant Barr, which is where Noma used to be. It was so great.

Michael: It was nice over there. I think for me, going overseas in 2016 actually just changed my whole philosophy on food. I actually applied to go to Heston's, but for some unknown reason I couldn't get the visa because I have children and things like that. That was a bit of a shame because, I love the way that Heston sort of thinks and I wanted to get into his head as well. But, I also applied for Noma. Noma was number 3 in the world at that time, but they redid the ratings and Noma became number 1. So for me, that was a dream because I always had to work at the world's best. And I just wanted to see what it was about.

Alinea, I had to go and work there because Grant was and still is to this day, one of my favourite chefs. I love his story. He had tongue cancer, and he got through that. But just reading his story and learning about how he lost his taste and his senses came back in in stages and I think that his chefs had to guide him, first it was salty or whatever it was and then it was sour, so all these different tastes and sensations that he had to learn again. I actually really loved that side. But then when I entered that kitchen, and that was the first kitchen that I worked in over there, it was mind blowing. 30 chefs, all highly driven, running around like idiots, 80 covers a night. Some of the best food I've ever seen. The taste flavour profile was phenomenal. A little bit of sciency, where they were doing molecular gastronomy. His whole philosophy was I want to take an ingredient, but I want to manipulate it. And I'm only manipulating it because I want to enhance it 10 times more. That was a little bit different for me because then when I went to Noma, it was the carrot that was just the carrot with a few things. So there were two aspects of where they were going but I love both aspects because now we've come back here, come back to Australia and I want to figure out how Ryan and I can incorporate that into the cooking that we're doing now. As I said, we've taken snippets from each chef that we've learned from and we've pretty much turned them into our own and we'll always, remember the chefs that we've learned from and take certain things from them and pay homage to them as well. I still love Noma. Noma was that whole thing where it really inspired me to forage and learn a hell of a lot more about ingredients. We learned along the way and that was the fun part of what we were doing. I think now our story is so true because we've done all these things and we love the foraging and we love curing and we love making cheeses and we love people and we love inviting them our space, and that's what we're saying, we're inviting people into a home.

Ryan: And we want it to be a family feel as opposed to just a corporate space.

So then with all that in mind and given that you don't want your children to be chefs, what would your advice be to young people starting out in the industry?

Michael: If my kids want to be chefs, I'm not going to stop them because, it is a good path. I think for me, it's an awesome industry that you can really throw yourself into and learn. There's something new every day from butchery to seafood to cheeses. I think it's a really good education that people can come and learn. You've got adults around you that can nurture you as well. It is also good to learn about customers and learn about the business. I think the biggest thing for us is anyone that now comes in, I want everyone to learn about the business. You've got to know the numbers. You've got to know what comes in, your food costs. You have to know about front of house as well. It's a whole concept of learning and I think if you can learn that because everyone who comes into this industry says, I want to be a chef and I want to have my own restaurant. That's everybody's dream. But it's not always going to work out. So I think if you can learn the side of business, then why not? You can eventually get there. My best advice is just jump into it, absorb it. If you have a connection with food then, being in a restaurant is amazing. There are so many different restaurants that you can work in too. You can go from fine dining to breakfast places to cafes.

Ryan: My biggest piece of advice would probably be, don't say time is money. Because if you're going into an industry like this, it's has to be about passion and drive as opposed to you just want it for a job. And take on board what other chefs with experience are telling you rather than taking offence to it. I've been super lucky with all the chefs I've had who I've worked under, Michael being a big one and Max, and then I've had ones who have worked under Gordon Ramsay. At the start, it was hard to constantly get pushed down. But then over time, when you adapt to it and you understand that they're actually doing it because they care about the food and they care about what goes out. And now, obviously, for us, running a business like this with Max, that's how we need to be. You have to be very strict in how things go out, what it is, why it's going out the way it is. Those are my biggest ones.

Max's Restaurant, 53 Shoreham Road, Red Hill