Ryan Spurrell

Conversation with a chef: Nice to meet you Ryan.

Ryan Spurrell: Jo, nice to meet you.

What a lovely dining room. How long has it looked like this?

Three months.

I've been reading a little bit a bit about you and you've worked in some really fine dining places and here it's a pub. Tell me about that.

The building is a pub. So we keep some of that aesthetic going, like keeping all of this area here, different people who may want to come in for a drink. I have a lot of people who sit out the front and have a drink. But the food, not so much. I spent some time in Asia and whatnot, so we're utilising some of the things I learned there and doing a take on East West. Not traditional in either sense.

Let's talk a little bit more about some of the food then. How did you go about putting the menu together? Had you worked with Asian food much before?

I've done bits and pieces. I have some friends who were from there. I lived in Vietnam for a while before Covid. And then Covid struck and that was that, unfortunately.

Where were you?

I was in Saigon. I was there for about eight months before Covid hit.

So you came back.

Well I was out getting all the visa stuff sorted. And then when we had our flight booked back, they locked the border to anyone who didn't have a Vietnamese passport.

Right. What are some dishes then that you've brought on? Is it Vietnamese leaning or a bit of a mix?

A bit of a mix. I travelled to Cambodia a bit. I've been to Thailand a bit. I have some friends who are Thai and they cook for me and I always enjoy the flavours. Realistically. it's more about a flavour focus and any of those fancy things. Creating things from scratch instead of buying things in. Thats what we look at.

So when diners come in, what's the best way for them to approach the menu? Is it shared or individual plates?

It's designed to go either way. If you just want to come in and have your own thing, then by all means, but the dishes are designed to be more of a sharing aspect, because that is a part of the cultural aspects of there.

What's an example of some of the dishes?

So we have our pork skin, which is puffed pork skin. A very common dish you find over there. We are doing an octopus beignet, that's a take on the Japanese Takoyaki. We make our own bulldog sauce. We play around with things like that. The kingfish dish we have is a very light fresh dish. It's fairly simple: cured kingfish. We do it with a ponzu and olive oil dressing. We use sea herbs and Granny Smith apple. But it's more about the presentation of the dish over trying to load up the flavours. It's quite a delicate light dish. But then we have our steak with sambal, sambal being a traditional condiment over in Indonesia. or our barramundi with banana curry, which are a lot bigger, bolder, punchier flavours than delicate. So you can work your way progressively through from a very light start, or you can just go and pick the bold flavours if you really want to.

When you're putting a menu together like that, is that what you're thinking about? Are you thinking about, is it hitting off the different lightness and heaviness, the sweet, salty sour? Or is it what you love to eat? Where do you start when you put it together?

It's the dishes that I like to eat. Thats what I draw on. Obviously if I like to eat it, it makes a lot more sense in my head, it's easier to translate that onto a plate. But that being said, you do have to look at the balance of the sweet and sour, but you also have to look at the sort of menu progression that you find in a westernised venue as well. I generally have a vegetarian for an entree, a cold fish, a meat, and then a cold or hot fish or a cold or hot meat, it varies. And then you have a similar style; you'll have a red meat dish and then you'll have a white meat, which could be chicken or pork or, because some people don't eat beef. So in that sense it's got that westernised feel. Whereas I'm working on a dish at the moment that is very eastern in its flavour. But I've just translated it into a dish you'd see more in a western restaurant than an eastern restaurant with a flavour profile.You'd find it in an Asian restaurant instead of a French or European style.

When you were over there, or just in general, how do you remember all of these things? Do you keep notebooks, or is it a photo thing? When you were in Vietnam and you're eating the food and you think, this is something I could do myself or I could bring in some of those elements. Where does that information reside until you then cook it?

I do have photos. I think it's important for every chef to have notebooks. I have really small notebooks, probably the size of a phone that fit in your pocket. I have a stack of those mole skins all bound up with elastic bands. I've got about two stacks of those.

Do you go back through them?

I'm not a tech savvy person. My partner on the other hand is quite tech savvy. She's also a chef. She's been through all of my recipe books. She's typed up a lot of stuff. So we have a Google drive that we share for all of that kind of stuff as well. That's full.

Amazing. I love that collecting of precious ideas and flavours and profiles. Do you think about food 24/7?

Absolutely not. I have pretty set rules when I'm not at work. On my day off obviously in my position I have to do other things, but I have a two-hour window in the afternoon that I'll get everything ready and all that. And if someone needs to contact me, they can contact me. If they're a minute past that deadline, I just don't.

Well, you have to be sustainable don't you, as a chef in terms of wellbeing if you want to stay in the industry. You have to be smart like that. Do you cook on your day off for yourselves? Do you need time away from the kitchen?

Some days we'll go out, but I have no problem cooking for myself. It's very different than cooking in a kitchen. I'm not worried about the same thing over and over again and making sure everything is right and everything's identical at work. Its the very militaristic training that I went through as a young chef.

So there are two parts to that. When you're in the kitchen then at work, are you able to enjoy that? Or is there a level of stress? Do you still have a level of enjoyment within the repetition and consistency?

I love what I do. That's why I've been doing it for 20 years. I have rules. As any workplace needs to. There are rules around cleanliness. There are rules around hygiene, organisation. I do keep on top of the team about things. The rules I have are in place to make sure everything's neat, tidy, organised, and OH&S issues are avoided, the fridge is done properly. So when the health inspector walks in, I can just say, please come in. There's no issue here. A surprise inspection doesn't bother me. That's what the rules are more set to do: ensure people's safety, ensure cleanliness. If everything's clean, you're going to produce a better quality of food, because you're not going to have to worry about things like cross-contamination and so on. And then there are just some other rules more about helping the guys improve themselves than put pressure on them.

The other part of that question was that you talked about the way you were trained. Before that, where did it all start for you? Did you always know you wanted to be a chef?

Basically, yes. Everyone has that story abut cooking with their grandma, but I don't. I used to come home in the afternoon and I enjoyed watching cooking shows. My mother can cook because she was a single mother raising four sons by herself, but it wasn't amazing cooking.

Were you helping in the kitchen?

I ended up helping in the kitchen. I used to watch a lot of cooking shows. Marco Pierre White was on TV when I was young. It was just interesting to me. Ian Hewitson, who actually comes in here, I used to watch him in the afternoons after school.

Those shows are satisfying to watch, aren't they? Because they are creating something and then you get a really great product at the end. But watching the technique is always really impressive. What do you think it was that was appealing to you as a youngster?

I'd say probably the technique. And the ideas intrigued me. I was very maths and science orientated at school as well. Art we found at home. My mother does a lot of artwork. She does art. She's a floral painter.

Ah, so there's two sides to it then.

Mum likes to attribute the art side to her, which is probably true. And when I was a young chef, when I decided and started moving into kitchens, it was more the focused and precise stuff that I found more interesting than that natural let it go sort of thing. The precision and making sure things were right. That's what I found more enjoyable. And that's left me in really good stead because my bases are all really right. As much as people push down on it and say it's terrible and it's bad, setting those rules and having that structure in place where you need to learn how to brunoise and julienne your mass and your zen, you need to understand the bases of your mother sauces. You need to know how to make your pastries, your breads. You don't need to be perfect at your pastry, but you need to understand all of it. It sets you in good stead so you can do anything at any time. I find a lot of the younger generation now that I've seen come through, have never done pastry, never seen bread. Their cutting technique is really poor. They're all being rushed through their apprenticeships. The generation under me, I've been doing it 20 years, so the generation after my younger brother and he's seven years younger than me, they're in leadership roles, but they don't understand what it is to be a leader. They're more preoccupied with their own public image and their own social media and all of these other things instead of actually the cooking. I mean, you can produce a dish that looks lovely and is great on Instagram, but if it tastes like crap, it still tastes like crap. It doesn't matter how good it looks.

And if it's not consistent, if the next time you do it, it's different, that's not right. I had a similar conversation with Diana Desensi at Saint George in St. Kilda. It was along those lines of people getting caught up in social media and even heroing the chefs that have got all the followers and it might not mean they're necessarily the ones to follow for technique.

God, you can go on my Instagram. I have absolutely no pictures on it. I had a couple on there and I cleared it a lot before I started here. I know I need to do it because it is a part of marketing and branding. I need to be a little bit more active on this because everyone keeps telling me, but at the same time, I'd rather be in the kitchen focused on the guest. The most important thing is making sure the guest has a good time. I think that's one of the things I enjoy about what we do as well. Yes its all about the cooking, but when you just focus on the cooking and you forget about the guest, you're not really doing your job. Our job is to produce things to give to people. It's about that more holistic approach. I didn't understand it when I was younger, and I made mistakes. I had some critical bosses who were very stern with me. But then you realise.

Well, its hospitality, isnt it?

It's hospitality. Exactly. It's in the name of what we do. It's hospitality. It's about being hospitable.

A lot of chefs cook with ego. And don't get me wrong, ego is required. You need that ego. If you have the confidence, you're going to have the ego. It's about managing and not letting it get ahead of what you are trying to do.

I feel like very quickly you got into fine dining.

I started in fine dining.

That seems to suit your personality and the way you enjoy cooking. Did you grow up in Melbourne?

I come from a place called Park Orchards.

Oh, it's gorgeous out there. At what stage did your career, did you decide that London was the place to go to?

Pretty early on. Europe was always going to be the place to go to. There wasn't much happening elsewhere. There were a few places in America, but America never held any interest for me. It does now. But more in the sense of traveling, seeing South America, the food cultures. There just wasn't as much about America. So it was Europe. Once I'd left working for Jacques and I'd gone onto to Shannon, a lot of the top brigade were all English chefs anyway. Ryan Clift was the head chef when I started there and we had Andy and Mark Briggs and a lot of the team was either English or French. So, I just headed that way.

Was it a culture shock?

Going to England? Not really.

In the kitchens?

Kitchens are or were tougher. But anyway, if you travel somewhere, you change kitchens. Even if you leave one kitchen and go to another kitchen and you are not learning, just leave. Especially when you're a younger chef, if you are not learning, there's no point in you being in that environment. Generally it means you're working with people who aren't going to be willing to train you. So there's going to be no real progress for you unless you just padding out your CV. That's a pointless exercise. A lot of kids who do it, they go spend twelve or eight months or whatever. But if you don't learn anything there, you are going to spend your life perpetually doing that. And then the second you walk into a kitchen with an experienced chef, they read your CV, and there's going to be an expectation set on you and you have to be able to back it up. The whole chasing the stars and all that kind of stuff, if you go for the padding the CV, you have to go over there with a very open mind. The kitchens are a lot tougher, it's a lot more ingrained, but you will learn. Most of the chefs I worked over there for, they were very tough kitchens. The Ledbury and Pollen Street. I had friends who worked in other restaurants. Id go do stages, which people frown upon now because you shouldn't work for free. But I got paid in knowledge. And I found that more important than payment you would get for a day's labour. Once a fortnight, once a month when I'd pop in and do a stage. The knowledge you get from these places is far more favourable. And that's the whole point of the travel is to learn and grow.

I often ask what would be your advice to young people starting out as chefs? You've really answered that. So then maybe what's the difference between a good chef and a great chef? Or what makes a good chef? A lot of the things you've already said, I guess.

A lot of things that make a good chef are that the great ones just do it even more. They're even better. The dedication that they put in. Good chefs are very dedicated, but the great chefs are so dedicated, they're so focused on what they're doing. But I think they're just really good chefs with really good teams as well. Because you can sit there and you can say they're a great chef and they are. Someone like Gordon, he can do it and it's all bang on, but he wouldn't have that if he didn't have that team behind him. But that comes down to him training all of his team. You start at the bottom, you work your way through all of that kind of stuff. It is training a great team makes a great chef as well.

It's a team endeavour. It's not a singular person, it's his name, it's his ideas, so if there's any backlash, it's all on him. But because he sets all the rules I was talking about, and has those standards and does all the training, you have a great experience when you're there. It's an attention to detail. I think good chefs are very good at what they do. They can cook very well, but it's the 1%, I think that's what makes the great chef making sure the glass was in the right spot, making sure everything is executed exactly right on the plate.

I was going to ask, can anyone be a chef? But that's that difference is that I suppose anyone could be a chef, but whether or not they can be a great chef.

Look, I have a really good mate of mine and he's an amazing cook at home. He cooks some of the most fantastic stuff. I go over there and eat and he gets self-conscious and worried, but his food's awesome. He could happily serve it in a restaurant, but he always says to me, I love cooking, I love doing it at home. But I will never work in a kitchen. I never want to be a chef. I would hate it if I did.

That's a good point.

Being a chef isn't about the cooking, it's about doing the same job over and over and over again. If you enjoy cooking woodfired pizza and you do it every Sunday and you cook four of them and you sit there and go, oh, I could be a pizza chef, cook 400 a day, five days a week. See if you still love it. That's the difference between a chef and a cook: we do it and we enjoy it. And if you're not enjoying being a chef, find another industry because it very much is a holistic approach. It's a lifestyle choice. You get up early in the morning, you go to bed early in the morning, it's long hours. A lot of kitchens now, you might still be working a long day, but you get three days off the week. It's all about balance now.

That's right. Do you think young people are still being attracted to the industry?

The few young people I've met who are doing it are very dedicated to it. They are very focused, very passionate. Once upon a time, when I was looking at getting into it, this is pre-MasterChef, it was very much a rough industry and you knew there wasn't much glamour to it, but you did it because you wanted to do it. And by the time you finished your apprenticeship, you knew if you were going to continue or you knew if you were out. It was very divided. Whereas now you have a lot of things that have glamourised cooking, which has had a detrimental effect, I feel. There was a big influx of young people, which I think is why there were a lot of rule changes. The generation I was and the generation before me, I mean it was shit and I'm not going to lie. I passed it on at one point, but I changed, like a lot of chefs have and it was good for that. But the work ethic changed around it as well. I did it because I loved it and I really wanted to work the hours I did and take in what was dished out. It paid off in dividends in another way. Because as I said, I feel that the likes of your MasterChefs and all these fancy cooking shows, I think the fanciest cooking show when I was growing up was something like Ready Steady Cook. We had the actual chefs competing, whereas MasterChef basically turned around and said, anyone can do this. They don't like to tell you that the four hour challenge actually takes 12 hours and that they have recipes under their bench when they're supposed to remember things off the top of their head. They don't tell you all that. You go out to restaurants and they have open kitchens, you see what's happening and there's a certain allure and glamour to it. They've been working for 10 hours already and they've still probably got five hours to go, but look at the energy in there, and look at how everything comes out. It's stripped that away and it has lost some of it in the end. It was good at the start. There were a lot of young people coming in, but they came in for the wrong reasons.

I also wonder whether lockdowns and all that stuff has affected a lot of people's perspective on things. I think in a lot of industries it made people rethink what they wanted to do. A lot of people left hospitality.

A lot of chefs did.

Maybe having that break allowed them to see what else was out there or they just didn't want to get back into that hard slog. You have to be match fit as a chef, don't you

You learn your endurance and your stamina.You hear people say, oh, my legs, my feet, my back. It doesn't bother me anymore. I think it's more the mental aspect of it. You're trapped inside all day. You don't really get out. It's not like any other workplace. It is very reactive. I can prepare a menu, but then we get an order, and you do it and then you have to manage all your orders. Customers don't want to wait. It's not like, oh, it's 5.00 pm I'll answer that email tomorrow. It's like, it's 9.00pm and we still have entrees and mains and dessert to do. We're going to be here until it's done. And there's that expectation that it is going to be done. And Melbourne diners can be very difficult, but they're also a lot more open-minded about food as well. So yes, they may be difficult, but they're a lot more open to trying things and seeing things and new flavours.

The Clarendon & Mirror Mirror Rooftop, Clarendon Street