Tommaso Bartoli

Hi Tommaso. Everyone's talking about Park Street. I was really excited to come because everything's been so glowing.

I hope so. People love it.

I went to St. Kilda DOC last week and I see that you were head chef at one of the DOCs.

What's the difference? Because I know that when you work your way up, already being a head chef is different to being a chef; you've got a lot more responsibility, you have to think about your team and your costs, but now you are a co-owner and chef, so that's a different thing again. What would be the difference then from being a head chef and then being a chef owner?

It is a big difference. As a chef, you need to manage the kitchen and then you're happy. Once you've done your job, you're happy. As an owner, you need to look at everything in the restaurant, which is a part of my career that I had never done before. I was only looking at the kitchen and that's it. Now we have to look at numbers. I did a couple of upgrade courses to be on top of it. But it's rewarding. It's good. Working for yourself is another thing. When you become a head chef, it's already good because you have everything in your hands. Everything depends on you. And it's cool. It's a great sensation when you become an owner. It's double it. People will come in your restaurant because of your food and also because it is your restaurant. When people love your restaurant, it's double satisfaction, but also double work.

Absolutely. You must be thinking about it 24/7.

Yes. But even when I wasn't a head chef, if you're really into the job, you never leave the job at work. You always keep it with you, even if don't have that much responsibility because you are always thinking about the day after. You're a chef all day, every day. If you love your job as a chef that is the way you have to do it.

That's right. Someone just asked me what I thought the difference is between a good chef and a great chef? And I think there's lots of things. I think it is obviously that passion.

Passion is everything. Passion is a must. If you don't have passion, forget about it. Tough hours. Long hours, big shifts, lots of stress. If you don't have passion, leave it.It's all about passion.

And I guess a curiosity, you've got to still think there's more to find out. To be a great chef, I imagine you are always still exploring and interested and excited.

There is always something to learn. You never think, okay, Ive arrived. I'm at the point, I know everything. You're never there. You are never going to be there. I think that's what I love about my job. Every day you can do something different, something new, something you can learn from others. You can open a book and find something that you didn't know before. So it's always improving, improving yourself, improving your way to work, changing the way you work. It's cool. It's what I love about my job.

And did you always know you wanted to be a chef?

No. When I was young, I dedicated my youth to being a soccer player. In Italy, we go crazy about soccer and my dad was crazy about it. He started training me when I was really young. I dedicated my youth to it and then unfortunately I broke my leg in an accident and I couldn't play anymore. My life was destroyed at the time. I was going to art school because I was good at design and I love it. I come from Florence, it's a big city. Like full of art. I've always been in love with it. But as you can tell from my English, I'm not good at study. I had a few friends at chef school, which was pretty easy. And I said, okay, well let's give it a try. It wasn't a proper school, it was more private. For three years. But more on the practice instead of the study. For example, the first year we had like one month of stage in a restaurant. They send you to restaurants and the second year was three months, the third year was six months. It was more about really getting into the job. I started this school just to see what happened. And then after the first month of stage, I fell in love with it. They put me washing potatoes, but I loved the way that people worked. I loved the way the kitchen was working. I finished the first year and the first summer, when the first year of school was over, I started working for the restaurant where I did the stage. They wanted me to do the summer season there. Slowly, slowly, it became a passion and I couldn't wait to be part of it.

How long did you work in Italy?

I started when I was 16 and I was there until 22 before coming to Australia.

And why Australia?

I don't know. I wanted to move from Italy. The situation in Italy is really bad. And chefs are super underrated. The salary is super bad. I started working for four and a half euros an hour doing 70 hours per week. I had Monday off but was working a double every day and finishing at one o'clock in the morning, starting at eight o'clock the day after, which I didn't care about. But at the end of the month, when the salary comes, you know what I mean? In the end, we work for money, and really the salary wasn't good for me.

I started hating the job slowly. It was becoming a burden for me because I was planning things like maybe opening a restaurant one day and I couldn't afford to, living in Italy. I thought about it and said, okay, Ill take three months, Ill go somewhere and I went to Ibiza near to Spain. I went there and did the season there, but there was too much distraction, parties and stuff. It was not good for me. I met a friend there who had been in Australia and he was saying like marvellous things about Australia: big salary, good people, so I said, let's give it a try. I booked a flight, thinking Id stay six months and see what happens. And as soon as I came over here, I started loving the place, loving the country. I remember my first salary. I was working in Sydney. After a week, the boss came to the kitchen with a cheque for 950 bucks. And I said, you must be wrong, I only worked one week here. He said, this is your salary. I was the happiest person the world. In the end, it was pay off for what I was doing. I was super happy. I think that's the way you need to reward a chef because really it's a hard job. In Italy they complain because they don't have more young people wanting to be chefs. No one is working in hospitality. Ask yourself why. I go back every summer, I'm going this June again. And every time I'm there, every restaurant that I go, they ask me to stay there. They propose me money and stuff. I would never go back.

In Italy, if you want to be a chef, you have no life. You have no life. It's good for learning because an Italian kitchen is another thing. If you have to learn this job, I don't think Australia is the best place to be. If you really want to learn like the basics. How a chef works here is too easy.

Do you mean in terms of discipline or technique?

Technique, yes. Especially discipline. In Italy we have these things between waitress and chef and there is a wall. The only waiter who can talk to the kitchen is the manager. No one can talk in the kitchen. The chefs are the most important. Which is not good.

Having worked front of house, I started off in a kitchen that was like that. And it's a shame. I think it's nice to have that good relationship between front of house and kitchen. I feel like the diner feels that as well.

Yeah, sure. It's nice to have it. It's beautiful. But I don't know how to explain, there has to be a little bit of respect. There are kitchen rules. In Italy it is only the chef that talks, that's it. Here, everybody is talking and asking for money from day one, asking for this, asking for that. I started working in the kitchen and I didn't ask for a thing until even after six years. I would stay there in my position. When they upgraded me, I was super happy. I would say thanks. I would never ask for a thing. I would never ask for a day off. It's a bit different. And even the hours that you work, the way you work, the precision of everything. Like cleaning, cleaning the vegetables, the fish, knowing everything about, the little things. I think here they miss these things. I have had experience in a few kitchens here. In Italy, when you've got a job, you want to keep the job. You never ask for anything. Here it's too easy, when its not they say, okay, I resign. In Italy, once you get a job and you really want to work in that place, you give everything for that place. You don't ask a thing, you don't say anything.

There is more discipline in Italy. Sometimes too much as we were saying before, sometimes too much. I love it here, here it is a family for us and it's good, but there has to be a point, a line you dont cross.

I wonder whether it's a generational thing as well. I'm a teacher as well as a writer, so I work with teenage students and I think attitudes have shifted in expectations. Australia has always been known as the lucky country, there is a sense of comfort here. Maybe that's what it is.

I love the way chefs can work here. I want to do 38 hours, I want this, I want to have three days off, which is good, but sometimes it's too much. This is not a job. You're not working in the bank. This is a restaurant, we work at night, we work at public holidays. Sometimes it's too much and in Italy it is too much the other way. If you learn the basics in Europe, when you come here, you really enjoy this freedom. But you know how the job works.

Well it really all blew up here a few years ago. In terms of paying people the right amount of money and not expecting too much. There's a fine line, I guess. I spoke to a chef recently who talked about when you are learning something, like I was at university for years learning French and I wasn't paid to do that, but because I loved it, I put all those hours in. When you're learning to be a chef, you have to put in the hours. There's a fine line between paying people properly and putting the time in.

We have a dishwasher that I pay $30 per hour. With all respect, because I think dishwasher is one of the worst jobs in the world. But when I told my dad, he said he would have done it his whole life if he had known.

Now you're an owner you have those finances to think about. There are a lot of restaurants closing at the moment because it is financially challenging. How do you keep going?

We are lucky because we are four business owners here. We all work in the restaurant. I manage the kitchen and my business partners are on the floor. I have a team in the kitchen. We are five in the kitchen. We keep the costs low. Even the food, the vegetable prices are crazy right now. You need to always be on top of it and always check. I did a great menu for summer, and I didn't spend too much and it didn't go well. Well, it did go well, but it wasn't as busy as we expected. But everyone was in the same position this year with the interest rates and so on. We did lose some money. So now I'm moving to find a good product at the right price and try to work and try to take the best out of it. That's what we have to do. Before we had two or three people more on the floor. Now the owners do more hours and we try and have as few staff as possible. That's what we have to do.

I hope it's going to get better soon. We took over this restaurant two years ago. The first summer was great. We didn't expect all the people coming and the response and we were so happy. Then all these things happened and slowly, slowly we became less busy. We were still working and paying the bills and paying the staff and we made some money, but not the money that we made in that first year. I hope it will get better. I've got a lot of friends in the industry, and I talk with everybody, chefs or business owners and we talk a lot and everyone is in the same position. We just need to be tight and stay in the moment and hope that things get better.

I was reading on your site that you cover the 20 regions of Italy. What does that mean?

No, the thing is my parents, my mums family comes from the south, originally from Naples and Campania. My dads family comes from Emilia Romagna. And I lived in Tuscany, so I have the centre and the south of Italy in my pocket. My dad's family was a really huge family. I spent a lot of summers when I was young in Emilia Romagna and all my dads family cooked, all the nonnas. And Emilia Romagna is the motherhood of fresh pasta and lasagna, all these kind of things and handmade pasta. Since I was young, I was in love seeing all this. I always had the passion for it. My mum was like the best cook in the world. When she was cooking for me, I remember when I came back from soccer training, as soon as I opened the door downstairs I could smell her cooking and I would run up the stairs. I was in love with it. I love to eat and I was in love with the way they did it.

So I always had this passion inside me and that's why all the regions, because my mum cooked in a different way, my dad cooked in a totally different way. Really from the south to the centre, to the north in Italy, there is a totally different kind of kitchen. The south is more like heavy food, fried food, more fish. And the centre is more like pasta, handmade sauces slow cooked sauces.And my region is like more wild animals, mushrooms, truffles. So I've got a bit of everything.

Do you cook for your parents now?

I wish. My mum died seven years ago, unfortunately. When I go home, I try to do something, but I spend one month there and I am always out with my dad. We always go everywhere. When I go home, I always try to go everywhere because I love the Italian kitchen. Even if I don't want to work there anymore, I like to explore regions and go to beautiful places where you eat incredible food.

Do things change in Italy? There are lots of trends here and things change, is that the case in Italy or do they stay the same?

I think it stays the same. Here, there is more space to create. In Italy we have these traditions things and people don't want to change. People get crazy if you change. When I'm there on holiday, I go back to the restaurants I used to go to and they still have the same menu with the same plates, with the same dishes. They will never change. I think they are a bit stuck. Here you can do more different things. You can really play with things because people love different things. In Italy they are more strict.

The biggest difference between here and there is the product: vegetables, fish, meat. No, the meat is the only thing here that is really good. But for the veggies, you can't compare. When I was at DOC, we opened a restaurant – unfortunately we had to close for Covid. We, it was called it Bio By DOC and it was only open one year. We did all vegan and gluten-free. I was working just with vegetables and it was so hard. Because here vegetables have no taste. They don't taste. It's super hard to make a good dish out of just vegetables here.

Is that because we are growing vegetables that aren't native to here?

It is different soil, different everything. It's like the fish here, the fish comes from an ocean, so the water is cold. Even the taste of the same fish that you can find in the ocean here and in the Mediterranean, it's totally different. Here youll find really big crayfish, but they have no flavour.

What do you do about that?

You need to play with the sauce. In Italy, the kitchen is more simple because the main product is beautiful. You don't need to add a lot of things, because the product itself already tastes amazing. Here you have to play with a little bit of cheese, with nuts, with sauces, spices.

Is your food traditional?

My food is traditional. But with a bit of a fancy touch. That's what I would say. Because I like tradition. When I was in Florence, I started working in a kitchen for four years and it was a big company. We sold all these prestige products from all over Italy. And we were doing fresh pasta. We were selling and there was also a restaurant. And then we had the for weddings and stuff like that. Then we had another restaurant, which was the good one in the city centre. I started working there and I loved it because it was really traditional. We did a prestige buffet with recipes from all over Italy. I loved it because it was simple. It was good. After three or four years, I moved to the restaurant in the centre where it was more of a fine dining restaurant, which I liked, but not that much. I don't want to be on a plate for too long.I love to make up a good plate, but I don't want to work on the plate like for hours. Or maybe when you have to go out on the pass, you need to three people there. It's not for me. I wasnt sure though. We have a three Michelin star restaurant in Florence called Enoteca Pinchiorri. I had a friend working there who said they were looking for a Chef de Partie there. I thought I would give it a try. I went there and it was really, really fine dining. I did six months there. And it wasn't for me. I was doing the same job for eight to nine hours; cutting the vegetables with no wastage, you learn amazing techniques. But it wasn't me. It wasnt what I love to do.

What I really love in a restaurant, there is the prep and there is the service. I love the service when there is the battle. It could be the larder, could be the pasta section, but handled by me. When the chef talks, asks for the docket, we all work, and we say Yes chef. And we just push. I love that. In a Michelin star restaurant, it's not like that. You have four or five in the same section and one day you just do salmon, crispy salmon over and over all day. Maybe you do scotch fillet. That's it. And maybe the sauce for the scotch fillet. It's not for me. I need to work with 15 pans. I need to pump. I know every chef is different. Lots of people here they love to work in fine dining restaurants. It's not for me. My food is simple. I like to work with simple food and try to make it look good, but not spend too much time on it.

Tell me about the menu here.

This restaurant was already open when we came here and it was already doing fresh pasta, which is the main thing in the restaurant. We do pasta fresh every day. We have one guy making pasta every day. I came here because Luca, my business partner was already working here and I was still at DOC. He said, there is an opportunity to take over the restaurant. I said, will we change the menu and he said no, we keep doing what they were doing. I love fresh pasta so that was me. We do mostly fresh pasta and entrees and we've got a couple of mains that we change. We have a scotch fillet and fish of the day that we change weekly. And we have a special meat that we change weekly as well. But mostly it is fresh pasta. I like to play with the pastas. I love it. It's the section of the kitchen that I love the most.

Is that different shapes?

Different shapes,filled pasta, long pasta, short pasta and all made in house. It is the section I love the most. Pasta you can put your love in it. You can make sauces, you can fill the pasta with whatever you want and do the sauce with whatever you want. A piece of meat is a piece of meat. Once you grill it, it's done. You can do a sauce on top of it, but it's a piece of meat.

Do you keep notebooks of recipes and ideas?

I keep my ideas. But we have recipe books of course. But the ideas I have at home and the ideas that I get from when I go out to a restaurant, or when I travel, and also from Instagram because of course Instagram nowadays you find a recipe everywhere. I follow the chefs that I love and when I see them doing things, I see something that I like, and I want to do it myself.

But I would say that a chef is not a solo thing. It cant be the chef alone. He needs the team. I want to have a good team. I put all my energy into having a good team because the team is everything. When I have a recipe, I don't come into the kitchen and explain the recipe. When I have a recipe, I come into the kitchen and I say, I want to do this. What do you think about it? I want to hear what everybody says. Even the last one in the kitchen, can have an idea and maybe from his idea, you can really use it in your dish.There is never a good chef without a good kitchen team. I have my sous chef here, and I never do a dish without him. I like to work with everybody because you learn from everyone here. I love to work with people from different countries as well because they have different things that you don't know. In my kitchen, I have an Australian, a Korean, I have a Filipino, and an Italian sous chef. We put a little bit of everything together. I love when my Korean chef asks to do a special. I will say yes. I love to see what other people are doing. You can learn from it.

As a business owner, if the kitchen team perform, I can have my Sunday off and talk to you today. I can not be there and not be stressed. I'm a hundred per cent sure that they're working well.

What would your advice be to a young person starting out as a chef?

You need passion. Passion is a must. I remember when I started working in the kitchen, my first chef said to me, I tell you this now, if you ever look at the clock in the kitchen, this is not a job for you. When you start work in the kitchen, if after two hours you look at the clock, change jobs, do it right now, do it before it's too late. Because when you're there, you're there. And really, when I'm there, I don't look at the clock. I feel better here than somewhere else. And that's what you have to feel. Because if you don't feel like that, it's not a job for you. It's hard, it's stressful. And for a young chef, when he is learning, he needs to keep his eyes, his ears open. That's the main thing. When I started in the kitchen, they put me on washing vegetables. After three months I was still there and I said to the chef, how can I go up a step? How can I do something else? He said, you need to wash the vegetables with your head turned around and watch us. That's how you learn. We will not teach you anything. When I tell you to move from this section to the other, you need to be ready. But without a training because you're already watching. And that's the way I did it. You need to keep your eyes open. Always hear everything: what they say, how they talk, how they use the knife, how they clean the potatoes. Open your eyes and be ready.

And travel, travel a lot. The more you can travel, try different things. Try different food, try different types of kitchen. Even if it's not the one that you like, that you want to do, keep on doing your kitchen, your type of food. But travel, try everything. Try every kind of food.Because really even in the worst restaurant, you never want to go, you can find something that you can use. That's what I do. And I always go to different restaurants. I never go to Italian restaurants here. I don't go out for Italian. Just for pizza. Pizza is pizza but I don't go out to Italian restaurants here. I want to keep learning all the time, but instead, if I go to a Thai restaurant, I can discover vegetables, or a sauce, that I don't know about and I might be able to use it in my kitchen.

Park Street Pasta & Wine, 268 Park Street, South Melbourne