Sam Hopkinson

Hi Sam, how's it all going?

Good and it's good to have the Food & Wine Festival event out of the way and onto the next thing.

And how was it?

It was fantastic. It was just a lot of work. So many bits and pieces.

What did you do for it?

We hosted an event for 80 guests here last night and we did it with Paul Wilson who was here 20 years ago. He did two dishes and two dessert canapes and we did two dishes and two dessert canapes. So it was a bit of a then and now thing, which was great. I haven't worked with him before, but years ago when I was at Rockpool, I was given a copy of his book from Botanical with his signature in it. It has always been part of my food, I suppose, my identity in a way. It was good to meet him and work with him.

That's a nice way of doing it. I've spoken to Paul Wilson. I have spoken to a few chefs who were part of that group who came over from the UK.

Yes. The English chefs who thought that they were going to reinvent the wheel and actually we were pretty good at what we were doing.

They certainly played their role though, and they were in lots of those really big venues around Melbourne at the time.

They definitely broke some ground in multiple areas. They created iconic dishes, developed great teams, built good kitchens, and most of them are still around and the ones that haven't made any money have made businesses go bust are not really here anymore.

So, just last night? You must be exhausted.

All good.

Great. Now I had a little look at your LinkedIn and what I could find about you online. You're originally from Melbourne?

Yes. Born and bred. I grew up in the south-eastern suburbs, went to school out in Wantirna, and I've moved over to Sunshine now.

When did it all start for you as a chef?

I remember driving home from school one day. I think I was about 14 years old and I'd just done work experience at a little cafe at The Glen called Bon Bons. It was in David Jones, I don't know if you know that area. I was sitting in the car and I remember looking out the window staring at Wesley College with my parents and I said, I really want to be a chef. And mum asked, are you sure you want to do that? The hours are terrible, the pay is terrible. I said, ah, yes.

What was it do you think that appealed?

I just loved being in a kitchen and cooking and working with all that equipment and the people and that's what really drew me to it, I suppose. I've never really considered myself to be overly creative, but I've always liked being part of the machine, if you will. I've always been a good worker bee. That's what drew me to it. And then, you learn things and you meet people and it's a very interesting industry in the sense that you can go anywhere in the world with it. It's very inclusive.

If you can cook, people will give you a job anywhere. That's what drew me to it. As well, my grandmother on my dad's side was a fantastic cook. From a young age, we did a lot of cooking. There was a bit of nurturing up until that point. I remember I got my first part-time job at Bon Bons. I used to do Thursday nights and cut calamari and slice tomatoes. But it was good learning for me. It kept me out of trouble.

Did you go to William Angliss?

I actually applied for a job as an apprentice at Rockpool in 2007. I remember turning up to the interview in my full chef's whites with my little neckerchief and having an interview with Khan Danis. Little me. I was very keen. I had the full kit of all the same knives all wrapped up. It was so cute.

Very passionate.

I was very passionate and I still am to this day. I spent a good three years with them and I learned a lot. I had someone mentoring me there who used to run the fish program at Rock Pool. I had a massive fascination with the processes and being able to break down beef and fish and things like that. He was a sushi chef and he really took me under his wing and inspired a lot of passion to continue. From there, I went and worked in Japan about eight or nine years later and that was sort of part of that.

I saw that. That's really interesting because when I've spoken to sushi chefs, the training that goes into it for them is huge.

Militant.

It is militant and that would take you a long way. Was that part of your decision to go to Japan?

Definitely. I'd always had a real affinity, although I don't have the palate for that cuisine. I can't create dishes without bastardising the cuisine, so I try to avoid working with a lot of Japanese ingredients or flavours unless I'm very confident in what I'm going to do because it can come off as fusion and I don't like that. It's almost insulting to a cuisine when people bastardise it. I went over there and I worked at Narisawa, which is a two Michelin star. At the time it was number four in Asia, I think. That was an experience. That was run like a military operation. You got in there in the morning and you get one cloth and you do all these things and you pick all these herbs and cut the duck and so on. But it was good. It was a good experience.

And how did you get on in terms of the language?

I did two years of language classes prior to that. But it was only one night a week. I feel like I can understand better than I can speak. I can't quite have a conversation. But in that kitchen they did speak quite a bit of English. They want to learn English as well, so they would really try and work with me, which was great. It helps with, I suppose, the culture cultural gap if you will.

In my head, I'm imagining that Japanese kitchens are really quiet.

It was quiet and small, but everything was perfect. It was very well planned. Everything was always scrubbed back to stainless steel every night. All the glass was polished every day. They had these ridiculous routines that they'd go through to ensure that it was obsessively perfect. I learned a lot in that regard.

What kind of food was it?

Narisawa classifies it Satoyama cuisine, which is a bit of a play on Japanese ('sato' meaning village and 'yama' meaning forest: sustainable Japanese ingredients blended with European cooking techniques), a lot of traditional Japanese flavours and produce with a lot of French technique behind it. It's pretty difficult to really quantify. We used to do this dish that was a mackerel and we'd smoke it over a very specific type of wood that was native to one part of fu and it was served with a tomato and wasabi jelly and it was very Japanese in its flavours, but very, but actually it wasn't particularly French. His cuisine was interesting.

Was it a conscious decision to go to that particular restaurant?

Sort of. When you look back at Rockpool, I wanted to try and go somewhere good, try and go as high and as hard as I could. And if it didn't work out, then I could back down from there. Because for me, pedigree and learning from the best is the best way to become better. That was the decision behind going to Narisawa. I'd seen a lot of his food on YouTube and TV shows. I really wanted to go and experience what it was like to be working in a Japanese kitchen as well.

How long were you there?

A bit more than a year I think.

What position were you?

I started off as a stagiaire and then I was a commis chef; a little kid again, running around after them and doing all the little crappy jobs. But it was fine by me. I learned a lot. They had great chefs. Not all of them were happy about sharing their secrets, they were quite a guarded team. But I still learned a lot.

And what about life in Japan? Did you get to see much of life?

There are different pockets that have different cultures in them in Japan. You go to certain places and you'll see lots of restaurants that might be Indian or Chinese. We lived in a very Japanese area and it was on the train line that went up to Hakone, which is southwest of Tokyo. We had a little house and it was all very Japanese and your employer pays for your transport to and from work. You get on the train; you go to work and you go about life and it's all very small and compact and convenient and logical. But we used to get away, we'd go up to Hakone and they are very famous for their onsen. There's an active volcano in the area, which is why they're famous for it. They used to do black eggs. They'd put them in the water on top of the volcano and the sulphur in the water would turn black. We used to go up there quite a bit and explore the area and it's beautiful getting out of Tokyo. But at the same time, you know, we did a lot of different things in Tokyo as well. We'd eat at different restaurants and go to different areas. But most of my life was really consumed with work. There wasn't a lot of time off, not a lot of downtime. You spend days going to and from work, you almost learn to sleep standing up on the train, which is fun.

Well, that's part of the culture too, isn't it?

That's right. I loved it. I'd move back there I think, if I didn't have children, because I don't have a hell of a lot of faith in their school system. My wife's a teacher, so she saw what that school system was like.

How did you know when you'd done your time there? That it was time to come back?

When my wife started to say that she was missing the cat too much. We had a bit of a game plan about work and then we went to Europe for six months after that and just travelled about. We put all of our stuff in boxes in a shipping container.

The Europe travels were purely recreational. I did a lot of eating of course. I was very lucky. One of the guys I worked with in Tokyo was from a tiny little town in northern Italy. And he was going back at the same time that we were. We met up with him and he took us around northern Italy and to Milan and Bergamo and all these other places. His dad made magnificent – they call it spiedini. They're all hunters and there were all these little birds on the spit with big chunks of pork and then they pour butter and sage over it and roast them on the rotisserie for hours.

It's best when you are with the locals isn't it?

It is. The one thing that I didn't like about Rome is it felt very touristy to me. I probably just didn't get a good experience because I wasn't with the right people. But when you're with the locals, they take you around and show you all the cool places. We used to do that when some friends would visit in Japan. We'd take them to all the good spots so they didn't waste their time.

I lived for a year in the south of France and I felt really lucky to meet people there and they'd invite me for dinner and it was great.

It is so good because you can share that experience of going to all these different places and narrowing down the best ones.

They're so regional in Italy as well as France, and super seasonal. We say that here, but really.

Strawberries are on the truck from Queensland as we speak.

That's right. You've worked your way up to executive chef. So what has happened in the intervening years?

When I came back from Japan, I actually just worked with a good mate of mine who owns a cafe or owned a cafe in Bayside. I just went and poached eggs with them for six months and had some fun and I was sort of looking for another challenge. One of my best mates, Joseph, who used to be a sommelier with Rabih at The Point years ago, after Rab purchased The Botanical, he said, come on board, we're looking for a head chef and we had this idea that we were going to rule together hand in glove. And we did for a long time pretty much up until Covid, which was fantastic.

Covid was terrible but we made the best of it here. Joseph had to go back to New Zealand during that time. But I stayed on and weve grown so much in that time alone. I mean we work with Shane Delia on Providoor. We developed our range of heat and serve meals, which is now known as South Yarra Deli. We're in about 500 retail outlets nationwide. That was all born out of Covid. It was after that we came back and did what we do best and serve the community and just keep growing.

So is that what executive chef means here as well? Do you oversee the deli as well? Plus, this is a big place.

It is a big place. We don't produce all of those meals here. But I'm in charge of all of the new product development and all of the testing and things like that and recipe development and working with the teams that do produce that food to make sure that it is of a standard. The same goes for here, you know, I'm here to oversee and make sure that everything that gets to the guest is as it should be, every time.

I was impressed to see it's seven days a week, all day and night. That's a really big production. And you're doing some really special things like aging meat. Are you still on the pans?

Yes. One of my favourite parts of my job is being able to cook on the line with the guys, because I don't think I could ever be a clipboard computer kind of chef. I love that energy, that urgency, the hustle being in there making food for people. That's what I first started out to do and I don't think I could ever give that up. But I don't do it all the time, but I'd like to do a bit more every now and again.

Have you always had the aging cabinets?

No, we installed them towards the end of Covid. We had them built in magnificent fridges. Best in class and we source all of our beef from O'Connor in Gippsland and that all goes in there for a minimum of 30 odd days. We source ducks from Aylesbury, which we also dry age in there, which is a recent addition to the project. But it wasn't always there. We used to get fantastic quality meat from O'Connor and from JBS and the brand of Little Joe, which we still do. But you know, the dry aging program was a bit of a pipe dream when we first started getting that to where it's now is.

Was that new for you as well or did you have experience with it?

I had experience with it when I was working at Rock Pool because they've got a huge dry aging program. I didn't actually spend a hell of a lot of time working on the meat side of things there. But we did a lot of unloading. They had a dedicated butcher, so the chefs would never really get an opportunity to learn that side of it. Same with the seafood, which was a bit of a shame but it was the best produce you could get at the time. We used to source it all from Cape Grimm.

So when you say like a dry aging program, I guess you do have to keep an eye on it. Is it a book or is it a computer program?

Basically what we do is we receive the beef from O'Connor and we like it to be slaughtered within three days of receiving it. Three or four days depending on what the conditions are. We'll tag all of that meat as it comes in, mark it by slaughter date when it went into the cabinet, what the cut is. And then we keep an eye on it as it ages because we're going to be losing moisture from it. It's going to be drying out and doing what it does to becoming more tender, more flavourful. We keep a record of it once we've processed it just so that we can accurately see what the yield's like. Otherwise you'll go in there and you'll be picking up bits of old beef every other day of the week and it's not very fun.

How often do you change the menu?

We try to go quarterly. We make small incremental changes depending on guest preferences and what's selling, what's not selling, whether we need to make some changes or whether produce becomes unavailable or if something better comes on the market. But quarterly is a rule of thumb. It's an extensive menu. There are 50 – 55 items on it. So the thing about changing 55 items is a lot of creative energy. We don't do that all the time.

No. And there are obviously favourites because you're a place with regulars. Where do you get that inspiration? Do you like cookbooks or do you look online?

I have a whole host of cookbooks that I look at to try and derive inspiration from. I try and eat out regularly. That helps as well to see what everybody else is doing. I love Gourmet Traveller. It's a little bit of a dirty secret of mine. I like going on there because they've got a lot of chef recipes as well and they do reviews for restaurants. So I find that is a good resource. And then just trying to work with the suppliers to see what they've got, what's going to be good, what's coming in, what's going out. And then we go from there really.

I imagine it's quite a challenge these days with the cost of everything. You are using really quality products and they have to look really good on the plate.

All the bells and whistles.

Exactly. But then you're also up against those margins. How do you balance that?

We try to price our menu items fairly. We purchase the best and we like to think that our guests expect the best from us and as a result, the best costs money. If you are discounting things, you're saying to them, look, this isn't really worth this and today I'm going to give it to you for a bit less because of whatever reason. For us we just try and price things fairly and we also like to think that one of the most important things is making sure that our suppliers are in business tomorrow and next year. So we're never going to try and screw them on price or anything like that. It's very important because we're all here to work together and to be in this for as long as possible.

And do you have a favourite dish on this menu?

I love the duck at the moment, which we're doing with a little sweet parsnip and a little ball of confit duck leg. Beautiful sauce with some candied orange and dried red shiso called yukari. It's delicious. We brine the ducks for two days and then we blanche them and then coat them in a maltose sort of coating, similar to Peking duck, but without all the blowing, it's just magnificent.

Delicious. I guess with all that in mind and your experience and so on and overseas, what would your advice be to a young person who was starting out as a chef?

Pedigree is probably one of the most important things that you can invest in. Invest in your, in yourself by trying to work at the best place possible and giving it a red-hot go. Because if you give up from the start, or if you settle from the start, you're doing yourself a disservice. And invest in your equipment and some good shoes: good shoes, good knives. Work hard at the best places that you can possibly. That's what I say.

Botanical Hotel, 169 Domain Road, South Yarra