Eddie Basich

Conversation with a chef: It's very summer Carnival out there, isn't it?

Eddie: You're not wrong. Very much so. I haven't been in town for a while. The weather hasn't been fantastic.

No, it's been a crazy summer. But now it has all gone into overdrive.

I see there's a cruise liner in as well, really summery. I've never been on one. I'm not really planning on going. But funnily enough, I was looking at working on one many years ago as I was in Bendigo and I was looking at coming back to Melbourne. My daughters were little at the time and I thought I needed to get back there. But then I thought, I want to do something else. Before I started doing my apprenticeship, I nearly joined the Navy. I've always been about boats and travel. My dad used to be a tuna fisherman in Port Lincoln. I was born in Fort Lincoln and so I've always loved boats and the ocean. And then I thought, what's a way of getting around and maybe getting paid. So when I was about 17, I went to the Defence Force in St. Kilda Road and had an interview. They told me once I was qualified and finished my time, I would be a cook, not a chef, and I wanted to be a chef. So I thought, you know what, I'll just work hard, finish my apprenticeship, and eventually I'll start traveling and doing what I want to do. Thats why later I thought about a cruise liner. I had the interview. It was on Skype for Royal Caribbean. They were based in Miami. I had an interview with the executive chef of the whole group. And he threw a few, how do you make this sauce, or whatever. Basically, I then just had the medical to do and something came up in Melbourne and I didn't really want to go away from the girls, but the position was great. It would have been sous chef, I would have had my own cabin. Anyway, I came close. That was in 2011.

The idea of working on a cruise ship fascinates me in the same way as when I've spoken to chefs who work in big hotels and then they travel all around the world to different hotels. It's obviously a really different life to working in a restaurant.

A lot of my career was working in big hotels. Before I started my apprenticeship, I did work experience through high school for a week at a place called Hotel Australia, which is Novotel on Collins Street now. It was the old school five-star hotel. It was grand for its day. The exec chef was Michael Sharp. He went from Executive chef to more of a manager role looking after setting up kitchens, well groomed, lean man. When I went in there, he was wearing the black jacket, with his name embroidered on it, neckerchief, black pants. And he was in the fish bowl, you know, he could see everything that was going on. That's who I wanted to be. Eventually I rang them, and I finally got that position and started my apprenticeship with Hotel Australia. That's where I learned the ropes and then went from there back into the big hotel chains.

One thing about those places is you can travel. It makes life a little easier. If you want to travel, it makes your life a little easier. I worked for a very short time with the executive chef of what used to be the Regent, now Sofitel, Wolfgang, a big Austrian guy. He was a company man. So when the Regent turned into Sofitel, he went to Berlin to work at the Regent there. Quite a few chefs that I know still do that. It's quite fascinating.

It sounds like at 17, you knew you wanted to become a chef. Was that something that, growing up you always knew you wanted to do?

I wasn't a big fan of school. I'd say a lot of chefs probably tell you they weren't. You mentioned you teach French and I wish I'd stuck to that because I would've done a lot better in college. But my background is I was born in Port Lincoln, South Australia, but I'm first generation Australian. My mum was born in Serbia, but she's from a Slovak background. And my dad's Bosnian. Mum's side of the family are all great cooks. I watched my grandma when she came to Australia to live with my grandfather, baking those poppy seed strudels. Then up north, where they come from, a little town, a lot of the wet dishes come from that area; goulashes, because you have Hungary and so on bordering that area. My uncle's a semi-retired hairdresser and he loves cooking. All their friends cooked, and there was a Czech gent called Michael, who lived in St. Kilda who handed me his knives down when he passed on. I grew up in Moorabbin and my next-door neighbours were Greek, so I had lamb on the spit. It was just wonderful growing up. That's where it really started. It was either, get into a trade and do something I liked a lot, or I was aspiring to become a good soccer player. My dad was. And hopefully play for the Socceroos and then one day for Man U, but it got to the point where school was just about to finish for me in Year 10 and I had to make a decision and cooking was my thing, which I love.

How do you maintain that love? I was just speaking to a chef earlier, and he was talking about having to have a hip replacement. It's a hard job and it's stressful. Lots of chefs talk about not being at family dos or giving up their evenings and weekends and so on. So for you to still say that you love it, what is it that you love about it?

You have to be a chef that evolves. I'm old school; we were chefs, we did apprenticeships, then you had your own apprentices. For me it is the adventure of educating not only other chefs, but teaching people how to eat, how to taste. But these are all things I learned along the way. Young apprentices who want to be chefs, I've got all time in the world for, and I just like to see the look on people's faces, when the food comes out of a kitchen. These days, I do a lot of private cooking. So I'll go to a private house – which I'm doing tomorrow in Ocean Break, and it's only six people this time, but sometimes it's 22 people – and I like going out there and watching when, say the Ligurian fish stew goes out through the door and passes a customer, and they're all looking up at you. And that puts a huge smile on my face thinking, you haven't even tasted it yet, but you can smell it and the look on your face, an then you eat it. I know what I'm like when I see something great. It doesn't matter if it's a pub or a cafe or a fine dining restaurant, but I look at it and go, wow, that's unreal. It gets me excited when someone's really interested. I go to people's houses and one of the first things you see is their cookbooks. Some of them are your typical Jamie Oliver but there might be others and I know that I've got a bunch of foodies. You can always convert them. My youngest daughter doesn't eat everything. She's not fussy. She just hasn't tried a few things.Slowly we'll build the taste buds up. I hated beer when I first started. Now I love it. And red wine. It's an evolution. We also have to keep learning every day. There are new things on the menu now, which sometimes I feel a little out of touch with and think, geez, what's that? Then I get on Google or go through my books.This is the 37th year of my being a chef. It's a long time and those aches and pains, you only feel them when you finish.

So you would've come up through the shouty chef, brigades era. Do you think things have changed in kitchens?

Things have changed. Some for the good and some not. I look at it this way. It's always been, and I hope your readers don't find this wrong, but I don't like to beat around a bush. It's a tough gig. It doesn't mean you have to abuse people and bully people or any of that sort of thing. But in the peak of service, there's not always please and thank yous and little pats on the back. If I've got a $60 or $70 a kilo Wagyu and someone burns it, and Jo's going to have to sit there and wait again in our high-end restaurant, I'm not going to be happy about it. It's not going to be, Hey, let's have a cuddle, and don't worry, Jo understands that you burnt that very expensive piece of meat. That's not how things work. I always make it very clear when someone comes in for an interview that it's tough. It's not always please and thank you, but if you do a good job, I'll be the first to buy you a drink and say, thanks team. You need a good team.

There are a lot of young chefs and cooks out there, and I was one of them a long time ago, who whack on that chef uniform and think everyone has to bow down to them. No, you earn your respect. And the way you earn your respect is to be transparent, straight down the line. Respect your staff, make your staff understand that sometimes they're not going to get a thank you or a please during service because we have to get it out. I remember working for a Michelin chef, Gary Rhodes in London, if I can say this, I got bollocked a lot. But it wasn't bullying, it was about perfection. And that's why the guy had a Michelin star, and that's why it makes you determined to create better. Standards are up. That's how I ran my brigades whether they were small ones, large ones, it didn't matter. If I had 20 chefs, which I have had in the past, I never bullied. I'd get upset. Simply because of the pressure, not because I was an arsehole. I have challenged people in the past where they've said, oh, can I come and work in your kitchen? And they go through the training and it might be the first service and they can't handle it. And that's that. Don't think it's that easy, because it's not.

You went to London. At what point did you decide that you wanted to go overseas?

Well, I wanted to travel when I was 17. It took me another 10 years to get there. I followed a partner over there. It was 1996. I did a bit of a round a world trip. I had never been overseas or anything, and London, I was only there for a few days. And then 12 months later, all of a sudden, I'm back there. I was on a working holiday visa. I worked around a few places, a couple of four-star hotels as well. I've got family in Europe in the Balkans, and I was hoping to either go to Vienna or perhaps Milan or something on the continent of Europe, but it just didn't work out. I didn't actually want to live and work in London because I came from a city. It didn't matter how big, it's still a city. I wanted to see England. So I went down south to Surrey and worked in a four star, one rosette hotel down there called the Burford Bridge Hotel. Then I did a bit of a trip, went to see the rellos, and then came back. I got stuck in London, but then Gary Rhodes came up and I never looked back. I just loved it. I just loved the experience. I didn't really know who he was at the time either. It wasn't until I sat in the office waiting for the interview and looked up and saw he had 10 books. It was everything that I always wanted to, to be. It was never just a job for me. It was always a career.

How long did you stay there?

Two and a half years was the European trip. The majority of that was in England and London itself. When you first get there, you find an agency and they find work. I don't like to move around too much. I wanted to settle in. And Gary Rhodeswas where I settled in for a year.

How high did you go up through the ranks?

When I got in there, I was a senior chef de partie. I was in charge of a section. I did all the garnishes and all the complements and learned to make the best pomme puree. Every section, fish section, hot larder, cold larder, pastry was on its own. We started off with about 22 chefs in that kitchen when we first opened. It was called Rhodes in the Square, Pimlico. By the time my visa was just about to go, there were 11. That's how they worked it; get more in and the strongest stay. As you said earlier, it's a tough gig. And once you get to that Michelin side of things, there is a lot of pressure, and it opened my eyes.

That's where I was educated on how to actually taste food properly. After being a chef for 10 years already, no one had taught me how to actually taste food.

What does that mean? Does that mean distinguishing different elements and being aware of what goes together?

In his other restaurant where I was doing induction training, his chef there, Wayne, had a stuffed pigs trotter, the pomme puree and a glaze. I had never tasted it. He said, rip into it and it was a massive thing on a fork. To be quite honest, I thought, you're taking the piss. Are you kidding me or what, mate? He said, shove that in your mouth. I did. I was struggling with the size of it, but he said, swirl it around, just like when we taste wine with the back of your tongues, and I started tasting the salts, the natural sugars, it's basically breaking down in your mouth, the elements. I've adopted that ever since. My youngest daughter, the first thing she does is to add salt. I always say, taste it first, then if you want to season it you can.Salt is an enhancer, and you have to be really careful how you put these things together. You build it up. For example, with the mashed potato. We used to do an emulsion, and I still do it, of butter, cream and milk. You warm it up and it's all done hot, otherwise you gets lumpy. Then a little bit of nutmeg in there, fresh is best, then you put the already mashed potato in to get it even fluffier, you add emulsion and every time you add the liquid, you add a bit of seasoning, but you then fold it in and then taste, and then layer it up. By the time it gets to the top, you've got probably the perfect match. That's how I was taught.

The only thing I don't use is cooking salt because it's too fine. It's hard to gauge, like icing sugar. You get a teaspoon of icing sugar and a teaspoon of regular sugar and the icing sugar is always going to be sweeter because it's so refined. But salt, whether it is from the Himalayas, or from Corio Bay over here, it's all salt, in my opinion. I was brought up with peasant style cooking. My mum used to use a lot of cooking salt when I grew up, it was just salt. It came in 10 kilo bags. And at Gary Rhodes, we didn't use this salt or that salt. We just used salt. It just depends on how you use it.

For pepper, I like using pink pepper in certain things, the foreshore here is covered in peppercorn trees, just help yourself. The green ones are a little bit stronger, which I, which I would use in a proper French style sauce. If I do pepper sauce, I like doing it properly. But it doesn't matter where you're getting it from, it's pepper. The supermarket has all that.

Did I see you also worked in Italy?

No, I didn't actually. I have done some cooking in the Balkans, with family, which again is very grassroots and I love that. My dad's side of the family originates from Bosnia Herzegovina. I'm non-practicing, but they are the Muslim side of the family, the Bosnian side. A lot of their cooking comes from the Ottoman Empire, the Turks. The Ottomans ruled that area for 600 years. There are a lot of big influences, so you get Turkish coffee, baklava. Recently I made a nice macadamia baklava with a Turkish coffee ice cream. I used Australian ingredients, the macadamias and made that into baklava and turned Turkish coffee into an ice cream instead of just baklava with coffee. They also use a pot with a lid called Sac that you put over charcoal and then you put charcoal on top of it, so it's like a little oven. That's where you make your borek and what we call pitta, and you can do slow cooking. That part of it was really interesting for me. So I didn't go there commercially to do any work, but, as I said, learning every day.

I saw on your Instagram that you'd visited the town where your name comes from.

Yes, my name's Basich. I have changed it. In the Balkans, the C usually has an accent. When I got married, I changed it just to make life a little easier. Where my actual grassroots from dad comes from is called Basici village. Unfortunately because of the war and everything else, a lot of it was ruined. That was the first time I got over there. It was only a year or so after the actual war. It only has about 30 people living there. There was a man there who was milking the cows, and he said, your uncle lived there and the school was there. I would've loved to have just been able to go there when it was all happening properly. It's 1500 years old.

When I went back to where my mum and uncle were born, I noticed the Slovaks were different people. They're really kind and friendly, happy people and of course great cooks. I got to spend a little bit of time in the actual house where my mum and my uncle were born and grew up in. You go in there and everywhere that you go, they give you a little glass of rakia, which is the Balkan moonshine, and again, comes from the Turks. I was at my cousin's farm and it was a Sunday I remember. Most people ride a bike, and they're all in their dresses, this was 98, I think it was, and I remember church had just finished and they were all riding their bikes and it was really strange, my heart felt full. I felt like I was home. I didn't feel that as much with where dad came from. But then in Montenegro where the family all live, even though I wasn't in the area where dad was born, I actually felt as though I was at home. I really miss it. I felt that I really belonged. My auntie is still alive and my uncle, my uncle is 94 years old and still kicking on. They have great lives, even though they've had wars, they don't stress. They're laid back. The only stress you've got is trying to get into Kotor with all the tourist cars. They eat well, and nearly everything is off the land as well, which is something that I love. I'm a Melbourne boy, but I've worked in regions because I'm interested in what comes off the land. I love what comes off the land because living in Moorabbin we used to have a big veggie garden in the backyard. We had chooks and all sorts of things as well. I love that part. My auntie when she was stronger back then, had a cow and the cow was milked, so we had fresh milk, untouched. It was so rich. Eggs were a hundred per cent free range, not 15 minute free range. They'd make feta cheese. I'd never tasted food like that. It was fantastic. My cousin has basically got a little mini winery and he makes red wine out of a French variety grape. It's as good as any Merlot I've ever tasted. I had fun, let's put it that way.

How long have you been doing the private chef thing?

I wish I knew about it 20 years ago. I've been doing it since about 2011. I was doing it on and off in between head cheffing and exec cheffing here and there. In recent times Ive gone fully with it. We bring a fine dining restaurant to you. It's been great. The stressful part is the shopping. The I get there and thats it.

Do you take your own cooking tools?

I always do. The deal is the client will order off your menu. They have to set up the tables and then we come in with the produce, most of it is raw produce, so it's actually cooked there. Some things you can't physically do that, and you have to pre-prepare and bring in. Then we serve it. I'll introduce each course and they'll ask me, where did it come from? I'll let them know where things come from and they're really intrigued because when you go to a supermarket, it says Australian lamb, but you don't really know exactly where it comes from. I love entertaining. I love being in front of people and not showing off, but sometimes they have kids as well, and the kids are intrigued, and they get to see this guy come in with a chef uniform and waiters. Sometimes I'll do it all on my own. It's a lot of fun. I love it.

It's a lovely thing to bring fine dining into someone's home. I think it's such a treat for people to have that in their own comfortable surroundings.

That's right. I did one for New Year's Eve in Torquay and they had little kiddies, and there was extra pancake mix from the desert. I said, here, here's some pancakes for the kids. It's very laid back. It's not stuffy. I've been to some fine dining restaurants where I think, the food is good, but the service is really stuffy because sometimes I've noticed, especially in the nineties, and early two thousands, some of these boys and girls that work in there think they are the bee's knees. One thing I also learned when it came to the waiting staff that opened my eyes up when I was in Europe. When I was at the Burford Bridge Hotel, for instance, my maitre d' was French and we had another maitre d' who was Italian. They were career floor staff and that makes a huge difference. If I take wait staff with me, I train them up. Even if it's my daughter. She's only very young and she's getting better at things. She did her first fine dining the other day with another lady, and she's doing terrifically. She's going to learn to carry three plates now. I think it's up to the owner/managers to be able to train people. A lot of people these days just get thrown in.

With all your experience in mind, what would your advice be to a young person starting out as a chef?

It would've been an easy question a long time ago, and it's become a hard question now. If your heart's in it, it's something you really want to do, then go for it. But you have to learn to look beyond. There are a lot of TV chefs and you have to look beyond that. Everything's prepared on TV. I've been on TV so I know how it works. When you get into the real kitchen,and you get someone like myself, you will be educated, you'll be taught. So you have to be patient. You're going to have to put up with a lot of rubbish, a lot of shit. Don't expect to go and cook steaks, you have to learn from the bottom. It doesn't mean you have to be a kitchen hand. I wasn't a kitchen hand when I started, but I was peeling carrots and peeling potatoes and saying, yes, chef. Start at the bottom and work your way up. If you get to the top right away, it's a harder fall. Work hard, be patient. Do an apprenticeship and stick at it because it can take you places. Money-wise, it is a lot better than what it was back in my day. It's long hours. Be wary though also, because a lot of people out there do take the wee wee out of you. Work with a chef who is passionate. They have to be passionate. If you don't sense that in your gut, try somewhere else. But once you find the right place, stick at it because it will take you places. It's taken me Europe and if I wanted to go anywhere else, I could. Even now, at my age, and I'm an old bugger now, I could go to the Balkans and buy a guest house and do my private dining in the guest house on the Adriatic Sea somewhere, or in Sardinia on the Mediterranean. So, stick at it because it can take you a long way.

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