Elia Donati

Thank you Elia, for being with me today. It's really lovely for you to come all the way over to me. What were you doing today?

I am working at a deli as well at the moment for a couple of reasons. One is that this year it has been a little bit more quiet and also it has given me the chance to get into finally making my products. That was the move that got me into the place I'm now using to manufacture the products that I'm coming out with, except for the coffee, which is made on another site.

What are the products that you're making?

I'm making my chimichurri which is a Latin American inspired vinegary dressing. It's liquid you put on steak usually and my own version of tzatziki, caponata and another garlic one, which is nowhere on the shelves. So until it is out, that's all I can say.

Are they based on family recipes or recipes that you've come up with yourself?

Actually, they embody exactly my story in Australia. I came here and I started working in the industry and learning from this person, that person, this chef, that chef. I guess that whole mix made my way of cooking. And I have a Latin American girlfriend, so that is also a lot of influence. That's where the chimichurri comes from.

I was reading in your bio that you really loved food from a young age and you would watch your Nonna and your mum cook. Tell me a little bit about growing up. What region are you from?

I'm from a place called Savignano sul Rubicone. It looks like Red Hill in Mornington. It's not far from the sea and it's a winery area, so I'm completely surrounded by vineyards and there's this huge medieval castle where they make the wine. The name of the castle is Ribano, which is why the coffee's called Ribano. I was born in a place where my friends were far away because I didn't have a bike or anything. I only had a couple of friends nearby, and I had a lot of nature and I could have all those outdoor experiences. That was my upbringing. I have two brothers and even though we all grew up in the same environment with the same parents, with the same Nonnas, obviously with a few years gap, but not that many, I'm the only one that ended up being a chef. One of my brothers is a pizza maker, but it's a bit different from being a chef. It was me who was a bit more interested in food, so it wasn't just the environment, although definitely the environment also played a big role. My mum would cook, my dad would cook, my Nonna will cook. It was very normal. It's actually the opposite. It wasnt normal to buy takeout, apart from pizza. Also, restaurants in my area never had sushi until I was maybe 14 or 15. It was later on when these kinds of things started popping up a little bit more everywhere. It definitely was a change when I came here, being able to eat all different kinds of cuisines and learn to cook different cuisines as well.

Did you train as a chef in Italy or not until you came here?

I only cooked at home. Mostly I was working with my dad, which had nothing to do with cooking. Then I wanted to learn English and have an experience, so I chose Australia. It was far away and seemed like a pretty good challenge, so I took it on and I loved it. But my nonno found me a job and nine months later, I was back in Italy, but after two months I had fallen in love with Australia already and I was not able to see Italy with the same eyes after that. I said, no, I want to go back and I came back to Melbourne and focussed on getting the visa. The rest is my process of going through different restaurants and learning from different people. So to answer your question, that was when I started training as a chef and that's when I started working in different places and also learning from practice.

That's great. It's interesting because maybe I shouldn't generalise, but I feel as though a lot of Italian chefs come here and they really want to cook the food from their home. So a lot of them just stick to Italian food. But it sounds like you've really explored lots of different cuisines, which is really great.

Thanks for picking up on that. I love Italian food. It gets a bit boring because you've seen it your whole life. And here we've got different ingredients, different quality as well. So it's good to explore, to change, to do something different. Find your own way with the ingredients that you find here, rather than just try to stick to however it's supposed to be made as if it's a law.

No, well that's right. I lived in France for a year, and I think they're very similar in France with the way that they do things, according to rules and the way that they've always been done.

When you first came here and you were exposed to those different kinds cuisines, was there anything that surprised you?

Asian. I had no idea about the herbs, the spices. For me it was like I had landed on another planet, I was smelling this, I don't know, mint from Vietnam, you know, they've got so many variety, so many colours, so many flavours. I was amazed. I'm Celiac as well, so definitely exploring a cuisine that is so focused on using gluten-free ingredients was a lot more useful for me and so a lot more interesting. And since the very first job, I was already influenced by Asian culture. My English was so bad and this guy finally calls me – I had to pay rent the day after, and I had a hundred dollars in my account – and he says, can you start today? Blah, blah, blah, blah. I couldn't understand the rest. I said I cannot hear, because I couldn't understand, so I told him, "Text, text." That was my dodgy way to try to get a job without showing that my English was so bad. So he texted me the address, I got there, I started, and I was cooking charcoal chicken, and they were doing Asian at the back. Lemon grass was the first thing I saw and I had no idea what it was. It looks like a spring onion, but it's too hard. It was very interesting, also coriander, all of these things.

I remember when I first moved here from New Zealand in 2011, and I was living over in West Footscray and I went to the Footscray Market and I couldn't believe all of the different vegetables and fruits and all those Asian cuts of meat and everything as well.

But even avocado. Here it is something that you can see everywhere. In Italy for us, we don't import much. And if there are some on the shelves, it's really expensive. It's more like in a delicatessen and something that you buy every now and again. It's not something we have on the table every day, contrary to Latin America, they definitely always have avocado and all these fruits available.

Well, in Australia, I mean, that's what everyone's spending all their income on, isn't it? Smashed avocado on toast. Australia's delicacy. Apart from Asian food, what were some other kinds of cuisines?

From Asian, I went to an American restaurant, and they were doing slow cooked ribs. I stuffed up a huge batch of barbecue sauce the first time they let me do something.

What did you do?

It was all in American measuring units. So I stuffed it up big time, but they sort of fixed it anyway. So I was just slightly introduced into that world as well, and I thought it was awesome. I didn't know anything really about low and slow and all the stuff that they do in America and all of that. I travelled with a van after that, so not much cooking. Then I went to Gold Coast to do pizzas, and then when I came back to Melbourne, I was here in Saint Kilda doing salads. I started from the very basics and I feel like I was one of the last ones, in one of the last generations going through the tough part of hospitality where you were treated like shit all the time and you mean nothing. And before you can even think of asking if you can cook a steak, you have to learn 75 languages and know how to cook every single cuisine in the world. They make it seem like it's the biggest responsibility in the world, so they keep you doing this small stuff. Luckily the industry now has changed a lot. They realize they cannot treat people like that anymore, and they give people chances.

I hope so. Do you think it has changed?

A lot. That's definitely the case here and there. But also people have changed as well. Now they tolerate this a lot less. They know they've got options more than they used to have. After that I worked in a cafe, and this was interesting because it was just a cafe, but they were doing a $10 special and it was different every single day. Only fine dining restaurants do that. The trouble they were going through just to have a different item every single day was incredible in this tiny little kitchen. They were Asian, but they were cooking a little bit of everything. I got to see so much in there, basic Japanese, basic Thai, Chinese, so many recipes. We did Italian in there as well. And after that Spanish. So I've tried different things. I was a butcher for almost a year too.

I wanted to ask you about that. I think that's a really great idea. You really understand then where the cuts of meat are coming from, don't you? And how to treat them.

I think a chef that likes meat should have the knowledge, that skill of breaking down the carcass and understanding where every piece comes from and what it's supposed to be and how it's supposed to be cooked.

When I've spoken to chefs who grow their own vegetables and then cook them, they talk about how the level of respect they have for the food increases. And I feel it must be similar when you are butchering a whole animal. You would have a bit more respect about where it came from maybe rather than when it just arrives already in bits.

A hundred per cent. I have seen so many people change because they go through that process. The mind just shifts. The meal means so much more than the same meal, but opened from plastic. Funny you say that. I've got into that as well this year. I've started growing my own vegetables. I think it's a bit of a disaster. But it's a skill I'm learning.

How much space do you have?

I've got a lot of space now. Finally. Considering I lived in an apartment for 10 years. I did not realize every tomato plant harvests up to 11 kilos of tomato. I thought they would make maybe 10 tomatoes each plant. I bought six plants. Im going to have 60 kilos of tomatoes.

But that's good. And you can make all kinds of things with tomatoes, can't you?

Absolutely. Hopefully. I put them too close to one other. There's a lot of learning there. But you know, it's a first attempt and it'll go better next year for sure.

And it'll be so satisfying to eat the vegetables youve grown.

Oh my god. It is. And you know what my accountant, he has never done something like that. And the other night he called me and he said, bro, you need to come over because we also hang out a little bit. We smoke cigars every now and again together, and he said, come, come, come, we bought this spit, we put the lamb on it. Can you believe we went to the market, we got the lamb, we put it on the spit. For me, it's normal, but for someone like that, it's not. And the fact that he made it, he turned on the fire, he waited for it, he cooked, and went through the process. He was, oh, this is the best lamb I've ever eaten, you know what I mean? That changes everyone's perspective because you have made it almost from scratch, obviously, he didnt butcher the lamb, but that's already enough. It's so important. If I may just quickly say this as well, one of the things I'm trying to do in one of my side projects, Cooking Bonds, is to help people strengthen their bond within the family through food.

What a great idea.

Thank you. And this is one of the main points, around which the whole idea develops. Even the kids. We believe that if they're more involved throughout the process, even just from choosing the fruits and vegetables at the supermarket, they'll probably be more interested or a little bit of cooking, whatever they can do. Rather than just having the plate of things in front of them already. I think it's very important point.

I spoke to the French chef Gabriel Gate a few months ago and he said a really similar thing. And he thinks that all parents should be passing their love of food on, whether it is picking the fruit or chopping up some things, but becoming involved because I think there are some generations that have missed out on being in touch with food and cooking food. I think there are lots of people who for convenience-sake and time-wise, are just buying pre-made food. And then their kids don't really get to learn that pleasure.

We are also being desensitized from the act of killing an animal. That's why a lot of people are more sensitive to and more inclined to being vegan or this sort of thing. Maybe because we don't live that kind of experience anymore. But we have created it because we want to go to the supermarket and find every single cut of meat at any given time. So we have created a situation where there is a mass production or a mass massive wastage of everything. And we don't see the whole process. But if you've got those animals, you use every single bit, I assure you it's a very different experience.

So how does that work in this project of yours? How do you have access to those families? Do they approach you?

I am almost ready to open the first version of my course, which will be more of a pilot version to give to people and to get feedback to see if we are going in the right direction. If we are actually onto something. They might have questions we didn't even think of. We will have the course or something ready and you'll be able to see it on my social media; Instagram. I've got the link in the bio to Cooking Bond, which is a different profile, but I'll also post it in my main Instagram profile. As I said before, I want people to bond through food because I felt like I had that and that a lot of people dont. People are busy. They get home, they don't have time to spend with their kids. But like my mum said, well, bad luck. That's your time with your kids and you also have to cook, so make that the time with the kids.

You seem to be very busy. How do you fit all this in? You're also a private chef!

I know. Well, we don't have kids, so we definitely have a lot of time on our hands and we feel like we want to go down this path for now, to set up our life in this way.

Is your partner also in hospitality?

No. She does help me out, but she has a small business. They do shows and they dance and she's a model as well. So actually one of the concepts we will do from next year will be themed dinners, which is something that I haven't seen anywhere. I'm a bit tired of trying to sell something as unique, but it's not unique because other chefs are actually doing it.So I found this way which makes sense because I help their business. They help my business. And together we provide something new. And for example, it could be a horror night, but you don't just get someone to show up and dance thriller Michael Jackson and then they go away, the whole night is horror, lighting, everything, the look of the wait staff, the look of the chef, the look of the food, the look of everything transports you and from the time it starts, to the time we go away, it's a horror theme night. It's a whole experience.

And what would the food look like? What is horror food?

Well, there's definitely some things that could taste really good but look like horror food. The first thing that pops in my head is chicken feet. They look a little bit terrifying. But no, it doesn't have to be a menu that nobody wants to eat, it also has to be something really appealing. I'm still working on it.

But currently, I saw that you cater for small dinner parties up to canapes for a hundred people. Do you do that full range? Is that happening?

No. I guess it was me testing the market a little bit. Obviously I have to stay in my lane and I want to stay in my lane. And my lane is more like below what the catering companies do. They do big numbers and they do it a lot easier, a lot more efficiently. I don't enjoy doing that. If I've got someone that I know and they want it from me, I'm very happy to do it. But I like the smaller groups because I can give more of me, more of an experience. When there's too many people and especially if they are drinking, they lose that part of the experience. 10 people, 15 people, even two people. It's awesome. For me, it's very enjoyable work.

And you prefer that to working in a restaurant?

A hundred per cent. As a Personal Chef, I've got that human connection; I get a lot more appreciation. I get offered a drink most of the time, which is sometimes hard because I am not eating anything and some people they just keep offering drink after drink. But no, the whole vibe is so much more enjoyable, at least for me. You show up, the music starts, the party starts, the whole thing is great.

It's real hospitality, isn't it? You're there with them and it sounds like that's what you love from growing up with food and so on as well.

That's why I think I'm more in the business of entertainment than hospitality.

How many different things are you doing now?

The private chef is the main focal point and that one has my name on it. And then I've got my products, the coffee and the products that I said before. And the theme nights are an extension of the private chef thing. The other one is Cooking Bond, which is the project I was talking to you about earlier. The deli thing is more of a job that I've been doing for the past months just to fill in the weeks.

So how busy would you be? Are there seasons for catering?

A little bit. Now its December. It's a lot busier than other months. It has been hard for me to understand how it goes because every year is different. Two years ago on February I was busier than the previous December. December I had 15 to 16 dinners. And then two months after, in February, I had 24. I don't know why. But then this year in February, it was a disaster. I was expecting to be at least busy, not as busy, but at least busy and it was a complete disaster. There has been a lot of learning on the entrepreneurial side for sure.

You've covered lots of different areas in terms of jobs. You're running your own business and you're entrepreneurial as well. What would your advice be to a young person who is thinking about becoming a chef?

Well, first of all, they need to see if they like it in a professional way, because liking to cook for your friends on a Sunday is very different to doing 70 hours a week of only that and very long hours that don't let you really socialise a lot. Unless you do it in a different way. If you want to be a private chef, I suggest you do it once you are very confident with your skills and training. Obviously there's always a line. If you're confident, start, don't wait until you are a celebrity chef, but not if you're just starting out, because people probably can tell and a lot of things happen. It's not like in a restaurant. It's not easy to control everything in other people houses. There are a lot of things that happen. And if you haven't had that professional training that makes your head ready to solve problems, you might struggle a little bit. Literally every time I do a dinner there is something unplanned that happens, small or big. Either the oven doesn't heat up as much or they don't have fry pans or the ones they have are horrible or things like that. Anything.

Do you go to their kitchen first to see what they've got? Or do you just turn up on the night and hope for the best?

Good question. If I know there's a bit a particular cooking process I need, I either bring my pot or pan or whatever I need, or I ask before if they've got certain things. When it's an Airbnb, I know it's pretty much a bit of a problem every time. So I try to cover myself with a few things. For example, if they've got 30 people over, I might bring my big wok, my big pot, because I know if I turn up and they've got a tiny pot, I'm not going to be able to cook pasta for all those people and to toss it like I'm supposed to do. But if you forget to do that or if something happens, you still have to make it happen. If you have to cook it in the oven to make it happen, cook it in the oven. That's what I mean.

You're right. I mean, you have to have that knowledge to be able to work with what you've got.

Absolutely. Or sometimes they come up to you and they say, I've got this, this, this and that on top of what you brought, can you make something with it? It feels a little bit like a TV show. Things go wrong. Maybe the eggs you brought don't whip up like they're supposed to or they are smaller, so need more and so the dough you're making isn't right, all these little things. If you've done it many, many times, it's a lot easier. Also, the quantities; even for me at the start, I used to buy a lot more because I thought I needed more and then I realized how much people eat and I can budget a lot better.

Do you have a favourite meal that you like to either cook or eat?

Oh, steak.

Oh that was easy.

That is absolutely the best thing for me.

That you cook yourself? Or do you like going out and having other people's steak?

Both. I eat steak all the time. I'm sure you can tell.

How do you like it?

I like it medium rare. But I think that most of the time restaurants have their steaks in the fridge, so then it's hard to cook it medium rare properly. So I ask for medium. I believe the best trick you can ever do to cook the best steak, apart from using really good quality salt and pepper is to have it on the kitchen bench for at least one or two hours, depending on the weather where you are. Like now in Melbourne, probably 15 minutes. It has to be room temperature. I think once you've done that, you are halfway to cooking an amazing steak and restaurants, they have to keep them in the fridge so sometimes it's harder for them to not burn it and cook it to your liking. But you get used to the place you go. If you ask for medium and it's medium rare, just keep asking medium. As long as it works.

That's right. And what are you going to have for dinner tonight?

Ah, tonight, it's a good question. Actually, I've got steak; scotch fillet, which is my favourite cut. I like Angus, with a little bit of marbling. If I can, I always cook on charcoal because it's the best. I'm trying to eat less carbs, so no potatoes, something green. And definitely wine. You know, when you go to Macca's, you cannot not have the burgers, the coke and the chips. If you don't have one of those three, your mouth is not happy. Hopefully it's not just me. It's missing something. Steak and wine for me, they just complement each other.

So, great. Thanks so much. Well, enjoy your dinner tonight and thanks so much for your time coming today.