Alessandro Tintori

Hi, Alex you, nice to meet you.

Thanks for coming. I was just finishing up lunch and we were a bit under the pump today but it was good also.

How's it been going?

Good. It's the end of the third week now and we have started to settle in finally. The soft opening is over. We are getting busier. The guys in the kitchen are trained properly, so it's good. Just a lot of hours to get to that point.

That was a really great article, the Good Food article in The Age.

Yes. It was fantastic and a bit unexpected, so it was very exciting.

I've been telling everyone that I've been coming to talk to you today. One of my colleagues at school said he was across the road last night and he said he looked over and it just looked like it was so much fun. Everyone was outside and it just had that really great ambiance. So he's going to come back and come here.

I hope so. We don't want make a place thats uptight and intimidating. That's not what we wanted. Its not extreme fine dining, or anything like that. This culture of Italian food is, it's friendly at the end of it, theres nothing particularly complicated. That was the idea behind buying the project; playing with Italian food, having a bit of fun with native ingredients, Australian ingredients, together with my passion for fermentation. Thats how the project started.

I was interested in the wording in the article that you want to make Melbourne another region of Italy. Tell me a bit more about that.

I didn't expect they were going to put it in the article, but that actually was the idea. When I'm thinking about Italian food, it's all about regional food. It's all about local produce. I grew up in the countryside on a little farm with my grandfather, my parents and a large family. Everything was sourced locally. My grandparents farm their own animals and produce their own food most of the time. Thats what Italian food culture is all about; sourcing locally.

What region was that?

I am from Tuscany, the heart of Tuscany. I don't think it's nice to keep importing food from Europe. I think it makes more sense sourcing locally. I feel that I am respecting Italian culture or food culture generally by using the local stuff rather than putting out a piece of prosciutto that has been shipped over here on a plane. I don't see the point anymore in doing that.That's why I try to focus in on local salami, local cheese, apart from Parmigiano, Balsamic vinegar, I try to get everything local. Thats what the idea of treating Australia like an Italian region is. It is more of a philosophy. When we cook Italian regional foods, it is unthinkable that we are getting anything from France, Germany, or anywhere, because you can find it locally and that's the idea behind the place.

I really like that idea and I think that it is a philosophy, isn't it? I think sometimes people talk about authentic food and that you can only use food from a region, but then in an authentic situation, as you say, it is about regionality and terroir and reflecting where you're from. It makes total sense to me. So, you are using the techniques and the ideas of Italian food, but you're using local produce?

To me it just makes more sense than importing everything. Obviously, it's a bit of challenge finding the right produce, or the high quality can be a bit of a struggle on the cheese side because cow cheeses in Australia are fantastic. The sheep cheeses are not as good, unfortunately yet as the French and Italians, but it doesn't matter, it is work in progress and I prefer supporting the locals. We are working with farms like Spurrell Foraging, for example, who make amazing produce, Ramarro Farm as well. Theres also another farm down near the Mornington Peninsula, Cafresco in Frankston, who have all the organic produce and we're getting stuff from those guys. The same story for meat producers, we are sourcing everything as locally and as small as possible.I alternate 2 producers for beef, Angus MB4 from Ranger Valley, one of the very few Angus to have a high marble score, or Jacks Creek beef, north of Melbourne,the pork is from Western Plains Pork near Ballarat,Margra Lamb is from NSW often people refer to as the wagyu of lamb. This lamb is hormone and antibiotic free and raised in lush green pastures with no exposure to feedlots. They have a wool-free coat so they don't produce lanolin, a natural oil found in the wool of other breeds that can adversely affect the flavour of the meat. The duck is from Aurum in the Moorabool Valley. The goat is sourced from Chris Cartwright who used to have the farm in Victoria, but he had to relocate to South Australia.Its a bit harder working that way, but it's also more rewarding and you can tell the difference on the plates. It's all about that. I think it's just getting very good produce and treating it with respect. Sometimes it does all the job.

Tell me about the menu. Is it a large menu or a tight menu? What are you doing?

It sounds a bit of a cliche, but when it comes down to food, it's always a cliche because it's been said over and over. I like to work with seasons. It's very important. As I said, I grew up on a little farm and you really see the season as they go. I want keep with that, so Ill change the menu very often, like once a month, every six weeks, I keep changing. Even this menu, stone fruit season is coming so we will update it compared to what I'm using now, which is greens, like pea, broad beans. It's a small menu and we work with the seasons.

So, what are some highlights for this season?

To be honest, my favourite season is autumn, for some reason.

Mushrooms!

Mushrooms, chestnuts, grapes. But spring is as good as it gets. You've got all the spontaneous herbs, which I love. For example, I forage the white garlic flowers, I get the white cabbages. I do it all myself. I love it. I learned from my grandparents and I keep doing it myself. That's why I like also autumn because you can go foraging your own mushrooms. But speaking of spring right now, all the wild herbs are in season now, obviously pea, broadbeans, sugar snaps, all the good greens, it's fantastic. Now it's getting to the point where the tomatoes are getting very good. It gets to the point where, as I said, stone fruits are about to arrive, so peaches, apricots, it just keeps the challenge going. I try to save something from each season, by preserving it. Like for this season I preserved a lot of wild garlic flowers, I pickled some, and I fermented some.

And what will you use that for later?

Garlic flower goes pretty much with everything. It's garlic, I use it with raw meats, like carpaccio or tartare. Raw seafood, I really like the way they go together, it's very pleasant.

Is the garlic flower stronger than garlic or more floral? What do you like about it?

It's a bit different, obviously the smell, it's very like garlic. So imagine, when you're walking in the springtime, along the creek you can see them everywhere and just smell garlic. But once you are actually having them, it's like light garlic, like when you blanche garlic over and over to make a lighter, it's the same flavour. Its very natural. Once you blanche the stems, they are bright green, which is obviously very pleasant to the eye as well. Right now I'm matching it with the burrata. I do peas, a white garlic emulsion and I mix that on the bottom of the plate with the burrata over the top. The cheese and garlic go very well together. It's classic.

Did I read that there was perhaps, I don't want to say, pressure, but there was a desire perhaps to keep some things on the menu from the previous owner, like the coteletta?

Yes. There was a bit of a debate at the beginning because we did some shifts with the previous owner, Maurice, he was showing the place around introducing us to the locals. He had a very strong signature menu and he suggested that we keep some of the signature dishes. But I don't believe much in signature dish dishes. I like to play with the season and if something is no longer seasonal, theres no point to me to keeping it anymore. Obviously some dishes are more popular than others. There was always the fried calamari on the menu or the beef coteletta or spaghettini with crab, which are very solid dishes. But I'm opening my own place. I want do my own menu, but at the same time, I have to keep in consideration the locals. People have come here for years and sometimes they have expectations and want you to match them. So I started to play a bit with the menu. Instead of beef coteletta, I do a swordfish cotoletta. I took a classic dish from Sicily, which is a swordfish puttanesca with tomato, capers and olives and I made it in a more modern way. It has been very popular. Nobody has complained at all. The same story with the crab spaghettini. I've been playing for the last couple of years, at Il Bacaro with bone marrow and shellfish. So it's a combination that I've been using a bit. I use it with scampi, I use it with prawns, and coming here, we found there was a crab spaghettini signature dish, so I just mixed the bone marrow with the spanner crab and just turned out fantastic, so it's a part of the menu. It's not going to be there forever, but it's going to be there for a while.

How long were you at Il Bacaro?

Six years. It was a while. It was very good. A fantastic experience.

Yes, well working with David, and I see that you did quite a few collaborations. I saw you worked with Aurum Poultry, so great experiences.

Yes, I moved there after, finishing at Grossi. I did my sponsorship there and Grossi can be very challenging and intense. I just needed a moment to relax a bit. I moved from head chef there to chef de partie. I said, look guys, I want to be there for a few months, relax a bit and then see what to do. Things kept rolling and they put me in charge of the kitchen eventually and I stayed there. It was fantastic. Honestly, I would've still been there if I wasn't opening up my own place. Working there was very, was very good. I loved it. I loved the team, I loved the management.

Whenever I mention Il Bacaro, people say, oh, it's my favourite restaurant. So obviously things are being done right there because people love it, don't they? Where did it all start for you? You learned to be a chef in Italy?

Yes. While I was at school, I was just looking for a summer job. I started in a bakery because my auntie was working there. That was a very hard job to be honest, working at night and things like that. I started to like the baking parts, but I didn't like the night shift, so I said, well, maybe Ill start to work in a kitchen now. The summer after I started to work as a dishie and I ended up in this high end hotel in my hometown. Again, it's a bit of a cliche, but when you step in there as a dishie, you see the kitchen is very disciplined. The food was amazing and everyone was acting almost like an orchestra, working at the same pace and the kitchen is very organised, which I found fascinating. Then, the chef used to say to say to me, start with your eyes, look at what we are doing and you can learn in that way. And I started to do that. So when I was washing dishes, I started to see what they were doing and eventually I started to do some little prep jobs. From there, forget about Uni, I just wanted to be a chef and that's it. I saved enough money eventually to move overseas.I went to London for a couple of years with some big restaurants there. London can be a very, very tough town to work, long hours.

When was that?

That was 2008 2010, so two years there. In high end restaurants, it's eight o'clock in the morning to the middle at the night. There are a lot of similar stories from many different chefs.

Was it Italian food?

Yes, Modern Italian. I experimented with a bit of Asian food here in Melbourne. I tried, I worked at an Asian place for a little bit before Grossi, but I found out that it wasn't for me. I had to reset my palate from the beginning, to learn all the new produce. I thought, I'm going to stick to what I know better.

From London, did you go back home again and then come here?

From London, I went back home for about six months, to start to organise my trip to Australia. I came to Australia, six months in Sydney. I was working close to Kings Cross, in Wolloomooloo. There was a lovely Italian restaurant I don't think is there anymore. But it used to be a very good place to work with a big balcony on the bay. I think it was one or two chef hats back in the days. It was a beautiful for six months, but eventually my, my time there was over, I moved to Melbourne and I started to work in a restaurant that's not there anymore at 101 Collins Street called The Italian. Again, a big restaurant, solid hats, a lot of working, , at the end of the year obviously I travelled around. I really liked the country, but didn't find a reason to stay at that time. So I went back to Italy and did a year there. I worked in a local Michelin star where I was. Then the old owner gave me a call after six months and said, if you want to be sponsored, we have a job for you. I was doing 80 hours a week, six days a week, so I come back here and things have kept rolling since then.

What made you come here in the first place? Why Australia?

It sounds silly, but I used to read a lot as a kid, a lot of books. I always liked books about travel and from London it was probably was the furthest place. I wanted to go to the furthest place and I looked at the map and thought, yes, that's far enough. And at the time it was just getting very popular with working holidays, so I came here more as a challenge, more for the experience than anything. And I really loved it.

Well, obviously you're invested in it now because you're an owner.

I became a citizen during the lockdown actually. It's been 12 years, so it's been a while. I haven't lost my thick accent.

No, well I haven't lost my thick New Zealand accent either. How does it feel owning a place? What's the difference between being a head chef and now being a head chef owner?

So far, it's 50% excitement, 50% stress. Obviously, the mindset is different now. I have to think about, not only the food, but other parts of the business. I've always been involved in costing the produce, but now Im doing it more careful. The kitchen was already there, but we did a quick renovation of the kitchen too because we were missing a bit of equipment in there. And obviously a pretty big part of my time is spent on menu creation. So I guess now it's about making sure the restaurants is running correctly and we are making money and then we can start investing more money into the kitchen. It's a different game, a different mindset.

You've been a chef for a few years now, so you've got a wealth of experience and it sounds as though you're really inspired by the seasons and by produce. Where else do you look for inspiration? Do you look at Instagram or cookbooks?

As I said, I used to read a lot of books and I still do, but obviously a different kind of reading now, more food books. I still find the best inspiration from cookbooks rather than social media. Social media always has a filter on so you can't really see the real thing. I prefer stories of other chefs, the way they work and the way they achieve something, and I can make it mine. I never try to copy a dish. That is very disrespectful to someone. But you can always get inspired by someone else's story, someone else's produce or someone else's experience. You get inspired by others. Kitchens become a big community, the knowledge is all out there. You just need to put it together and make it yours in your own way, always bring a bit of your personal experience into it. The menu here is a bit of my Italian background, a bit of local produce, a bit of my obsession for fermentation at the moment and it all comes together.

Do you have lots of notebooks? Do you write things down? Or is it all in your head?

It's a bit of both. Sometimes I just read a book and take notes and then it comes together. I have notebooks everywhere. And I look at them at different times in the year and the same notes can bring up different ideas

Do you think about food 24/7?

Oh, 23/7. Normally. It's a big part of the job, of course. When you are in the kitchen, you don't really have time to think about the creative parts. So when I'm cyling home or out foraging my produce, then I start thinking in that way. I was looking at the produce list to see what's available and then I organise the menu around that. Otherwise you are forcing things if you think of a dish first and then look for the produce. You never work with the best produce when you do it that way. So I look at the produce first and then I create the menu around that. It's the best way to do it, I think.

I was going to ask you before, so I'm kind of jumping back now, but, I know that in France – I lived in the south of France for a year – made all these amazing friends who would invite me for dinner and it was all very seasonal, so when it was asparagus season, for example, and I'd always stop and wait and watch how they did things, because there's always a way of doing things in France. They would get their plate and they would put, their fork upside down underneath it so it made a slope and a little lip and they would make a little vinaigrette in that and then take each spear and dip it in and eat it. Or eating artichokes, they would eat all around the leaves and then have the heart at the end. Is it the same in Italy? Do you have those kinds of particular ways of doing things?

Yes. Food is a celebration at the end of the day, you are around the table. It's where everything happens in a family. I don't know how to describe it, but yes, everything has its own way. Growing up on a farm, the season brings food and food brings work and it's all a chain of things and you end up to celebrating the produce. So when it's summertime, it's time for tomatoes. You're making passata, salsa, and all the family gets involved in it. There is a very specific way to do it. There is a reason it has always been done that way and it works. It's a tradition that is, and it's going along. When it comes to autumn, you have olives and wines. So you're making oil and wine. It's done in that way for a specific reason and it keeps the tradition going.

It's very community based, isn't it? I love that idea. I don't feel as though we have that so much in the English or Anglo-Saxon culture of people coming together to make passata or salumi. I really like that everyone comes together to do that.

All the neighbours come to help us making the wine and you go to help them to make the salumi. The a community comes together. And as I said, a lot of things happen around the table, like birthdays, all the celebrations are all around the table.

What is experience you want diners to have when they come here? What would be the ideal way for them to approach the menu?

Definitely with open minds. There are a lot of Italian classics here made in a bit of a modern way. We would like them to think they are having an Italian experience because at the end of the day we are an Italian restaurant, but I would like to them to love the fact that they're eating local produce; be proud of what Australians are doing. Be proud of their own farms and be proud of their own fishermen. Be proud of their own butchers because that's what they're having, the produce is grown from their own area. They should be very proud of having Italian food, but with their own produce. I want them to be open-minded that way.

The last question I often ask is, what would be your advice to a young person starting off as a chef?

I don't think I'm that good to give any advice.

What would you tell your younger self?

To my younger self? Well, be smart about it; pick the right experience. Don't think too much about immediate rewards. Think about collecting the right experience that might work for you. Because if you are ever going to be a head chef, and you pursue this career for a long time, your food is going to reflect the experience you have had in the past. So pick the right experience for you. That's what I would say.

I think that's the perfect answer.

Sosta Ristorante, 12 Errol Street, North Melbourne