Nick Deligiannis

Hi Nick. I've spoken to you on the phone before but it is lovely to meet you in person.

Welcome to Sorrento.

Thank you. And congratulations on Young Chef of the Year and a hat here at Audrey's.

Yeah. That was amazing,

You are nailing it.

Not just personally, but the whole team. We're such a young team and I'm so happy about the people we have in the restaurant and the culture we've developed, and the people just work so hard and they deserve it. They really do. And it's good to be recognized. I just believe there's no real ceiling for us in this room, in a room like this and a kitchen like that.

How amazing. I was just speaking to an omakase chef and he's been a chef for 28 years and he said he is still learning. I just love that idea that there is no ceiling and there is no stop to what you can do and what you can learn and how far you can go.

In an industry like this, in a country like this. And like it's, you'd be daft to think you know everything. Honestly, if you do think you know everything, then alright, move, aside and let the rest of us learn. There's no room for egos. You know, everyone wants to learn. Everyone is learning. So that's it. Just keep cooking.

And how many in the kitchen?

We've got quite a small team. There's only six of us at the moment. We only do the eight services during the week, so, you know, we all get our weekends. But during summer we went up to about 11 chefs. But in the Continental itself, there are about 40chefs. Yeah. Because there are four kitchens, eight outlets. There's a lot of things going on.

Oh, that's a beast.

It's an animal. I've never seen so many people here at once. In January it was just nuts. New Year's Eve, school holidays. There were 10,000 people between Sorento and Blairgowrie at the camping grounds, just even Main Street Sorrento was huge.

Thank you for your time. Have you got a lunch service today as well?

Yes we do Sunday lunches. We've only really opened the Sunday and dinner during our longer weekends and when people are actually down here because we are a coastal restaurant down the peninsula, you can't really expect people to always be down here. It is a seasonal place and destination restaurant, so it's just a bit hard to always be open and available all those services. But it gives everyone their weekends, which is great.

And that's a big thing, isn't it? There's so much talk around wellbeing and mental health and hospitality and part of that is having proper breaks and working the right number of hours. But I know that can be hard in kitchens, so that's awesome that they've got that time.

Exactly right. Especially being a very young team as well, being social is very important to a lot of the team and gone are the days when you are sacrificing your whole life for the industry, obviously, you get out what you what you put in essentially, but, when it comes to balancing that work and life and socializing aspect, it's really important to give people their days off, especially clumped together. Even in summer, we'll still close Monday, Tuesdays. We really could have capitalized on Monday, Tuesday trade. But, you know, it's really important to us to keep that balance and our staff and our culture happy. It's probably bigger than the food to be honest. It's keeping the staff happy.

I think that's important. I have this great thing and I haven't brought it up lately, but I often bring it up in conversations and it is this idea of, whatever the emotion of the chef is, it goes into the food. There's a book, Like Water for Hot Chocolate and whenever the chef cooks something, the people then eat her food, and they experience the same emotion that she had. I would love to think that happy kitchens make happy food.

You can really tell if a team clicks. The food will come out probably better and tastier, but it also comes out more efficient and the service is better because everyone can get along and there's teamwork involved and there are a lot of things that customers don't see. There is a bit of a symphony in the kitchen where, like an orchestra, you have a conductor, and then everyone else is sort of playing their instruments. It's very hard to do that when people don't like each other or respect each other.

You mentioned being young, so I'm going to say, as a young chef, are you in that generation where you haven't experienced that shouty chef situation? Or has there been some of that?

Absolutely. I might be very young. But I've been in kitchen since I was six years old. I think Australia has changed. I've cooked as an adult in Australia and it's been really great, honestly, it's been a great environment to be in. You work very hard and you work very long hours. But I've been very lucky to have really good mentors who haven't been that sort of tyrant egotistical chef and I've always also worked in London where I've been surrounded by people that big dog you and undermine you, bring you down, break you down.

Honestly, the biggest thing I learned was what not to be, cool, you learn great skills cooking overseas, but I thought, I don't want to be this person. I want to be a good cook. I want to be an asset, but I don't want to be an asshole about it. That was my biggest thing and that has pretty much moulded my management style to what it is today. Youll never see me raise my voice, it's more of a respect us respecting you. You respect me as a human being first and as a chef. Then we can all cook great food and you know, have a great service, have a great restaurant. Why wouldn't you want that?

Are there pressure points for you in the kitchen though? I mean, obviously, you have to get things out on time. You're working with sharp knives and hot stoves and ovens. How do you manage that?

Well, it's just part of the trade. You learn to adapt and you learn to cook and you learn how to cook safely. And honestly, I don't feel any safer than going for a walk. Being around the stove and cooking and using sharp knives, you just know your confidence. It's all about being confident as well. I feel safe in the kitchen and it's my job to make us safe for the team.

I you keep it a nice environment for them, then everyone can enjoy the workplace. You know, simple as that.

What happens if someone makes a mistake or do they not make mistakes?

Mistakes happen in every kitchen. If anyone says otherwise they are lying. But, you know, it's a learning curve. If it's a lack of leadership, I'll probably say, you know, it's my bad for not communicating enough. But if I have communicated, then yeah, it's a further conversation. There might be a little bit more of a blunt response than usual. We don't have time to have a full blown conversation about it there and then. When you have a hundred people in the dining room waiting for food, especially a tasting menu, it's a hundred times 10 plates, you know, so it's a thousand plates of service. So, you know, okay, this is if you think about that, I can't stand there and what he did wrong. Sometimes it does come across blunt, but then you always have after service, you always have to put your time in. You have to put the time into people. If you want a good team and a good culture, that's what you have to do.

As you say, you have had some really great mentors. I actually have never spoken to Scott Pickett, but I've spoken to lots of his chefs and I really love him. I love what he does, I love the restaurants and so on. But then I also noticed that Steven Nelson was your mentor as well, and I've spoken to him at The Recreation.

I couldn't have been luckier as a young chef to be under these sort of people. Steve was pretty much my first head chef. I started my apprenticeship with Jacques Reymond and Steve was there working at the bistro. I spent three years with Steve and not just as a mentor as a cook, but as a young man, being around that sort of person that is so calm under those pushing situations and service and, you know, dealing with a chef like Jacques and you know, how he managed a team. I got really close to Steve and then when I went to London, and then I came back, we opened The Recreation. I was sous chef there when I first opened. It was very daunting. I was very young, but it was good. It was awesome cooking with Steve. When we got the first hat, I was just like, this is the best. I loved it just for what he's worked for. He is one of the hardest working men I've ever worked for.

He's so humble.

He's a boy from Canberra, he is just smashing it. Then you've got someone like Scott who's extroverted and a very different form of management, but an amazing operator, to operate nine plus restaurants, and still have time to call you and say, Hey, how was your weekend? That's what I call respect. I couldn't ask for better mentors. I am very lucky. For all these guys to push me and not just cooking wise, but now that my name is getting out there a little bit more, it really helps when I have the support of people like that.

Absolutely. So let's go back to you being six and in the kitchen. Tell me about that. I often ask chefs whether they always knew they wanted to be a chef? And I guess you did.

I was very lucky. My dad had restaurants growing up. We had a pizza shop in Hoppers Crossing, so I grew up in the Western suburbs, Im a Sunshine Boy. We had a pizza restaurant in Hoppers Crossing, and we actually lived upstairs and dad worked downstairs all the time. Unfortunately, mum and dad divorced. Then my dad moved to Bentleigh where we opened another pizza shop. Every day after school I used to take the train from Sunshine to Bentleigh, and then I used to work there after school. I used to wash dishes from about six till 12, then started cooking at about 12. And then I left school when I was 17. So I've been actually cooking since I was 12 essentially. Pizzas, bistros, cafes, three hat, one hat. I have literally done it all, which is good. And if I had to give one piece of advice to young chefs, itis to try everything, don't just go into straight into the top restaurants in Australia or Victoria and think that's it. People you meet cooking in different situations, different restaurants, it is awesome, honestly. And that's why I love hospitality; different sorts of people, different sorts of restaurants and they're just cooking. They are just cooking dinner, cooking lunch. It is very simple.

That's so interesting. Obviously there must have come a point in time when you chose to then continue, having been brought up in it. But what is it about cooking and food that you feel so drawn to?

I think as I got older, I'd noticed that my sort of personality is that I'm very much a giver and a feeder at times. I just love feeding people. And I think with cooking, the mind quite a lot. Especially being so creative. I just love making dishes and running restaurants, that's my passion and that's the drive, even when I was younger, it was all about just getting better as a cook. I knew that I had the creativity and I just needed the skill set to back it up because you can think of as many dishes as you want, but if you can't cook them, you can't cook them. I just knew that being in such an industry where I could work hard for one, be creative, be skilled at something, it just ticked so many boxes for me.

And I love eating as well. I couldn't think of anything better just to eat and drink in Melbourne or, I'm going to Greece in August for a month and every time I think about it, I have to stop thinking about it because when I think about it, oh my God. Its one of those things that I just love. I do love it and I'm a full lifer for this industry. I say that all the time. I would do nothing else.

That's incredible. I've been loving seeing your Instagram posts and I know that Audrey's has a really big seafood focus, which is of course is exquisite being by the sea and eating seafood. But I really love that you're doing everything here; all the filleting and the preparing of the fish and that has gone out the window in lots of restaurants. Because it takes time, and therefore money. I guess maybe in fine dining you have to do that, or not? What do you think?

Well, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. I'll put it very simply. But yes, we are seafood focused, being down here. The story of Audreys is that Scott's grandmother would take him for a Fishman's basket most Sundays. And this was the ode to Audrey. We really wanted to showcase, not just Victorian seafood, but Australian seafood. I'd be daft not to use Tasmanian sea urchin or you know Northern Queensland tuna. So we use seafood from all around Australia and what I can fillet, I will fillet, just to stimulate, not just the guests, but the boys and girls in the kitchen, because I feel if they're not learning in this kitchen, then it's probably not the place for you. It is really important for the staff to learn as well as myself to learn. At the moment we've got whole King George Whiting in. We've got some whole tuna in as well. We're dealing with great suppliers, some local divers around Rosebud as well, which is a bit of a treat. What we can do in-house, we will do in-house. But for example, like the bread situation, if I believe that I can't make a better product than someone else, then I'll be more than happy to use that product.The local bakery has a great rye sourdough we use. The brief in here, is that we're not trying to reinvent the wheel, we're just trying to display great seafood, with great local produce. You won't see me trying to push the boundaries. It's just a beautiful piece of fish, beautiful garnish, beautiful sauce. That ability to have restraints is important, because if you want to put more and more on plates, you can't do that. Then people will say, I just want some nice food mate. So Im not afraid to just put a piece of raw fish on a plate with a simple dressing or if it's a baked King George Whiting with some fresh pasta that we make.

I just saw that story on Instagram and then I saw someone saying, oh no you have ruined the crispy skin. You can't say that to a chef. And it looked delicious. I hadnt seen that pouring the pasta over the top of a beautiful piece of fish.

It's the internet. I don't even know that person, and they don't know the backstory. We're not trying to get crispy skin. It's just a baked piece of fish. King George Whiting cooks in three minutes, mate. I wasn't going to get crispy skin in three minutes. But like I said, the beautiful simple garnish, bit of fresh pasta, bit of caviar, some fresh peas.

I loved it. I just looked it and thought I want to eat that because it looked like there would be all the different textures and just a bit of salty from the caviar.

Absolutely. And we smoked the butter that we put in the sauce as well. So you get a hint of the smoke and then just a little bit of cheffy skills with simple sauce techniques and simple cooking. The more layers you put in these things without adding ingredients, really makes a dish that's remembered and it is beautifully tasty because you don't have to add ingredients to make things beautiful. You just need to add technique and technique can get you so far.

It's interesting though, isn't it? You are saying, its just a simple dish, but I think sometimes those simple dishes can be hard because you have to have those different layers as you say, of technique as well as the quality of the product.

That's what makes chefs different. It's what makes a chef a chef. They think about, not just what the ingredient is, but how they're going to prepare the ingredient, how they're going to make the sauce. Its an art. It's almost an art form to make a beautiful sauce and a beautiful garnish for such a simple fish. As long as people are enjoying the food, then it's good.

How often do you change the Tasting Menu?

Weekly. We have our one signature, which is our squid noodles. That has never changed. But everything else, well it's the ocean, isn't it? We do use farm fish, but if I can get some wild caught fish, I'll use that. So King George Whiting, I'll use that for as long as it's available. Then it might be Lakes Entrance John Dory. Then its hapuka one week, or blue eye the other week, it's a natural rotation and it's good. But that forces me and the team to think of new dishes or new garnishes and really pushes a team to think outside the box. It can be very easy just to do the same dish with a different fish. We can do this garnish with six different fish. Itll taste great. But I feel that's not really justifying what we do for a living and I think it's our job and our responsibility to bring new dishes to the table. Scott gives me a lot of freedom in this room to do our own menu. But having him there as well so I can send him a dish and he'll give us some feedback on it. I keep in contact with Scott about whether I'm on the right track with the food. I like changing things a lot as well. It keeps us on our toes. I think about Steve as well. He would change the menu on a Friday night at six o'clock. There's a massive blackboard special and we used to go down at six o'clock on a Friday, and Id be, okay, cool. He just loves that. It pushes you, because I think every chef's got a little itch and you have to scratch it. So having a bit of a push in it every now and then is good.

And how do you balance 10 plates?

We have our snacks, we have five snacks and that gets broken into three plates. Then we roll into five seafood courses. And then we also offer a meat supplement. Just because we're a coastal seafood restaurant, that doesn't mean we don't offer meat, so we offer Blackmore Wagyu or Great Ocean Road duck, if we're going to use a meat, poultry or other protein, we're going to use the best. David Blackmore Wagyu from Alexandra, Great Ocean Road duck from Port Campbell. We had some local Hastings spring lamb last year, which is amazing. I am trying to look for some game meats at the moment as well. I'd love to do some venison here in this room. I think this room can definitely carry a deeper cut like that. Then we roll into a pre-dessert and dessert. There are a lot of plates and I think that these tables are so big and so grand and I just love filling up tables.

Feasting!

Exactly right. I grew up in a Greek household and we never just had a plate of food in front of us. It was 10 plates in the middle of the table and then all our plates are empty and we'd just be making our own plates. That's what I love and that's what I love bringing into fine dining. It brings in a homely aspect as well. This room is named after a grandma. It's supposed to be comfortable. And I just love the fact that we can intertwine those two worlds.

When I spoke to you back in 2021 for the Broadsheet Cookbook Home, we talked about your Madeleine, the sweetcorn Madeleine with espelette and blue swimmer crab. That was from the place you'd worked at in London, was that right?

It was inspired by what we did in London. I used to work at a restaurant called Pollen Street Social. We did a sweet corn muffin with a little dill cream. We grabbed that base and then it put into a Madeleine mould and we put that on the menu at Frederic. That was my first head chef job at Frederic, back with the Reymonds. So I worked for the Reymonds for three years, went to London, did my rounds with Steve and down at Peninsula. Then I had the opportunity to come back to the Reymonds and we opened Frederic, which was great. It was an eyeopener to the world of being a chef. My first head chef role. I think I was 24 when that opened. I had a lot to learn. I knew I could cook, but I didnt know about management and managing people and that was good. But then six months later, unfortunately Covid happened. We had a really good first year and then obviously COVID happened and we reopened a few times as everyone knows, through those breaks in Covid. But it just never really got off the ground because we had so many interruptions, but I couldn't be more thankful to have had the opportunity to open a restaurant like that so young. It has really really moulded what I am today. I've been head chef at Estelle for a little bit and then over here at Audreys, and I'm a very different person to what I was when I was 24. I feel like I can run any kitchen in the world. I believe in myself like that.

I was going to ask about going to London. Lots of chefs do it. Do you think it's necessary to go to another country if you're building a career?

Yes, I think if you are looking to be in this career for a long time and open a restaurant for yourself, I think it's very important to work overseas, not just to be in another country, but it's a different way of cooking. It's a different way of presenting yourself, a different way of professionalism, different guests as well. So why wouldn't you want to gain that experience? If you really love this industry and want to be part of a bigger picture, then absolutely you should be cooking overseas and talking to as many people as you want and cooking for as many people as you can. And just because it's an English-speaking country doesn't mean you're not going to learn a completely different world of cooking. It was a shock to me when I went to London I was out of my depth here. I'd been cooking in a really nice team; one team, one dream. It was all these good things. My career was really on the up. And then I hit London and I was like, oh my God, I know nothing. I know absolutely nothing. So it was great being there and adapting and growing and becoming a better cook and better person and just opening my eyes up a little bit. You don't have to do it. But I feel like it's really good for yourself and your personal growth to go overseas and cook.

And now that you're here, and it seems like a silly question when you're surrounded by all this beauty and you've got all this great produce, but where do you get your inspiration?

I think just from everyday life. I eat out a lot and Ive been been trying to change this, but I'm on my phone a lot. I love Instagram and I like looking at what chefs are doing all around the world and Australia. I like looking at what people are doing and obviously love going to markets and whatnot and weather's a big one as well. I love looking at the weather and thinking, what would I eat on a hot day? What would I eat on a cold, sunny day? That one's big for me. Last week it was absolutely miserable down here. It was raining, there wasn't any sun. So I'm like, you know what? I feel like making pasta, so we made pasta. Inspiration for me is everywhere. I was talking to my girlfriend, and she said she hadnt had roast pumpkin in ages and it would just be a conversation and itll click a little bit. But yeah, Instagram's a big one. There is so much food on the internet. Reels are a massive one as well. People just cooking and saucing. I've been trying to be quite active on Instagram and doing all that and displaying what we do here. It's not to flex or anything, it's just to get it out there.

Great. Well, thank you. You've told me so much. I loved it. I could sit and talk to you all day. And that's another thing its not necessarily natural for chefs to want to talk. Some chefs are used to being back in the kitchen and not having to talk to the media and all that kind of thing, but that's part of your role I guess, as well as head chef. You seem to be very at ease talking about food and, and your job, so that's great.

Well, it's my life, isn't it? But I really love doing these sort of things and I want to do more of them because I love telling my story and I love teaching other people. I just want everyone to grow together. I want my generation to be the best cooks Australia has seen. I love doing this sort of stuff.

Audrey's, Sorrento.