Jordan Clay

Jordan: How has your week been?

Good thanks. I'm a French teacher as well as a writer, so, it's been a busy week.

I'm from Canada, so its compulsory to take French for a very long time.

Do you still speak French?

Not so much anymore. If you don't use it, you lose it.I'm going to Indonesia to a resort in a couple of weeks time. The resort is owned by some French people. And when I did a video call, they're like, oh, Jordan, I see on your cv, you've worked in France. Do you speak French? I said I could speak a little bit, but its very elementary. I said, Je comprends un petit peu. They were all, Oui, oui and then rattled off into the thing and I had to say, ah, not that well.

That's exciting. Is that for a holiday?

No, it's a new resort on a very small island and they're just hosting three week residencies. I think what's happened is they've had somebody pull out last minute and they're trying to fill a spot. So it's all happened very abruptly.

Does that mean that you are inheriting menus or you can go and do what you like?

No, you do whatever you like. I think it's a multi-outlet resort. And one of the outlets is, not a fine dining restaurant, but a restaurant proper and it has one chefs table, 12 to 20 covers. It'll be interesting.

It's a great experience.

It'll be fun.

Is it breakfast, lunch and dinner?

No, just dinner. They have other outlets that do that as well, but um, like

So do you just give them a supply list and they'll come up with it? Or do you meet suppliers once youre there?

A lot of the ordering goes via Bali. But they said that a lot of fish and things like that will be Fisher direct. Which is quite interesting. We deal with a bit of fish direct stuff here. Yes. Like Two Hands and those kinds of companies. That comes with its own curve balls. So, throw in a language barrier, throw in island mentality, which is pretty chill. We'll see. At the end of the day it's only 12 to 20 covers.

What an amazing experience. It'll be really great.

It'll be interesting.

I just read a recent review of Pipis Kiosk where the person wrote about being here and enjoying the autumnal sunshine and what an incredible experience it was. I really liked that because when I've written a story about someone, I like to see that they're still doing well, of course. As you would be. Its great that people are still are still reviewing you because you opened a couple of years ago, but then had turmoil. You made it through the end of lockdowns and things.

Yeah. I mean, it was hard. Its such a blur, right, the actual timeframes.

I couldn't actually remember when I came here.

Because it was so stoppy starty. I'm not good with dates at the best of times. When I was doing my citizenship application, you'd have to list all these places that you've been. I made a mistake and had to go back and do it. It was a nightmare. But the bulk of Covid was spent here just hanging out with these guys. So that was nice.

Because you did operate as a kiosk?

Exactly. We were really like fortunate that we had a bit of a captive audience. People were trapped at home, so of course they're going to be walking up and down the beach. I became an expert level barista. Something I never thought I would have to learn how to do. Its just fortunate circumstances that we're on the water. A lot of other places that tried to pivot would've struggled a lot more. Right place, right time. That was already baked into the business plan anyway. We were just really lucky.

There's something very magical about eating so close to the sea, and there are other places that are on the sea or on the beach, but you are literally on the beach and the sea is really close. I think I remember saying when I came to wrote the article, that it'll be beautiful at any time of the year. When it's summer it's amazing, but then when it's stormy, it's also an impressive place to be. It's pretty good.

Having now spent two years here, and coming to work every day for me, the autumn and the winter are my favourite times. It's a catch 22. In the summertime when it's super sunny and beautiful, the wind is always a little bit higher, whereas in the wintertime it's always super calm, especially the mornings, the water is like glass. It's so nice to be down here, like you say, when storms happen and also watching the ships go by. Tommy has a ship tracking app and if you see a peculiar one, you wonder what they have on board? Where have they been? Thats nice. It's a nice place to come to work.

And has it met your expectations in terms of owning, being an owner chef?

I think so. I don't think anything has changed for me from being a head chef somewhere and being an owner per se, responsibility wise. In terms of mentality and how you conduct yourself in the kitchen, it's the same. And I think that was a big reason why I decided to become, or have a crack at being a business owner. At some point you start to feel like I want to be careful how I put this, but you are not boxed in by the people that you are working for, but sometimes you see angles and you want to do things a little bit differently, but it's not your business at the end of the day and you have to toe the line. Even if you are a head chef, it's not your money on the line. You can walk away at any point and there is no risk to you. I think sometimes young chefs can lose sight of that but you have to put your money where your mouth is eventually and have a red hot crack and just leave all the chips on the table and whatever happens, happens. I still come into the kitchen the same way I would do three, four years ago when I was just a head chef or a sous chef. Nothing has changed for me in that respect at all. I think it was The French laundry, Thomas Keller, there's a really famous quote from him. He says that he could always tell who's going to go on to open their own businesses and open their own restaurants and have success because they treated his restaurant in the same way they would treat a restaurant that they owned.Now I really understand that, and it makes sense. Nothing has changed for me, not respect.

That must be great for owners to have people like that working in their kitchens because then you are proud of what you're putting up and you are taking responsibility for it and you are wanting to succeed. It's the best kind of employee I would imagine.

Of course. But also, the owners are responsible for that as well. They empower, at least the people that I've worked for, they empowered me. I had ownership over the menu. They're not just like delegating from the top and saying cook this. If you have that kind of ownership over a menu and your team and all the rest of it, then I mean, of course you're going to want to do your absolute best for them.

That's true. I think the same can be said for the structure of the kitchen and putting together a team and how leadership works. I was just at a hospitality event, mental health in hospitality on Monday night run by the Movember team in conjunction with some hospitality people. Its a really big question at the moment, well not question, it's a really big point of discussion at the moment. Wellbeing in hospitality. It has to be top down, doesn't it?

Of course. Absolutely. I that's a greater focus across society, whether you want to focus on hospitality or not. I think the awareness level is so much higher even than it was 10 years ago. And that's important. Were all really close here as well, we're colleagues, but we're also close friends. I think if you can't speak about that with your friends.

I think that's an incredible context to be in. You've got it all here; you've got a beautiful setting and then you're coming to work with your friends. That's the dream.

Totally. That's the dream. But you know, also I think if you work in hospitality, especially if you are a career professional, you probably enjoy your job and not everyone can say that. I think just that in itself, you're really lucky, because for a lot of people, a job is a job for them at the end of the day, and it's a way for them to fund other things. So if you are fortunate enough to have a profession that you actually genuinely enjoy, and of course there's parts of it that you're not going to love, but on the whole, if you enjoy it, you should count yourself lucky.

So now, I'd like to go back to the start of things for you because I've read several times that you were 18 and you won a competition to go and cook in France. What happened before that? How did you even get into that position?

This is funny. When I was 14, for me and my friends, it was about getting a summer job. My friends all applied at a petrol station attached to a grocery store. Of course I wanted to work with my friends, so I apply and they said, Jordan you snooze, you lose, we're all full up for the summer. Sorry, there's nothing here for you. So I was kicking rocks away from the petrol station and all that, but I found out later that week that the golf course where me and my friends played a lot of golf growing up, the chef there was looking for someone to help out and I was already there every day at this golf course, so why not make a bit of cash? I also thought, you know, learning how to cook would be an interesting way to impress the girls. And I just enjoyed it. It was pretty rough and tumble too. The chef was pretty old school. He was an old Swiss dude who probably drank too much, smoked too many ciggies but was a nice guy. Nice enough to take this 14 year old kid who had no idea. No clue. And just tolerate him for an entire summer because that's what it would've been.

Were you doing kitchen hand type jobs?

No, I was actually cooking. Cooking on the fryer, making sandwiches, lots of lunchtime stuff, soups, things like that. I did that for consecutive summers until I was 18. Then my dad said I had to go to university. So I did that for a year and it wasn't for me.

What did you study?

I studied communications. I wanted to get into marketing, advertising, and all the classes that I enjoyed had nothing to do with that. I took a film class that was really interesting. I knew I wouldnt fit being at a desk, that's just not me. So then I went to culinary school after that. My dad said ok, if that's what you want to do. I had given it a year, I gave it a a try. So he was ok.

So then how did the competition happen?

When I was in culinary school, I had a quite a bit of experience already leading up to that. Id worked at a couple other restaurants prior to that, obviously the golf club for multiple years. I had a slight edge over some other people who were just picking it up for the first time. I had a mentor at Polytechnic in Calgary, and he asked if I wanted to try it. He explained to me what a black box is and stuff like that. Iron Chef was really big at that time as well. It was enticing to somebody who's 18, 19 years old. Its a competition thing and I played a lot of competitive sport growing up and I think there's a common thread with a lot of chefs who have a type of personality, they're competitive whether it's overt or kind of undercover.

So whether or not you're entering competitions, you're always kind of in competition arent you, with yourself or with other restaurants?

Sure. It's not as negative or, pessimistic is probably a better word to use as it used to be. I know when I was in my early twenties, people would go and dine out other places and they would just then talk shit about it to their colleagues. That was a common thing. I don't notice that as much anymore. It's very rare. Everybody is much more supportive, I think just across the board because everyone knows how hard it is to do something even very simple.

So, you enter the competition and you win, and then you go to France. What's that for?

For experience. Work experience. Half of it was organized by the school. And the other half I organized myself.

And had you been to France before?

No. Never.

Okay. But then all that French you learned came into play?

Some of it, but it's different French and it's a lot faster, especially if you're not a fluent speaker.

How do you go about organizing things for yourself when you're 18?

You just knock on doors and lots of people turned me away and people tell you stories about and they say, keep knocking on doors. But one guy, I tried to get into Astrance, which was three Michelin stars at that time. Pascal Barbot had had been to Australia. He's a fluent English speaker. I went three days in a row and on the third day he said, listen, I'm just not going to hire you, you can't speak French. It's just not going to happen. I really admire what you're trying to do. But maybe try here, but this is too high level for you, basically is what he said in a nice way. At least he was honest. And at least he gave me some recommendations of places that I could go instead.

Is that how you ended up at Le Chateaubriand?

Exactly. Those guys were super cool. Where I'm from in Canada, it's not exactly a culinary hotbed. I guess there's not so many people that you can look up to. In Melbourne there are so many professional career chefs that are killing it. So you have those kind of trajectories that you can look up to. But I think in France, I looked at those guys, and they lived cool lifestyles. They basically did whatever they wanted. They were cooking amazing food. And it was fun.

That's good to hear. Because I would've thought it would be all like the brigade there as well.

It wasn't so much like that in France. I think that was because of the places that I chose to go. I then went to London for a period after that and it was rough and tumble, really hard, one of the worst years of my life. But one that ended up paying the most dividends in terms of opening up doors down the track. It was like all the nightmare stories you hear about the culture, bad culture in the UK.

Sure it opens doors. But is it mostly about opening doors or did you learn a great amount of technique and so on that year as well?

I did. I wouldn't recommend doing it that way. It doesn't need to be like that. You realise that after the fact, but definitely a lot of learning.

What brought you to Melbourne?

I came back from Europe and I spent a few years in Vancouver and I went and and saw some other things, did some other things and padded out my CV; put a couple of bigger names back on my CV. The plan was to come back to Canada and then, you know, the world's your oyster. It was a toss up between San Francisco and here. I went down to San Francisco and its very expensive as everyone knows. Healthcare is like non-existent in America. Things were kind of starting to get a bit weird there politically. So after a couple weeks in San Francisco, I came back and I had met a friend in Europe who wasnt hospitality related. He was moving here and I thought, I'll just do something totally off piste and give this a crack.

Was there a culture shock moving here?

I don't think so. Not as much as places that I've been to previously. Not compared to France, especially Australia, Canada being commonwealth countries. There's a lot of parallels especially in mentality. But it is very different. I wouldn't say it's a culture shock, it wasn't shocking to me, but it of course, any new place is going to be different.

And you've been here 10 years now?

Again, I'm terrible with the dates. I think maybe 10 in July.

Amazing. Your menus are so delicious and innovative, but approachable. What is your inspiration?

I just want people to enjoy themselves. The days of these lauded chefs on a pedestal, that bubble has really burst. People just don't really care that much. They just want to have a nice time and eat some nice food and be a little bit interested. For me, that's my perception. I'm sure there will be people that disagree with my sentiment, but it's not about me.It's not about any individual here. It's about people having a nice time, but it still needs to be interesting enough that people who dine out all the time, all around town constantly are still stimulated. So I guess having those kind of familiar pieces to latch onto and then maybe just twisting it or putting a unique spin on it, that's kind of where I find myself.

Is there a need for to have seafood and shellfish on the menu because you're by the sea?

Of course. You can see the water, and it has fallen into place because that's a comfort level of mine. It has been for a very long time. Being in Australia, honestly, we have some of the best seafood in the world. Maybe only Japan really can kind of edge us out. There is so much diversity of species. If certain things are unavailable, you can easily pivot and make a shift. Its exciting. That's what's fun about being here in Melbourne.

Absolutely. And can you still be surprised by food?

Of course. All the time. And sometimes when you least expect it, sometimes it's not a direct surprise, but it'll make you think about things differently. I'm trying to think of an example off the top of my head; the other day I had something that I thought was going to be hot and it was cold, deliberately cold. That was surprising. Just little things like that. You have never seen it all. The world of food and food culture is so vast, right? I don't think I'll ever stop being surprised.

Just to finish with, what would be your advice for someone who was thinking about becoming a chef?

My advice for someone who's thinking about becoming a chef? I don't know. That's tough.

Or what would you tell your younger self that you know now that you might not have been so clear about then?

Look up to people. I'm just thinking of some of the apprentices that we have and things that I've told them. It's not easy. Nothing in this life is right. I guess I would say, just keep your chin up. You are going to have setbacks and not every day is going to be an amazing day, but you have to let that be water off a duck's back. You have to stay positive, stay in a positive environment with positive people as well. If you are in a toxic environment with people who are like innately negative, get out. That would be my only advice.

Pipi's Kiosk

129a Beaconsfield Parade, Albert Park

There's something very magical about eating so close to the sea, and there are other places that are on the sea or on the beach, but you are literally on the beach and the sea is really close. I think I remember saying when I came to wrote the article, that it'll be beautiful at any time of the year. When it's summer it's amazing, but then when it's stormy, it's also an impressive place to be. It's pretty good.

Having now spent two years here, and coming to work every day for me, the autumn and the winter are my favourite times. It's a catch 22. In the summertime when it's super sunny and beautiful, the wind is always a little bit higher, whereas in the wintertime it's always super calm, especially the mornings, the water is like glass. It's so nice to be down here, like you say, when storms happen and also watching the ships go by. Tommy has a ship tracking app and if you see a peculiar one, you wonder what they have on board? Where have they been? Thats nice. It's a nice place to come to work.

And has it met your expectations in terms of owning, being an owner chef?

I think so. I don't think anything has changed for me from being a head chef somewhere and being an owner per se, responsibility wise. In terms of mentality and how you conduct yourself in the kitchen, it's the same. And I think that was a big reason why I decided to become, or have a crack at being a business owner. At some point you start to feel like I want to be careful how I put this, but you are not boxed in by the people that you are working for, but sometimes you see angles and you want to do things a little bit differently, but it's not your business at the end of the day and you have to toe the line. Even if you are a head chef, it's not your money on the line. You can walk away at any point and there is no risk to you. I think sometimes young chefs can lose sight of that but you have to put your money where your mouth is eventually and have a red hot crack and just leave all the chips on the table and whatever happens, happens. I still come into the kitchen the same way I would do three, four years ago when I was just a head chef or a sous chef. Nothing has changed for me in that respect at all. I think it was The French laundry, Thomas Keller, there's really famous quote from him. He says that he could always tell who's going to go on to open their own businesses and open their own restaurants and have success because they treated his restaurant in the same way they would treat a restaurant that they owned.Now I really understand that, and it makes sense. Nothing has changed for me, not respect.

That must be great for owners to have people like that working in their kitchens because then you are proud of what you're putting up and you are taking responsibility for it and you are wanting to succeed. It's the best kind of employee I would imagine.

Of course. But also, the owners are responsible for that as well. They empower, at least the people that I've worked for, they empowered me. I had ownership over the menu. They're not just like delegating from the top and saying cook this. If you have that kind of ownership over a menu and your team and all the rest of it, then I mean, of course you're going to want to do your absolute best for them.

That's true. I think the same can be said for the structure of the kitchen and putting together a team and how leadership works. I was just at a hospitality event, mental health in hospitality on Monday night run by the Movember team in conjunction with some hospitality people. Its a really big question at the moment, well not question, it's a really big point of discussion at the moment. Wellbeing in hospitality. It has to be top down, doesn't it?

Of course. Absolutely. I that's a greater focus across society, whether you want to focus on hospitality or not. I think the awareness level is so much higher even than it was 10 years ago. And that's important. Were all really close here as well, we're colleagues, but we're also close friends. I think if you can't speak about that with your friends.

I think that's an incredible context to be in. You've got it all here; you've got a beautiful setting and then you're coming to work with your friends. That's the dream.

Totally. That's the dream. But you know, also I think if you work in hospitality, especially if you are a career professional, you probably enjoy your job and not everyone can say that, you know? I think just that in itself, you're really lucky, because for a lot of people, a job is a job for them at the end of the day, and it's a way for them to fund other things. So, I mean, if you are fortunate enough to have a profession that you actually genuinely enjoy, and of course there's like parts of it that you're not going to love, but on the whole, if you enjoy it, you should count yourself lucky.

So now, I'd like to go back to the start of things for you because I've read several times that you were 18 and you won a competition to go and cook in France. What happened before that? How did you even get into that position?

This is funny. When I was 14, for me and my friends, it was about getting a summer job. My friends all applied at a petrol station attached to a grocery store. Of course I wanted to work with my friends, so I apply and they said, Jordan you snooze, you lose, we're all full up for the summer. Sorry, there's nothing here for you. So I was kicking rocks away from the petrol station and all that, but I found out later that week that the golf course where me and my friends played a lot of golf growing up, the chef there was looking for someone to help out and I was already there every day at this golf course, so why not make a bit of cash? I also thought, you know, learning how to cook would be an interesting way to impress the girls. And I just enjoyed it. It was pretty rough and tumble too. The chef was pretty old school. He was an old Swiss dude who probably drank too much, smoked too many ciggies but was a nice guy. Nice enough to take this 14 year old kid who had no idea. No clue. And just tolerate him for an entire summer because that's what it would've been.

Were you doing kitchen hand type jobs?

No, I was actually cooking. Cooking on the fryer, making sandwiches, lots of lunchtime stuff, soups, things like that. I did that for consecutive summers until I was 18. Then my dad said I had to go to university. So I did that for a year and it wasn't for me.

What did you study?

I studied communications. I wanted to get into marketing, advertising, and all the classes that I enjoyed had nothing to do with that. I took a film class that was really interesting. I knew I wouldnt fit being at a desk, that's just not me. So then I went to culinary school after that. My dad said ok, if that's what you want to do. I had given it a year, I gave it a a try. So he was ok.

So then how did the competition happen?

When I was in culinary school, I had a quite a bit of experience already leading up to that. Id worked at a couple other restaurants prior to that, obviously the golf club for multiple years. I had a slight edge over some other people who were just picking it up for the first time. I had a mentor at Polytechnic in Calgary, and he asked if I wanted to try it. He explained to me what a black box is and stuff like that. Iron Chef was really big at that time as well. It was enticing to somebody who's 18, 19 years old. Its a competition thing and I played a lot of competitive sport growing up and I think there's a common thread with a lot of chefs who have a type of personality, they're competitive whether it's overt or kind of undercover.

So whether or not you're entering competitions, you're always kind of in competition arent you, with yourself or with other restaurants?

Sure. It's not as negative or, pessimistic is probably a better word to use as it used to be. I know when I was in my early twenties, people would go and dine out other places and they would just then talk shit about it to their colleagues. That was a common thing. I don't notice that as much anymore. It's very rare. Everybody is much more supportive, I think just across the board because everyone knows how hard it is to do something even very simple.

So, you enter the competition and you win, and then you go to France. What's that for?

For experience. Work experience. Half of it was organized by the school. And the other half I organized myself.

And had you been to France before?

No. Never.

Okay. But then all that French you learned came into play?

Some of it, but it's different French and it's a lot faster, especially if you're not a fluent speaker.

How do you go about organizing things for yourself when you're 18?

You just knock on doors and lots of people turned me away and people tell you stories about and they say, keep knocking on doors. But one guy, I tried to get into Astrance, which was three Michelin stars at that time. Pascal Barbot had had been to Australia. He's a fluent English speaker. I went three days in a row and on the third day he said, listen, I'm just not going to hire you, you can't speak French. It's just not going to happen. I really admire what you're trying to do. But maybe try here, but this is too high level for you, basically is what he said in a nice way. At least he was honest. And at least he gave me some recommendations of places that I could go instead.

Is that how you ended up at Le Chateaubriand?

Exactly. Those guys were super cool. Where I'm from in Canada, it's not exactly a culinary hotbed. I guess there's not so many people that you can look up to. In Melbourne there are so many professional career chefs that are killing it. So you have those kind of trajectories that you can look up to. But I think in France, I looked at those guys, and they lived cool lifestyles. They basically did whatever they wanted. They were cooking amazing food. And it was fun.

That's good to hear. Because I would've thought it would be all like the brigade there as well.

It wasn't so much like that in France. I think that was because of the places that I chose to go. I then went to London for a period after that and it was rough and tumble, really hard, one of the worst years of my life. But one that ended up paying the most dividends in terms of opening up doors down the track. It was like all the nightmare stories you hear about the culture, bad culture in the UK.

Sure it opens doors. But is it mostly about opening doors or did you learn a great amount of technique and so on that year as well?

I did. I wouldn't recommend doing it that way. It doesn't need to be like that. You realise that after the fact, but definitely a lot of learning.

What brought you to Melbourne?

I came back from Europe and I spent a few years in Vancouver and I went and and saw some other things, did some other things and padded out my CV; put a couple of bigger names back on my CV. The plan was to come back to Canada and then, you know, the world's your oyster. It was a toss up between San Francisco and here. I went down to San Francisco and its very expensive as everyone knows. Healthcare is like non-existent in America. Things were kind of starting to get a bit weird there politically. So after a couple weeks in San Francisco, I came back and I had met a friend in Europe who wasnt hospitality related. He was moving here and I thought, I'll just do something totally off piste and give this a crack.

Was there a culture shock moving here?

I don't think so. Not as much as places that I've been to previously. Not compared to France, especially Australia, Canada being commonwealth countries. There's a lot of parallels especially in mentality. But it is very different. I wouldn't say it's a culture shock, it wasn't shocking to me, but it of course, any new place is going to be different.

And you've been here 10 years now?

Again, I'm terrible with the dates. I think maybe 10 in July.

Amazing. Your menus are so delicious and innovative, but approachable. What is your inspiration?

I just want people to enjoy themselves. The days of these lauded chefs on a pedestal, that bubble has really burst. People just don't really care that much. They just want to have a nice time and eat some nice food and be a little bit interested. For me, that's my perception. I'm sure there will be people that disagree with my sentiment, but it's not about me.It's not about any individual here. It's about people having a nice time, but it still needs to be interesting enough that people who dine out all the time, all around town constantly are still stimulated. So I guess having those kind of familiar pieces to latch onto and then maybe just twisting it or putting a unique spin on it, that's kind of where I find myself.

Is there a need for to have seafood and shellfish on the menu because you're by the sea?

Of course. You can see the water, and it has fallen into place because that's a comfort level of mine. It has been for a very long time. Being in Australia, honestly, we have some of the best seafood in the world. Maybe only Japan really can kind of edge us out. There is so much diversity of species. If certain things are unavailable, you can easily pivot and make a shift. Its exciting. That's what's fun about being here in Melbourne.

Absolutely. And can you still be surprised by food?

Of course. All the time. And sometimes when you least expect it, sometimes it's not a direct surprise, but it'll make you think about things differently. I'm trying to think of an example off the top of my head; the other day I had something that I thought was going to be hot and it was cold, deliberately cold. That was surprising. Just little things like that. You have never seen it all. The world of food and food culture is so vast, right? I don't think I'll ever stop being surprised.

Just to finish with, what would be your advice for someone who was thinking about becoming a chef?

My advice for someone who's thinking about becoming a chef? I don't know. That's tough.

Or what would you tell your younger self that you know now that you might not have been so clear about then?

Look up to people. I'm just thinking of like some of the apprentices that we have and things that I've told them. It's not easy. Nothing in this life is right. I guess I would say, just keep your chin up. You are going to have setbacks and not every day is going to be an amazing day, but you have to let that be water off a duck's back. You have to stay positive, stay in a positive environment with positive people as well. If you are in a toxic environment with people who are like innately negative, get out. That would be my only advice.

Pipi's Kiosk

129a Beaconsfield Parade, Albert Park