Jack Cassidy

Hi Jack. It's Jo here from Conversation with the Chef. Thank you for your time today because it sounds like it's going really gangbusters at KIN. I've seen articles about it everywhere, so I appreciate you setting aside some time today.

No worries.

I'm intrigued because it sounds like a pretty amazing place to work; a heritage listed castle-like building. I haven't managed to get there yet, but is it as great as it sounds?

Yeah, it's pretty mind blowing being able to walk into the castle every day, but then, once you're inside it's all systems go until you walk out again and see the building and its very cool.

And it sounds like it's quite big. The restaurant seats maybe 120, 130, is that right?

Yes its around 120, but three of those are private dining options, which seat up to 10 people each, or weve got one where the wall slides back and you can have a table of about 20 to 25 in a private dining experience.

It sounds very lovely. I'm just looking at some of the highlights on the menu. Its modern Australian, is that what you'd describe it as?

Yes, modern Australian, but mixed with a country vibe. I'm not trying to scare anyone away or make it at all pretentious. It's still to try and keep that feeling that everyone's welcome, country cooking, but just with a bit of refinement and a lot of respect for the produce.

And I see that you've got quite a few indigenous plants or elements in your dishes, like Saltbush and bush tomato and also kangaroo.

At the moment we're doing a really nice kangaroo skewer, so that gets done on the char grill and it's also got a spice rub with wattle seed pepper berry are the main flavours and then balanced out a bit with a bit of coriander powder and cumin powder and obviously a bit of salt and sugar.

That sounds really good. Have you been working with those ingredients for a while or was this a new thing?

I've been working with them for a while, but I didn't really understand or give them the respect that they needed. At the start it was quite different to what I was working with in a French kitchen and I was put off the flavours. They were different and I didn't get it. But now after working with them for a while and now I get it and it's cool.

And I guess it's that whole terroir; working with ingredients that are from the land where we live, as you say, once you get your head around it, it must feel quite special to be able to incorporate those into the dishes.

It's really cool and introducing other people to it too. Most of the chefs in my kitchen at the moment are quite new to it as well and Im watching them learn and seeing all the weird faces that they pull when they first try them. I told them to try the bush tomato. They had no idea what it was? Or aniseed myrtle and they all thought it was weird and pretty hectic. I told them that if you use them and treat them in a certain way,then we can create some really cool unique flavours that are unique to Australia and we are not relying on techniques from other countries which most of Australian dining was started on.

I'm not sure I'm familiar with bush tomato. What sort of flavour does it have?

They taste like eggplant in a way, so we treat it like that. They are kind of nutty but also can be a bit bitter. We soak them in a sugar syrup to rehydrate them and soften them and that also brings out the natural sweetness in the tomato and also a massive umami, almost too much. With the relish there are quite a few cherry tomatoes in there too to balance it out.

And working in a winery, are you conscious of the wines or is that more the job of the sommelier or the wine staff to match that to your food?

It's 50-50. We talk with Nick Brown, the wine maker, about the flavour profiles on all the different wines. We might start down the traditional path of red usually goes with red meat, but then we say, no, I want something a bit unconventional, but it actually works. Like pork and Marsanne or something like that. It gets people thinking a bit.

Nice. I was looking at some of the other places youve worked. You're working in a castle now, but you've also been worked on one of Australia's most unique island resorts Bedarra Island, which sounds amazing.

Oh it was. It was so good. The owner, Sam is such a gentleman, treated you like family, just a classic. If you are good dude him and pride your work, he'd give you the world. He flew us on his helicopter, we got to take the boats out to go fishing on our breaks or our days off.

Amazing.

We'd go into Cairns for a couple of nights. He put me and my missus up in the nicest hotel room there. We lived like absolute kings and plus we got to cook some cool food.

What kind of food were you cooking out there?

There were only villas, so we only had 24 people at a time, but we only had the one kitchen, and we changed lunch and dinner menu every day.

Wow.

We would go from cooking modern Australian to anything. Lunch was a bit more laid back and chilled. We might do really good fish tacos or a nice salad sometimes, or sometimes for dinner wed say, were doing all Indian tonight, from start to finish, which was challenging but good fun and just sped up the learning so fast.

I was going to say that it sounds like you would be learning a lot with so much variety. That's amazing. And how long did people generally stay there?

Some people would stay for a night and others would stay for 12 nights.

Wow. So, over those 12 nights you're having to do something different all the time. Was that the philosophy that no guest gets the same dish while they are there?

Yes. Those 12-nighters, if you did a dish on the second night they were there and you wanted to make it again and improve it, youd have to wait. You'd want to make it better and you sort of fixated on that, but you couldn't do it again until they left.

Wow.

And we did two entrees, two mains, two desserts for every dinner. So you'd come up with six dishes a day and by day 12, you just run in a blank thinking, what haven't I done?

Did you keep notebooks or anything of all of those? Because that sounds like it'd be like an amazing collection to have of all those different ideas? It must have required so much organisation.

We only had four chefs on the island to do breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. We were all in it together and plus we lived together, you could hear the other person snore they were that, so all we did was talk food. That was it.

I bet. And how long were you there on the island?

I was there for about a year. I was only initially going to do six months because my partner didnt want me away for more than six months. I wasnt sure if I would like it anyway. I thought I might get homesick or whatever, but I think I ended up doing about 16 months or 18 months or something. She got to come up for the last six months, which was good.

Oh that's good. I was going to say it would have been hard on her missing out on all that. It sounds like a pretty idyllic – hard work – but an idyllic place to be.

What made it worse was that down in Melbourne there were still lockdowns. When I was up in Queensland and she was in Victoria, it was still locked down. So I was living my best life on the top of the Great Barrier Reef and she was stuck in an apartment in St. Kilda.

Oh no.

I didn't post much. I didn't want to get into trouble.

No, that's right. Oh, well thank goodness that's all come to an end.

It sounds like you only work in really glamorous places, but where did it all start for you? Did you always know you wanted to be a chef?

No. I grew up playing basketball my whole life. Obviously I wanted to play in the NBA but then I stopped growing so that was out of the question. Wen I was 15 my dad said, why don't you be a chef? And I thought that was stupid and sounded horrible. I went and got a degree in graphic design and as I was doing the tail end of it, I had to go work in an office. I did that for four or five months and it wasn't for me. Then a friend asked, why don't you be a chef? Because he was a chef as well. He told me that his worked at a and that he would look after me and set me up. That restaurant ended up being Bistro Guillaume.

Wow. Thats a good place to start.

I didn't know it was a good place to start, I just thought that was normal. It was a really good place to get your hands dirty and learn the traditional French methods, like the mother sauces and things like that.

Did you start right down the bottom and work your way up?

Yes. I started as an apprentice. In my first year as an apprentice, everyone thought I was overpaid. I was on like $7.80 or something, and they said that was so good for an apprentice.

It's really interesting that your dad and that mate obviously saw something in you. Why do you reckon they were suggesting that you become a chef? Did you do any cooking at home?

I didn't do much cooking at home. I was just running out of other stuff to do. As soon as I got in there and started doing it, and then after the third month of not wanting to go, something clicked and then it started to become enjoyable and I started to understand the routine and the pace that you had to work at and just the vibe of the whole kitchen. Once I started to work that out and build relationships with the other chefs in there, I just fell in love and there was actually nothing else. I have never even thought of a career change. I just love it.

That's so good. I love hearing that and it sounds like it's an overall thing for you. You clearly take great pride in the food that you're creating, but you also like the vibe of the kitchen or the venue as well, which is good. Did you go to Jackalope after that?

No, I hopped around. Bistro Guillaume ended up being quite long days, because of doing lunch and dinner seven days a week. So I tried cafe cooking and ended up working for a guy called Scott who was a sous chef at Supernormal back in the day. This cafe was called Mighty Boy and it was a little Asian style cafe. He introduced me to Asian flavours and techniques and just the rush. I thought, you know, it was fast paced at Bistro. But this was a little thumper. we would make like 120 pad thai in about 45 minutes in a lunch rush. It was nuts. The techniques and the flavours; he taught me how to make Pho and we were doing all these weird sorts of flavours. It was so new to me; it was just eye-opening. I thought, oh my god, I know nothing. He took me right back to square one again. I felt like an apprentice on their first day. After that, I hopped around a few other kitchens trying to find which way I wanted to go with cooking. I tried pub style and worked at Hotel Sorento for a bit. It is massive. It was just so huge and it was good to see the production side of how you can pump out so much food. We were doing 2000 people in a service over the peak of summer.

Oh, it is huge there though, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a monster. It was good to manage all the different aspects of a place like that and see how it all operates. They were buying fish by the pallet, not even by the kilo.

I hadn't really thought of that side of it yet. That's right; the volume of food.

After doing that, I realized I liked refinement.I wanted to go back into more fine dining but with no pretentiousness or anything like that. That's the goal I want to achieve eventually; to keep it simple.

It sounds as though you've been quite deliberate in trying out lots of different places and certainly learning lots of different styles of food. Do you think you've still got more to learn?

Oh, stacks more to learn. I want to know everything. I talk to suppliers a lot more now. I want to know where things come from? Where does the beef come from? I'm more invested now in that part of it rather than, okay this is the finished product on the plate; here's your steak and chips or whatever. I still want to learn the agricultural side too. Being up here in Northern Victoria, Im so much closer to all the farmers and everything. I have the opportunity to go visit them.

I've spoken to Annie Smithers a few times in the past. She is out at Trentham at Du Fermier and she grows a lot of what she makes for the restaurant and she talks about how when you grow produce, that you have a greater respect for it and you're less likely to waste ingredients and so on. I really like the idea that you're investing in the whole journey of the dish and I think that does bring with it a respect for the food.

I like that. My favourite restaurant is O.MY. I guess 85% of their menu comes from their farm. I've been watching their journey from the start, how small it was to how big it is now and Id like to go on that journey as well. It looks and sounds like a lot of hard work, but the rewards reaped will be worth it.

Absolutely. Blayne is so well organized. I walked and talked with him, around his farm garden and he maps it out with a chef's mind. It's all organised according to seasonality and what he is going to change out for something else as they move into the next season. I was there quite a few years ago now. So as you say, he's just got bigger and bigger and is making more food and it's a very impressive operation.

He's such a nice guy too. There has to be something wrong, doesn't there? He's nice, he's a good chef. He's got a wicked philosophy about food. There has to be something.

No, we should all strive to be more Blayne. Thats a good thing to think about aiming towards, but where do you get your inspiration now? Do you look at cookbooks or are you, inspired by the produce or are you looking at other people's food on Instagram? Where are you bouncing ideas from?

At the moment? I've been getting given a lot of like old cookbooks from Op Shops that are native Australian ones. And flora and fauna books, which are native to Australia as well. And I've been going through them and then calling my suppliers and asking how long it will take to get certain things?Is it possible? Can we get it? And then just taking an ingredient and building a dish around it. The protein of the dish might come last.

It might be based around a herb or even a strawberry. Alright, what are we going to do with this strawberry? And then you might think, a red wine sorbet, but like the main focus is strawberry, but the main component might just come last.

Yeah. That's interesting. I think I've heard a couple of people say that's a new tack they're taking, leaving the protein until last and thinking about the other flavours which is great. It's, a good approach.

Well there are a lot more vegetables and spices than and flora and fauna compared to proteins.

Yes, true.

So thinking down that path sort of opens you up to a lot of different flavour profiles rather than being, okay, I know duck goes with plum. You can think, can I ferment the plum? Can I do this to the plum? Or you know what might be really weird, but would work isMurray Cod, because its rich enough or savoury enough that it actually would complement a river fish rather than a duck.

Yeah. So when you are coming up with those ideas, are you always sure they'll work?

No, not a chance. I fail heaps. And then everyone's in the kitchen watching what Im creating and wanting a taste? No, not a chance. That's horrible.

But I think that's an important lesson, isn't it? I think, you know, you do have to try those things to then come up with the good stuff and not be afraid of failing or going down a different path with the flavour profile. That's good. So, with all that in mind and your experience up until now, what would your advice be to a young person who was thinking of becoming a chef?

I would say go onto the Good Food guide and find a smaller kitchen that has a really good head chef, whether it be two hats or one and just go put yourself in their face and learn. Don't just go down to your local because they're paying a little bit more or whatever. Spend five years finding the right people to teach you the style you might want to take on. You need someone who can mentor you, it makes it a lot easier and they'll really help your passion and make you keep that passion.

I think that's really good advice. Thank you. And thank you for your time.I can't wait to come out to Rutherglen and try the food for myself and see the fancy castle. Enjoy the rest of your day off and hopefully I'll meet you in person one day.

Yes, please come up and visit. We'll look after you.

KIN at All Saints Estate, 205 All Saints Road, Wahgunyah, Victoria