Chris Orr

Hi Chris. Thanks for agreeing to talk to me. I spoke to Michael Craig last week and he mentioned there was another Glaswegian chef in Melbourne and I thought, I cant pass up on this.

Michael and I go way back actually.

Yes, he said you were his head chef in an American BBQ place in Glasgow.

Yes, I think it was one of the first places he worked when he became a chef and then he moved on. I got a bit of a fright when I saw him in Melbourne because I hadnt seen him for a long time and he was working in Trippy Taco.

Its crazy, isnt it? When youre halfway around the world, you dont really think youre going to run into someone from back home. I thought it was interesting that that was American BBQ and I also read that youve worked in an Indian restaurant and an Italian restaurant and now youre finally getting back to your roots with Scottish, although it seems like youre drawing on all of those places at Wee Mans Kitchen. Where did it all start for you? Did you always know you wanted to be a chef?

I suppose, yeah. I always had a keen interest in cooking with my mum when I was young, doing a lot of baking and stuff. Back in the day I was interested in all the British cooking programs; Gordon Ramsay and Keith Floyd and so on. Floyd was a really big inspiration for me. It was always something I was interested in I suppose; cooking and travelling and just wanting to see the world, that was my inspiration. I fell into it from an early age. I was 16 when I worked in catering for a national stadium while I was still at high school. Then when I was 18, I went to the South of France and started cooking for a big group of boys. I was basically taking down tents at the time and I started group cooking for everybody. When I got back, I started working in an Italian restaurant and then I got into Argentinian food and that was something different. So, I had a keen interest in international cuisine, really. In Glasgow at that time, it was probably very European based, and I wanted to explore the scene more.

You were saying you went to the South of France, whereabouts was that?

That was in a place called Antibes, and I was in Nice and went up to Cannes as well. Basically, it was just a small part of the story but I had just left school and got a summer job taking down tents in big holiday parks, so there was just a bunch of about 20 boys and they asked who could cook and I could, so I started cooking for about 20 people and I suppose, being in France and having so many ingredients. Waking up in the morning and going to the bakery and getting bread and there was so much amazing produce in supermarkets, compared to the UK at that time. It was really exciting. Even simple things like fresh basil, you didnt really get much fresh basil in Scotland. Id see stuff like that and get inspired. It really got my juices flowing.

And then when I got back to Glasgow, one of my mates, I was probably 18 or 19, offered me a job in an Italian restaurant and I thought, yeah, Ill take that. I dont know, there was a slight glamourisation about cooking at first when youre that young, watching all these cooking shows and having ideas about how youd make it. In the kitchen, structurally everything is really different; you got tucked off into the corner with 25 bags of mussels that needed to be cleaned and a massive wheel of parmesan like you have never seen in your life and it takes you two hours to take it apart. Then youd get a tiny little grater and youre doing the whole thing. I always remember how dirty my chefs whites would get. I used to wipe my hands on my tummy and Id take my whites home to my mum and there used to be all these red tomato stains that wouldnt come out and my mumback then my mum did my washingshe was bleaching my whites every day.

Ive always had a very strong Italian background for cooking; I just had a real passion for pasta. It was seen as European and foreign. Im talking about the early nineties, back in the day, when we were just eating potatoes with everything in Scotland. Potatoes and chips.

I know what youre talking about. Im from New Zealand and I lived for a year in France between 1993 and 1994 and food has come a long way in New Zealand as well, but at the time, going to France, and I lived just out of Avignon in the South of France, for me, it was a revelation as well. Im not a chef but I certainly appreciated the markets and tomatoes that tasted like sunshine and apricots that tasted like apricot jam, just because they were so beautiful and ripe.

It was the way the markets would take care of the fruit and how interested the people were in the cheeses and charcuterie. Look markets play a big part in my life now and I think thats one of the big reasons I came to Melbourne. I travelled here back in 2003 and fell in love with Melbourne because it felt like a European city on the other side of the world. I remember going to Vic Market and falling in love and I was staying at a back packers and Id ask everyone what they wanted and Id run off to the market and get lost in there, spending a fortune just so I could cook and see all the wonderful things. That always had a big impact in my mind, and I told myself I would come back. I moved here in 2012, and I thought, yeah, this is it. Ive got a restaurant in Preston, so Im right next to Preston market. Its not open right now, but markets play a big role for me. I just love the freshness and the smells and everything. Youre always finding something.

When you first came here, you were at Ritas. Was that when you first got here?

I was working in a small cafe in Elwood and I was doing breakfasts there, but for some reason I never took to it and I saw something advertised for Abbotsford and I wasnt really sure about Abbotsford. I was staying in St Kilda which is where you end up staying if youre British and a backpackerI dont know where Kiwis stayI call it mini Dublin or mini London now. I saw the job for Ritas and it was quite far away but I went for a trial and straightaway everything just fell into place. At the time they were doing breakfast, lunch and dinner, so I started off doing breakfast shifts and everything was pretty straight forward. I started cooking simple Italian breakfasts, like garlic mushrooms on toast and poached eggs, pretty normal stuff, I cant remember now, its going back a bit. I stayed there for about five years. I had a good relationship with the owner and I really believed in what I was doing. I really enjoyed it. It was a small place and it was all handmade pizzas and pastas and all the produce was really good. Dan, the owner was really good at sourcing stuff; everything we used was good. By the end I was designing menus and stuff, so I stayed thereand I love pizza as well.

Its a great place. I live in Abbotsford and before the lockdown, it was really starting to flourish with Dr Morse and Bodriggy and all of those places. Its a great little corner down there.

It has a great feeling. It was basically just Ritas back then, four years ago, with another caf up the road and now its just buzzing. I love Dr Morse as well. I love Abbotsford actually. Im in Northcote which is a wee bit better. I love Northcote.

Northcote is great, although anywhere northside really. Although I lived in Elwood when I first came to Melbourne and that was great as well. Melbourne is a great city and I think thats the joy of it, that there are these different neighbourhoods that have a different feel, which is interesting. Did you go straight from Ritas to your own place? How did Wee Mans Kitchen come about?

I was working at Ritas and I suppose after five years there I was looking for new directions. I was in my head thinking about doing Scottish pop-ups. I had this whole visualisation of doing a Scottish pop-up and there was a little bar on Elgin Street, I think it was, that reminded me of a Glasgow bar; the dcor seemed a bit plain and it had a good feel to it. I was going to go and speak to them about a pop-up. But that never happened. But I had a friend who was doing beer, Dan, who is now the owner and brewer at Tallboy & Moose. He asked me if I wanted to come up and open a kitchen and do food. I grabbed the opportunity and thought, why not? Id never had a kitchen that was mine before. I had to actually build the kitchen and test it out and at that time I had just had my first child, and I was living in St Kilda as well and I dont drive. I was building the kitchen for about eight months and going away up to Preston and back, so it was a hard time.

The number of chefs I hear about who start new ventures when they have just had a new baby astounds me. Its like you want even more of a challenge.

Its crazy. Dont do that. Wait until youve had the baby.

How do you go about knowing what you want for a kitchen design? Youve been in quite a few kitchens, so what is the most important thing about setting up a kitchen for you?

For me the main thing is flow. Youve got to have a kitchen that flows, and its got to be easy and accessible to get dishes in and out. Ive got an open plan kitchen. Im lucky because I have worked in a lot of open plan kitchens and I like open plan because Im very person-based, and I like to talk to people and see what theyre doing and be part of the restaurant. In terms of flow, I think its good to set up your dishwasher area and make sure that all the dishes come in and out so that its running smoothly. In terms of kitchens, it depends what youre going to do. The set up for me, I looked at what I was going to be cooking and how I would be cooking it. Ive always been a fan of the grill; Ive always liked grilling meat and doing barbecue, but I wasnt taking that direction, so because Im based on Italian food as well, I needed a stove. Ive got a nice big second-hand stove from the 1960s. Its a solid thing, really heavy. I set up really simply at first: stove, fryer, flat top and fridges; refrigeration is really important. Its a small kitchen so space is a hard thing to manage. Tallboy & Moose can seat 200 people and that kitchen is basically the size of a small kitchen you get in a house. In turns of volume, it gets quite tricky, the good thing is that everything is fresh. Youve just got to make it; you cant store a lot. At least when you come to see me, Im busting my balls to get some food out rather than getting everything ready the week before. Its about flow.

I was looking at your menu and you talked about having an Italian influence, but you also have Scottish influences, of course. I wouldnt have thought of combining Indian, Italian and Scottish but it clearly works at Wee Mans Kitchen so how do you make that all come together?

Thats a good point actually. So, have you been to the UK? Right, youve been to the UK, so you know about the pubs. Back in the day pubs would shut at 12 oclock so you would go straight to your Indian and youd order your pakora and your curry and while you were waiting, youd get a pint. You were always allowed to sit and have an extra pint while you waited. So that was my introduction to Indian food. My dad and my mum when they were coming back from the pub would bring an Indian take away home. Then Dad would try and get away from my mum so hed suggest getting Indian and hed go down to the Indian restaurant and order a curry and the curry would take about half an hour because they were always so busy and he would go to the pub. In Scotland, Indian is our other national dish, we love curry so much. I love curry so much. I spent half my time eating Indian food. Even at school, youd be at the school ftes and the mums would have made wee fairy cakes or nice scones and then youd have all the Indian and Pakistani mums come and thered be pakoras and bhajis and samosas and all these amazing sweets youd never seen. My mum would say, Chris, Chris, Chris, make sure you get some pakoras! Because they would go first instead of the fairy cakes and standardised British food; it was always the Indian food that seemed to go.

Thats whats important for me; being multicultural and appreciating that its different cultures that connect Scotland and being more global about it. So, for me, what Scottish food represents in Wee Mans Kitchen is this: I associate it with drinking because thats what Scottish people are also associated with. We like a drink and the best food to go with that is probably Indian food. At the same time, the Italian food is that home-cooked Italian style that everyone can recognise. Like everybody has had their own Italian influx and everybody eats pasta, so I suppose that plays a part. In Wee Mans Kitchen, Scottish food, I would say, theres a fair bit of deep-fried, because a lot of it is; chip shops play a big part in Scotland, the traditional fish and chip shops, you get your potato cakes, your deep fried pizza, deep fried sausage, deep fried mars bars, deep fried dogyou dont really get deep fried dog, but if you wanted it, Im sure a Scotsman would do it. The chip shops and all that are probably associated with football in Scotland. When you go and watch the football, or soccer as you call it over here, chip shops are the big go-to. I stayed next to Scotlands National Stadium and we had four chip shops in our local area. So basically if Scotland were playing England or whatever, you would see these big burly men walking down with bottles of Buckfast, which is a Scottish tonic wine, which gets you really drunk, and cans of beer and bags of chips. Theyd be chanting the songs. Wee Mans Kitchen, being in a brewery, I associated that with drinking.

Basically then, Wee Mans Kitchen is all just about things that go well with drinking beer, because I suppose thats what most people are coming to Tall Boy & Moose for; craft beer. And I make my own haggis.

I was going to ask you about that. I dont know how easy it is to get hold of haggis any other way in Melbourne.

Its actually quite easy. There are a few companies that sell it. I was scared shitless about doing haggis because it gets a really bad rap; people see it as a disgusting thing Scottish people eat and that its basically sheeps offal shoved into a sheeps stomach and kicked around like a football. But its actually a small little animal that lives in the glens of Scotland that I imported over here and just go out and shoot themI like to play a lot of games with customers. But going back seven or eight years when I first came over, I was surprised to see that there was a lot of black pudding on breakfast menus. I never really associated Australian people with black pudding, but it seemed to be on a lot of menus. And by seeing that, I thought Id put haggis on and show my true identity as Scottish. I suppose for the whole idea of a Scottish menu, I play with a lot of ingredients. I spent a lot of time in India as well and I think the spices they use in India, you can cross it over with a lot of cuisines and Scottish food uses a lot of potatoes and different parts of meat and chicken and I suppose with my love for Indian food, I just put it all into one. Id love to one day have a British Indian restaurant. I think thats one of my goals actually.

It must be amazing when you get your own place to be able to do all that and bring all the things you love together and cook what you absolutely want to cook.

Thats the beauty of it. I get bored very easily and I like to change my menus quite often but Ive also got a specials menu so when I want to work on something new, I just shove it up on the specials board. Im also a bit OCD and I can never just do one thing so I end up putting five different specials on and, again, its a small kitchen and my menu can get really big at times becauseI dont know, I always try to simplify things but then I think I cant leave this off and I have to have this on

Having a kitchen gives me scope and keeps me entertained doing new stuff. I am constantly doing new stuff. Right now, with the lockdown, Ive been shut for six weeks because I wasnt set up to do takeaway really. Takeaway food is amazing but I didnt want to be that restaurant. I wanted people to come in and see me and experience my food there and then, rather than taking it home and moaning because it doesnt look like the picture. Ive been doing these big feasts. I call them Wee Mans feasts and thats what I first started doing at Wee Mans. Its a monthly feast and I pick a country or a city even and hone all my cooking skills and a menu I designed for that country or region. Last time I was doing Nepali food. Ive never been to Nepal, but I have an Indian chef from Nepal and we teamed up together and did a whole Nepalese feast which was amazing. We used pretty cool ingredients; like we got some buffalo meat. I smoked that over hay, and I learned some new techniques that are different to the Indian techniques I knew. The Nepalese have their own style of cooking which is quite different. I learned a lot. I like to do new things all the time.

Are you just doing it once a month?

A one off, every two or so weeks. The next one Im going to do is Jamaican food because I love Jamaican food. Theres a lot of it in London. When I was living in Canada, theres a big Jamaican community and I love jerk chicken and so on.

How would people find out about that to get in on that?

Instagram on Wee Mans Kitchen or Facebook. Thats the hard thing about being a chef owner. I spend too much time on the cooking, and I dont do enough on Instagram. Its always last minute. I plan it all in my head and then think, I should put it on Instagram. Its good to do different stuff, I suppose.

And clearly you still love cooking and love the hospitality side. I really like the idea that you didnt want to do the food you do as takeaway because for you, its the whole experience of going with beer and you talking to the diners. That to me is the epitome of hospitality so that must be what you love about your job.

Totally. Thats my main thing. Im finding it really difficult in lockdown and not being able to have customers into the restaurant. I get lonely, I suppose. Every time Ive worked in big restaurants and it has been a closed off kitchen, I hate that feeling of not seeing whats happening. Being part of hospitality is about the buzz, the clanging of plates, the noise of people chatting and drinking, the smells. I love being in restaurants, myself, and I love to be in that buzz. At the same time, I love cooking as well. Im always cooking here at home. Im always exploring new things.

For example, Ive been obsessed with Mexican food, recently, so Ill go and explore and read about it and find recipes I have never done and never made and Ill try and perfect it and invite people around. But the thing is now its a bit hard because I cant even invite people around for dinner. And there is only so much my missus can eat of my cooking and my freezer is full of different concoctions. And dont get me wrong, sometimes it just doesnt work, and it can get a bit bloody expensive at times. Thats what it means to me. If you want to be a chef, especially at the age of 40, youve got to love cooking. Its not just a job; its long hours and thats the hard thing, Im 40, Ive got two kids, Im needed in the house now. I cant do 13 hour shifts any more, my body just cant take it. Having my own place allows me to come in and out and concentrate on my family while at the same time having a wee bit of passion, which is still cooking and being able to explore that and the restaurant.

Perfect. What I really love about these conversations with chefs is that every single time although I have spoken to a lot of chefs now, you all come out with these beautiful things in a nutshell that explain things from your perspective. I am always so grateful that chefs share that with me and you certainly have, Chris, so thank you so much for talking to me; it has been such a pleasure.

I tend to rabble. Just dont catch me with a pint or youll be there for three hours.

Wee Mans Kitchen

270 Raglan Street, Preston