This was such a great chat. They are ALL great chats and I can’t even tell you how lucky I feel to be able to sit down with these chefs and just ask them anything I want to about their craft and things that occur to me mid-flight. Dan was so accommodating and really went with the flow and answered all of my questions in such a delicious way. All this, while the end-of-winter sun slanted in through the art deco windows of the Prince Dining Room. This is a pretty special place where the staff do yoga together and access the St Kilda Salt Baths and Dan is cooking up some pretty special food which you should definitely try. It’ll be obligatory after reading this chat or listening to the podcast on Spotify.
Hi Dan. Thank you for talking to me. How has your day been?
Good, thanks, how was yours?
Pretty good. Off and on sun out there; we’re getting to that time of year where people are coming out of hibernation and more willing to go out and do things again.
Absolutely. We really notice it here. Foot traffic around the beaches and so on really make a difference instantly when the sun comes out.
I think too there’s something about the Melbourne mentality. We had a long summer and pretty glorious autumn, but people always start complaining about winter and how sick of the cold they are. Now, Dan, I was reading about you and how you were at Aria for a period of time. Are you originally from Brisbane?
No, I’m not from Brisbane. That was the first big move from the country. I grew up in the Hunter Valley. So I spent my time cooking and doing my training there, then the first big move was to Brisbane and I spent some time working there.
Was that something you always knew you were going to do; be a chef?
I cooked through school and I always had a knack for it and enjoyed it, but also growing up in a small town I had this urge to get out and explore. I had the idea there was so much out there to see. Then I spent some time in kitchens when I was 16 and 17 talking to chefs and fell in love with what the industry could offer from there. We always had a vegetable garden growing up as a kid and we were hands on with that but I didn’t really reflect on that. I was very lucky to have had that growing up, so a natural inspiration.
When that clicked for you when you started working with chefs, what do you think it was that appealed to you the most about being a chef or about hospitality as a whole?
I was lucky enough to work with a couple of mentors and spent some time in Sydney and Brisbane and they encouraged me to get out and see the world and not only that, that level of creativity and freedom appealed to me; not only freedom in the kitchen, but freedom as to what you can go and do.
The world’s yours. When you moved from a small town to Brisbane and a hatted restaurant, it must have been a different experience. What level did you come in at?
I came in as commis chef. I was 21 years old and young and fresh out the Hunter Valley, Newcastle dining scene. For me, it was a little bit overwhelming but I certainly attacked that head on. I was very impressed, almost blown away by it. We would do 250 covers for lunch and 250 to 300 covers for dinner in the same day, Friday no problems. The kicthen would operate seamlessly. It was a really well-oiled machine and was there for 10 years. It was a credit to those guys that it operated so smoothly.
It’s interesting that perhaps because of the restaurant hierarchy, chefs naturally want to learn more and be learning all the time but it’s almost imposed on you to rise up through the ranks and keep on learning and keep on impressing.
We are a pretty determined bunch. I wouldn’t be surprised if we weren’t all Capricorns like me. I’ve always enjoyed everything about the hospitality industry, the long hours part comes into play when we start burning the candle at both ends. We’re an industry that is never set; we could do a service that goes an hour longer than it should or a table comes in late, it will always be varied hours so it’s about how we drive the other side in terms of wellbeing and so on.
That’s something that is being spoken about more and more now. Now that you’re a head chef, how do you maintain your own wellbeing and that of your team?
We do lots of things. We put wellbeing and health at the forefront of conversation as opposed to how it used to be done. Our industry is always based around alcohol, I guess, but instead of that party vibe, we drive a bit more the wellbeing aspect. We do yoga together and we have linked up with the sea baths for gym memberships so guys can do down there as well. We talk about all that in the kitchen so it is normalised. So if you say you went to yoga at the weekend, it’s fine. If you said that 10 years ago…well it just wasn’t said at all. It’s about managing that side of things as well and trying to be healthy. Everyday you hear about chefs who have burn out and who have left the industry . We are trying to create a space that when you do do long hours, you are taken care of. That’s encouraged here.
We so often talk about sustainability of the products you’re using, but it is also about sustainability of people too, your team.
Absolutely. The industry varies so much in terms of hours, it’s about ensuring that everyone is taking care of themselves outside work.
What position did you get to at Aria?
I was commis chef for 15 months. That was my whole time in Brisbane. Then I moved to Melbourne.
And that’s where you rose up through the ranks.
Yes. I moved to Melbourne and worked at Circa. I was pretty fortunate because I worked under three really good head chefs; Jake Nicholson, Paul Wilson and Ash Hicks. It was one restaurant and one kitchen but it was kinda three restaurants because the food style was really different, the operations were different. It was really three very different incarnations of that space. I spent four and a half years at Circa. I came in as chef de partie and left as sous chef. I guess at that age’ mid-twenties, that’s when you are driving on.
Then you had a bit of a sabbatical?
I did. I took the best part of a year off. I was very lucky to have been able to do that. I guess I had worked hard to be able to do it. I did a lot of travelling though south-east Asia and Europe; they were the two main places that I spent my time. That changes you as well; getting a bit more of an understanding of culture and food and people along the way. There’s nothing quite like sitting on streets of Vietnam and not being able to communicate with anyone verbally but being able to point at something and say that’s delicious or I want what those guys are having, send that to my table as well and then get a thumbs up from the other side of the room from some Vietnamese, they are pretty special moments. You get that around the world. Whether it’s Northern Africa, some parts of Spain, Sicily, France. Those moments are special.
I think clichés are clichés for a reason and we often say that food brings people together but when you go and see how that works in other communities and cultures, and how they interact over food and get excite dover food. I remember….I spent a year in France…and went to the hairdresser and was there for about an hour and another couple of clients spent the whole time debating the recipe for a galette des rois (King’s cake, eaten on 6thJanuary) and I was struck by how French that was. But that sitting around big tables for hours talking about everything, it’s wonderful.
There’s a real common ground. I was lucky enough to meet a friend of mine who is Sicilian and we met him over there and had dinner with 20 of his friends in a restaurant on the side of a mountain about 45 minutes from the coast. We were sitting around eating and trying to communicate in broken English, all though my mate. We had all had beers and been drinking and eating and had such a good time. It came time to pay for the bill and me and my girlfriend took our money out to pay and my friend told me it had all been taken care of. They had split our portion amongst 18 people that we didn’t know just because we were guests in their town. We were blown away by that hospitality and generosity which was so natural to them.
I guess I draw inspiration from everywhere. The product is number one. We take a product and move to a dish from the product rather than the older classical style which is more recipe driven, so you find a recipe first and then build a dish to that recipe.
You would have gone at just the right time in terms of having learned a certain amount so that when you go away, you know what you need to know.
Yes. Previously you spend a lot of time working with head chefs and it’s their domain and then you get to take a bit of time and taste food and eat things and then be able to interpret things for yourself. That’s where we get most of our inspiration. It’s such a brilliant thing that chefs have to put their interpretations on things but a lot of us speak about coming across a dish on a street somewhere or a flavour somewhere, generally in the back streets somewhere and then we take that back and put our own twist on it.
Yeah and then that’s what diners do; the food you are then creating creates a memory for them or can transport them somewhere else. That’s the power of food as well. I was reading that you came back with some particular ideas or influences about the spices and so on that you were using and that that has changed the shape of the menu at Prince Dining room. Can you talk me through that?
Through that travel and then when I took on the head chef role halfway through last year, I went back to Europe again and spent a bit more time in Northern Africa and the Med, Italy and so on to gain some inspiration. When you travel across those parts of Europe, everyone has the same approach. It’s seasonal and local and it’s about developing a palate for the spices you want to use.
In Morocco, I spent some time with a chef there, and he then introduced me to a home cook, a good friend of his, Moroccan, I guess like the equivalent of a Nonna, grandmother. She was a very good cook and we spent five days together, going to the markets and cooking each day. I was trying to learn and take in everything from her and jotting things down. I was asking so many questions and we got to the point where we were making a tagine on the last day and we were cooking a lamb tagine with sesame and prunes…very traditional and I was asking what I could substitute for the ingredients, could I use figs instead of prunes or change the spices? I think she had had enough of me and told me that this was the recipe and her grandmother had taught her mother the recipe and that’s what her mother had taught her and now she was teaching me. We would got to the markets and she would buy her cumin from one stand and coriander seeds from the next and the saffron from the next stand. It’s not too dissimilar to south-east Asia where there would be two duck and rice shops but they’ll buy rice from one store and duck from the other one, because it’s a different grain of rice or it’s cooked differently. Each family has their prerogative.
Sometimes it’s about relationships too, isn’t is? Obviously they are choosing the best ingredient but sometimes that’s because there has been history before.
That’s right, probably from where her grandmother got it and her grandmother before that. Not too dissimilar to us with suppliers either.
You will have built up your own relationship with suppliers here. Can you recreate what you discovered over there? Are you able to find the ingredients you need?
We are pretty fortunate in Australia to have such a diverse climate. The stone fruits when you’re walking through Morocco or Spain, there are big trolleys of super-ripe stone fruit that permeate the streets as you’re walking by. Having relationships with small-batch suppliers can transport you back there. You can get a peach that is so delicious and the juice is running down your hands that you could be back on the streets of Morocco. We are lucky to have the relationships we have.
You will have had a winter menu but are you starting to think of spring now?
We sort of evolve the menu pretty quickly here. Some proteins will last a bit longer but certainly the vegetables and garnishes change frequently.
I read that you are quite vegetable driven here.
Absolutely. And we’ll move things week to week or month to month. We don’t set ourselves a window of how long we’ll run a menu, we just use what we can for the peak of its season and if that means changing things daily then we will.
That’s wise. I was just thinking, I asked the question about seasons, but the indigenous people worked on multiple seasons. We seem to still work on four, but it’s quite right to be more led to walk on country and see what’s fresh and available at the time.
That means back to those relationships. We are super close to our suppliers and communicate with them on a daily basis. We have five or six veg suppliers and they’ll text me at 9 o’clock at night asking what I want…the strawberries are ready to be picked now, do you want them tomorrow? Or the zucchini flowers are ready to go now. It’s not about me picking up the phone and asking for a kilo of strawberries or a punnet of zucchini flowers, but they come to me with what’s ready on that day.
Does that make you feel excited or panicked?
Excited. I think sometimes some of the guys feel panicked, but it’s an opportunity to see something at its peak and get creative. We’re lucky enough to have a kitchen with wood fires and wood ovens, and good equipment. That’s our first port of call when we’re cooking, we lean towards the wood oven.
What would be the process if someone rings you up and says the zucchini are ready to go, do you then have a chat to the team or do you come up with the ideas and then tell them?
The ideas definitely come from the whole team. We have a diverse kitchen background of people from South America, different parts of Europe and they’ve come from different kitchen backgrounds too. I try and take input from everyone so that we can create something that fits. It’s beneficial for everyone. People have things to teach me too as much as I have to teach someone else. I think it’s important to let people see something and have an idea and then manage it.
Apart from the resource of your team, where else do you get inspiration? Is it from Instagram or cookbooks or other peoples’ food?
I guess I draw inspiration from everywhere. The product is number one. We take a product and move to a dish from the product rather than the older classical style which is more recipe driven, so you find a recipe first and then build a dish to that recipe. There has been a big move to that in Paris, for example, in the new age bistros from the last five to eight years. You can see a big shift in what a Parisian bistro is now.
It’s not all coq au vin and boeuf bourguignon any more.
Delicious as that is. It’s just a lot more produce-driven there now.
The markets in France are amazing. I did a cooking class in Paris and we went to the market in Bastille and I couldn’t believe how much there was there. Our markets are great here to, but I loved seeing a Parisian market.
Give me an example of what you’ve just been talking about. What’s on the menu tonight?
Some good examples of what we do here are our carrot dish. We try and be as sustainable as possible here as well, so we roast our carrots in the wood oven and make a green harissa out of the ops of the carrots so there’s no waste. We don’t peel the carrots, we just give them a good scrub. our seafood is market-driven, we don’t lock ourselves into anything but have a good relationship with different seafood suppliers to understood what’s on the market. There’s lots of hearty dishes too, like roast pumpkin. We roast the whole pumpkin in the wood oven and where the seeds are, we scoop that out and boil that to make a little pumpkin stock and to clean the seeds off, then we make a little pumpkin curry out of the odds and ends. Then we dry the seeds out and shallow fry them in oil and lots of spices, so it’s a little dukkah pumpkin seed mix. There’s no wastage. There’s sweet potato on at the moment, we just use whatever is in the market whether it’s purple or yellow. We have orange on tonight as well, with lots of sesame and preserved lemon and chilli, which is really yummy. They’re some pretty good examples of vegetable dishes that stand out and stand up for themselves as well. You’d be quite happy having them as the feature on a table and let them be the hero and maybe have a small amount of protein to share, as opposed to the other way around. It used to be 500 grams or a kilo of protein with a couple of sides. Maybe put three or four hero vegetable dishes out with a smaller amount of protein, like some fish or Nicholl’s kitchen or even the tajine.
Is that the tajine recipe from the Moroccan grandmother?
It is. It’s the exact recipe. The only difference is the cut of meat; we used leg in Morocco but we use shoulder here because it holds up to braising better.
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