I first met Nicolas Tollé when I was a regular at Three Bags Full a few years ago. He and another French chef friend were working there and did a series of evening French dinners which I absolutely loved and wrote about at the time. Nicolas is now living and working in Eltham and his Instagram byline says it all; Proud Dad, Husband and Chef. He loves cooking, but left France to have more of a work-life balance. I caught him on a busy day in the kitchen at Second Home. They were a staff member down and even after lunch, there were still people ordering so Nicolas had one eye on me and one eye on the kitchen and still managed to tell a really great story and leave me with things to think about. He also makes the best corn fritters I have ever tasted.
It’s so busy here.
It always is and especially with school holidays.
How long has Second Home been open?
Three and a half years. I have been here since the end of August, so seven months.
I don’t really come to Eltham but it’s lovely out here.
I live here now.
Oh, so it really is your Second Home.
Literally. It’s a beautiful part of Melbourne. You are really amongst the gum trees and it’s not that far from the city.
Where did you live in France?
A small town in the north, nothing as nice as this. It was along the Belgian border, so cold and we had probably had 300 days of overcast weather in a year and maybe 20 days of sun. Nothing as nice as here.
Did you always want to be a chef?
From fairly early on. But I was pretty good at school and I really loved history. I wanted to be an archaeologist for a little while. I did a summer camp in archaeology and so on. One day I just changed my mind. I went against what usually happens in France. If you’re not academic, you go to more of a trade school, but I did the normal school process and did the equivalent of VCE. Then I did a one-year course of cooking in Paris rather than doing a three year apprenticeship. Then I went straight out working.
I think I always loved food. My mother wasn’t a great cook. I think it was the time, she’s much better now. It was in the nineties with Tupperware and everything cooked in the microwave. I think it was the era, people didn’t want to spend time in the kitchen. My grandpa loved food and I think he was inspiring for me. I did a bit of cooking at home. I really loved Christmas and liked to pretend I was cooking in a restaurant and I would cook for my parents and serve them. I guess I had something inside me. I wanted to do something creative and I didn’t want to go to University like everyone else. It sounded more exciting to be cooking.
When chefs here learn the trade, they learn classical French cooking. You’re French already and in France, what are the similarities and differences in the training do you think?
It’s almost 20 years since I started and it was much tougher than it is now. Although people a generation before me said the same thing to me. I think it is a tradition in life for the older generation to tell the younger one how much tougher it was. The French way from France is really strict, almost military order. It is the way it is, don’t question anything. The boss is the boss and there is a hierarchy. There was a lot of oui chef, oui chef. But you are working on years and years and decades and maybe centuries of craftsmanship. There is a reason why you do it. You’re working in with other people and you have to think about how you do things. You have to think about why am I doing it this way? Why am I filleting this fish this way? There is a reason why. It’s about understanding the why, which is good, but we weren’t to question it. It was what it was, and it definitely isn’t like that anymore. In any field. My sister is a German teacher in France and the kids definitely question more now than they did when we were at school. At the end of the day, that is probably good. We shouldn’t take everything as a given.
I think it takes time and a fair bit of confidence to try to realise who you are a chef, rather than following someone else, like Alain Ducasse or Joël Robuchon or Ferran Adrià or René Redzepi. It’s easy to be influenced by the way those chefs are cooking, but I got to the stage where I want to do the things the way I want to do them, rather than trying to reproduce someone else’s style.
Has your own style of cheffing changed over the years?
It definitely has evolved. For many reasons. Because of experience and influences and just me getting older. My taste has changed too. I definitely like things less and less sweet. I like less fat. I think it’s a general human thing as you get older, and I have changed the way I cook as well. I think that has always been the way in general. I think if you look at cuisine in France, it has changed since I started working. People used to cook a certain way and use more butter and things like that. I think it takes time and a fair bit of confidence to try to realise who you are a chef, rather than following someone else, like Alain Ducasse or Joël Robuchon or Ferran Adrià or René Redzepi. It’s easy to be influenced by the way those chefs are cooking, but I got to the stage where I want to do the things the way I want to do them, rather than trying to reproduce someone else’s style.
Who are you as a chef?
It’s a good question. Just someone who enjoys a good meal. I really try to cook things as simple as they can be yet using a bit more technique than cooking at home. I try to use the right technique and make it taste good. It’s not fine dining, it’s a café. It’s about finding the right balance of quality and consistency. It’s a hard question. When I cook for friends, I think they enjoy coming to our place because they think I always cook something exotic and fancy, but it’s nothing fancy. I love to do a good spread; a few salads and sides and a nice piece of meat or fish with good sauce.
Did you start in fine dining?
Yes I did. I did most of it in France. I also worked in catering. It was probably the most luxurious catering company in Paris. I was there four or five years. That’s a different way of working to fine dining. It was still at the top level and you cook for 300 people with a Michelin star chef. Instead of being in a restaurant, you are out at another site.
That’s probably what brought me to Australia. It was too much. It was exhausting. I look back at all the people I used to work with and many of my friends I still have in France, the ones who didn’t stop fine dining, are all top chefs in Paris. It’s like the chefs on Chef’s Table. At some stage in their life they have chosen work over anything else. When I watch Chef’s Table with my wife she always says, where is the family? They’ve got kids, but the guy is spending 18 hours in the kitchen. What about his kids and partner? Those people chose to follow their passion all the way through. I think it’s somewhat egotistical. They are putting themselves first. To achieve what they have achieved, you have to be working all the time. Good on them, but at a certain point, I just wanted to leave. I was working too much, and I wasn’t do anything but cooking. What about living my life?
There is something about the cycle of feeding your own soul so you can feed other people.
A happy chef is a good chef. A frustrated or grumpy chef doesn’t do a good job.
Did you have to come to the other side of the world to escape that?
I needed a good way of breaking up what I was doing. For me that’s why I started working in cafes. I enjoy not working at night. It comes with the frustration of what it can sometimes be in cafes, you know, there’s a lot of eggs and bacon. It’s about still trying to do as good as I can, being respectful of what I want to achieve and finding the balance. I live in Eltham. I spend 10 hours here and it takes me three minutes to get home around 4.15pm. The days are long, but I can achieve more things outside work as well.
21 Brougham Street, Eltham