When I walk into San Telmo in the afternoon, the kitchen is a hive of activity. Meat is cooking over the coals and there are an incredible amount of chefs in the tiny kitchen, all focussed on their individual tasks. Stephen Clark is their leader, having worked his way up through the ranks from commis to head chef. Stephen hadn’t initially intended to be a chef but he thrives on it now, appreciating his at San Telmo who he considers his friends.
Stephen, you’ve been at San Telmo a while but as a sous-chef and now you are the head chef.
I actually started as a commis nearly seven years ago.
Wow. You must love it here.
It’s a really easy place to work. It’s a lot of fun; it’s busy, which is nice as a chef and the food is delicious.
And you have travelled a bit through South America, yourself, so you were familiar with the food, or is that since being here?
Since being here. I had no idea when I started. We moved down here and this was the first place I applied for and the first place that responded within about five minutes. Then my wife and I went for our honeymoon for a month and then I went just before Christmas last year for a wedding.
It’s interesting when you learn about a certain thing and then once you go to the place it comes from, it all makes sense. I learned French for years, for example, but it wasn’t until I went there that it all fell into place.
My spoken Spanish is atrocious.
But your knowledge of the food must have been influenced by the trip? You probably went back with new eyes.
And I can understand people relatively well, as long as they speak slowly. Being able to understand what was being said and not feeling completely out of place was different.
What were some of the things you were noticing over there that perhaps you might not have noticed if you hadn’t worked here or perhaps you were looking out for because you wanted to know more so you could apply it here?
Mainly all the barbecues they have, which is quite amazing; all the different ones and the way they operate them. But mainly the way people eat over there. For instance, a late dinner here is eight or nine, but nobody goes out to dinner until ten o’clock or later there. You’ll see kids out at 11.30pm eating dinner. It almost seemed more civilised than rushing home from work to eat dinner. They just relax and then eat dinner.
This is a real sideline, but it just occurred to me, do you think that’s what makes the drinking culture different there?
I didn’t see a lot of drinking for the sake of it. Don’t get me wrong, every meal has red wine and beer and so on, but it seems more like you’re drinking more with the meal rather than drinking to get drunk. They do produce a huge amount of red wine though.
I’ve eaten here…well, a while ago now…and the red wine and the meat are the things I remember.
Yes, everyone seems to love it, which is good.
You said you moved to Melbourne, where were you before here?
I was living in Noosa and that’s where I met my wife, working in restaurants up there. It was a bit boring because it is a holiday town and if you don’t surf or fish, there’s not really much to do.
Right. And I spoke to another chef who had worked in Queensland and she said it was all about the seafood up there, and you learn a lot about fish, although not necessarily the fishing part of it…
Noosa is really beautiful but not a lot happens. It’s quite sleepy. That’s fine but then you come down here and there’s more going on and more restaurants to work in.
The cooking is really fun, obviously, but it’s all about the people. Everyone in there are really good friends, so that’s why I keep coming back.
Did you train in Noosa?
No I trained in Brisbane. Under the same guy I worked for in Noosa. I spent four years with him as an apprentice, then had a year off and then got told there was a job in Noosa and moved up there and spent another five years there with him.
And that worked out well because you met your wife. Serendipitous. So when you started, what sort of food were you doing?
I guess the best way to describe it would be modern Australian. We did a bit of everything; there was always something a little bit Asian on the menu. It was mostly European, but it gave me a good grounding in everything. It was really good training. they pushed us hard to come up with new dishes. You’d get homework every night, like use this ingredient and come up with ten dishes. It was good sometimes and sometimes you’d go to work and be afraid of what was going to be said, but in a good way. They certainly trained us really well and pushed us really hard.
What’s an example of an ingredient or product they might have thrown at you?
This one isn’t an ingredient but funnily enough I got told to write a menu as if I was in Noosa. At that time, there was ‘Noosa food’; a style of cooking which was quite simple and beachy with lots of really fresh ingredients and seafood. I had to come up with four starters, four mains and four desserts. Other times it would be something like here are some finger limes, come up with ten dishes that use finger limes. Or if pork was on special that week, we would have to come up with ten pork dishes.
Where would you start when you were approaching something like that? Would you start with books?
Yes, they encouraged to buy cook books and read them. If you just ripped the recipe straight out of a book though, you’d probably get spoken to but using them as an inspiration was always encouraged. Just looking at menus around town and at what other people are doing to get ideas.
Do you still do that now? Is that your process?
It’s a bit difficult here, because of the way that we cook because it is very simple and it is just meat on the plate. That’s how they eat in Argentina. So it makes it challenging in a different way to be inventive in presenting the sides and starters and still stick to what you get in Argentina. I have Argentinian and South American cookbooks. I also have about 10 Argentinian staff working here at the moment, in the kitchen and on the floor, so if I have an idea I can ask them if they ever eat that sort of thing.
Josh at Asado said the same thing, that his training made him see chicken livers as a starting point for a pâté, but his Argentinian staff encouraged him to cook them over the coals and they were amazing.
Normally any sort of protein goes straight on the barbecue and then is eaten like that, maybe with a bit of lemon or chimichurri and that’s it.
Did you have to get used to working with fire, well this type of fire?
I had never cooked with charcoal before. I’d never even cooked on a wood-fired barbecue before I came here. It’s actually, in some ways, easier than cooking over gas because you have a lot of control over how hot it is and where you can put the charcoal. Once you get the hang of the way the grill works, it becomes second nature.
So not too many burns now?
No, I’ve never really burned myself, although I do cut myself. If I’m going to do something, it will be a cut. There are a few guys in the kitchen who burn themselves.
I burn and cut myself but that’s just in my kitchen at home. Did you always want to be a chef?
No, definitely not. I spent three years at university. That was a waste of time.
Then I moved back to Brisbane and was floating around doing casual jobs here and there. One of my dad’s business friends had a restaurant and they needed a kitchen hand one night and my dad said, Stephen will do it and then rang me and told me I was working. I fell into it from there. They needed an apprentice about three months later and I said I’d do it.
Oh, so that was the one you stayed at for four years?
Yes. But the funny part was that I was the worst kitchen hand they had ever seen and they were going to fire me before I became an apprentice. So that’s how I started cooking and now I really enjoy it.
Can you use anything from what you studied?
I studied English and History, so it wasn’t very useful.
Well, nothing is ever wasted, I’ll say from my teacher point of view.
It was an Arts’ degree and I didn’t know what I wanted to do so I just did those two because they were interesting.
It’s hard to know sometimes what we might want to do. But obviously you are pleased with your choice?
Yes I am.
I really like hearing that people have been involved with one restaurant or group for a number of years. I like the idea of building a team and keeping it. You would have a really good team here.
Yes we do. It’s a really stable team. We’ve only lost two staff members in the last 18 months.
I imagine it’s challenging stepping into the role of head chef having been sous chef. What’s your leadership style in the kitchen?
Obviously you can’t scream and shout at people any more. You never could here anyway because it is such an open kitchen. We get really good training from another business we work with called Eldred Hospitality and they are all about making sure you don’t ask people to do things they know you wouldn’t do yourself. It’s about always being respectful and honest in the way you communicate with people but at the same time being very assertive and leaving no doubt as to what you want.
I’ve found the best way is to communicate properly with people. Shouting at people isn’t very good communication.
How do you handle the pressure when there are a lot of diners in, it’s hot and there are knives and so on…?
At the beginning, I just had to make sure I was focussed on every docket we were doing. These days because we have such a stable steam, it’s never really that stressful even when it’s really busy. We often get comments about how relaxed we look. That’s because we are. It’s not like we are rushing around and in the shit. You have to be focussed on what you’re doing and make sure everyone is ready for service. The service is almost the easy part of it, it’s being ready and organised that’s important.
It’s like a performance isn’t it?
Yes, you do all the practice and preparation beforehand and hopefully you’re ready and if you’re not, you’d better rush around and make sure you areready.
Do you have a favourite thing to cook or a favourite thing on the menu?
I do like cooking the strip loin on the bone. Everyone knows what a strip loin is but we present it in a different way that people have never see it before. I like the Provoleta. In Argentina, it’s a piece of cheese like Provolone that they put on the barbecue and flip it out into a little dish and serve it like that. It’s pretty much grilled cheese. We do something very similar here, but we cook it in a pan because we can’t get a cheese that will stay on the barbecue. Have you had saganaki? It’s like that but better. It’s caramelised and gooey and very hot.
I have to have that.
Next time you come in, have it. It’s amazing.
What would your advice be to a young person who was considering becoming a chef?
Don’t watch MasterChef or My Kitchen Rules. Be prepared for a lot of hard work. Be prepared to feel…not stupid…but a bit useless sometimes. That’s a good thing because that’s not an easy thing to learn. You almost have to abandon any idea of common sense and how things work from what you knew before and work in a very small personal space because a lot of kitchens are tiny and you do have to get used to people working on top of you. But the main thing is to have an open mind about it because you will work with people from all over the world and you will probably have to deal with some interesting personalities who could be pushy and assertive in the way they communicate. It’s good life experience.
What are the good things? What makes you keep coming back to it?
The main thing is meeting all the people from all over the world. I’ve got kiwis, Australians, Argentinians, Colombians, Ecuadorians, a Korean guy, a Japanese guy and two guys from El Salvador in the kitchen on the roster at the moment. When you have people from all over the world, they have different ideas about how things work. I’ve picked up a lot of bad words in a lot of different languages. It’s always interesting meeting different people and learning new things. It’s handy having people from all over the world because when I travel overseas I get tips and ideas and sometimes places to stay.
The cooking is really fun, obviously, but it’s all about the people. Everyone in there are really good friends, so that’s why I keep coming back.
14 Meyers Place, Melbourne