When I told Kate I needed a photo of her, she suggested sitting under the pride and joy of Gabriel owner, Andrew Skoullos, Patrick Dagg’s mixed media piece, King for Phillip. Perfect, really, that she has a halo-like crown hovering over her head, because talking to her, I couldn’t help but be caught up in her enthusiasm and love for what she does and the people she works with. Check out @gabrielfitzroy to see the treats she is putting out. Like me, you’ll be heading down to Gertrude Street on a regular basis.
So, Kate, you were with De Clieu as well.
Yes. Initially when Andrew had in mind to buy the business, he always wanted to take it to the next level; keep it pretty Fitzroy. By using Flack Studios and some other local manufacturers, that’s been nice for people in the area. Then I’ve had some experience in the inner Melbourne suburbs; Thornbury, Collingwood and Fitzroy. It was nice to see the transition from a pretty tired De Clieu to a lovely fresh Gabriel. It still feels like the classic space that it was always known for.
It’s a lovely space and they have done great things with it. As for the food, every time an Instagram from Gabriel comes up, I honestly think, I need to go down there and have that. I’ve actually only got down once and done that. That was when I saw the fruit toast with the whipped ricotta and honey. There was a fry up I saw last week that I need to have.
The fry up is like the classic big breakfast. We’re not necessarily doing something that everyone else has on their menu. I think that’s what I’ve tried to do with a lot of the stuff. Everyone has a fruit toast on, but it’s a bit nicer with ricotta and a nice honey. The fry up has pork belly and greens on it; kale and roasted tomato. It’s not just your average big breakfast all piled up on the plate.
There has been really good feedback on the food. It’s nice to be standing in the kitchen and hear people go, oooohhhhh! When they get their food. It’s nice. I think people eat food with their eyes first, so it should look good and then when they taste it, hopefully it tastes even better than it looks.
Instagram has really changed the hospitality industry. Sometimes for negative reasons, but I think the majority are positive.
Some chefs I speak to are not into social media and not into the fact that people can so easily jump online and give their two cents worth whether they know about food, or not. But I think there are positives as well.
Definitely. It can be a bit demoralising sometimes when you get a negative review on something because it’s not just your job it’s your passion, that’s what you really care about. If you’ve had a bad day, or if I’m not here and something has happened and one of the other chefs in the kitchen has had a hard time, then all of a sudden, there’s a negative review and it can be heartbreaking sometimes. You need to get a thick skin.
Customers are having bad days too. And sometimes their reactions are because of that.
I think the more we, as chefs, can go out, the better. A lot of the people I’ve had in the kitchen have been Internationals, which is really great because we have Michelin star chefs in there. The guy in there at the moment has worked at Michelin star restaurants in Germany and I’ve got one girl from San Francisco and she has worked with Dominique Crenn and really amazing chefs. I really encourage them to go out in Melbourne because it’s like no other city in the world when it comes to cafes for breakfast and lunch. It’s the only place, I think, where you can go out and get restaurant quality food for less money than perhaps it should be, because people don’t want to pay it, but it’s a pretty special place.
It has all changed, hasn’t it? I often liken it to back in the day when I was growing up, being on a tv show wasn’t really that cool for actors ad all the big names were in movies and now that has all changed. All the big name chefs were in the fine dining restaurants and now there are a lot of them in cafes. People are coming to cafes and expecting high quality food. It’s an interesting shift.
I think it’s difficult. A lot of people have got into strife, and it’s their own fault because they haven’t done the right thing with pay. The reality for cafes is that it’s hard for cafes to make money if they’re not licensed and serving alcohol to the extent restaurants are and they’re paying award rates and public holidays and paying everyone equally and fairly, it can be really hard to make money for business owners. Mostly for cafes. Hopefully everyone feels passionate about fair pay and that people can get an idea about just how much money it takes to use quality ingredients and food, which is what people want and expect.
Within the confines of the certain amount of hours people can work, are you still able to teach staff?
I think it’s hard in cafes. It’s manageable, but in cafes you’re open for the majority of hours that you’re at work. You’re doing service, whereas in restaurants, you go in at nine or ten and you won’t start service until lunchtime, then you have a break and some more prep time and then you do night service. Whereas in cafes, I arrive at 5.30am and then it’s intense prep and then it’s service and then we finish service at 3pm and it’s intense prep again and then we try and get home before the twelfth hour clicks over. It is hard. I’ve not really had a full-time commercial cookery apprentice under me because it is very tricky. Mind you, a lot of my café experience has been in quite small kitchens. There are some really big café kitchens and there could be some room for apprentices to learn the café feel of things. I learned in restaurants and I feel like it equipped me really well to deal with cafes. I think it was a good first step. Cafes are so much more hectic than restaurants.
They are a different beast entirely, I imagine. How long have you been a chef?
I’ve lost track, but I think it’s around 12 years. When I left high school I actually trained to be a nurse. I liked nursing but I thought I might quite like to be a chef. My best mate was a chef, Sandy, she’s head chef at Top Paddock. She had been a chef for a couple of years and we would cook together and my dad is a great cook. Chefs and cooks run in the family and I was always surrounded by good food. So I thought I might as well be cooking it. I remember I sat mum down, and said to her, I know I’ve just finished training to be a nurse – she’s a nurse and she was excited that I was doing nursing – but I think I want to do my chef’s apprenticeship. She was really good about it, she just said, alright, are you going to stick at it? You know it’s very different to nursing. It’s not like cooking at home.
She’s right. It is really different. You have to love it. And you can’t just love baking cakes at home and then be a chef. You have to love it in a different way.
Have you wavered at all in those 12 years?
No. Not yet. There has probably only been two points in my career, once when I was doing my apprenticeship and was having a bit of a hard time. It’s not a nice thing to go through for the majority of people, and I did wonder if that was something I wanted to do and then when you get tired and bit run down and you’re low on staff and can’t find anyone to hire. When things were really really bad that’s when I wondered whether I’d be able to do this for much longer. It didn’t last very long. I found staff…I found great staff and I carried on.
There’s nothing better than a Saturday or Sunday service when you pump out 300 plus meals between two or three of you. You go into the cool room at the end of the day and there is nothing left and you think, shit, I’ve got to do it all again tomorrow. It’s so much fun though. It’s like you train all week to play the game on the weekend. It’s awesome. You’re tired, but it’s really good fun.
I was going to ask, and I only ask because I started Conversation with a chef because of the amazing conversations I had with my really good friend, Nicky, who was a head chef in Christchurch. She said that, for women chefs they had to go into a kitchen and earn the respect of their staff, but a male chef had to do something pretty drastic to lose respect. What’s your experience of that? Is it harder for women?
Definitely. I’ve been very lucky in that I finished my apprenticeship and did my own business for a while, so private catering for dinners and all that kind of stuff. I travelled for a while. When I came back I did a bit of…a bit like here…going in and helping set up or hope turn over cafes and restart them. I did some consulting work and helped write menus and so on.
The girls who opened at Short Round in Thornbury…it was a very strange coordination of events but they contacted me for a job, so I’ve been lucky in that I haven’t had to apply and then go in and earn respect from staff. I feel that there are more and more women in the kitchen. I feel like, for a couple of years at Short Round, there were only females in the kitchen. People said, oh that’s that place that only employs women. Coincidentally that’s what happened, there were two guys who were dishies, but that was just how it panned out.
I do wonder if I have a really small amount of bias. It’s possible. I like to think that I don’t. I like to think if there were two equally qualified chefs, one male, one female, I’d like to think they would have equal opportunity to get the job. I haven’t really thought about that one.
When I spoke to Philippa Sibley she told me she was glad that I hadn’t asked her what it was like to be a woman chef because she is a woman and she’s a chef and it shouldn’t be a thing. But other women I’ve spoken to have said it’s something to talk about and there hasn’t been equality.
In restaurants certainly, there probably still isn’t. I think the whole hierarchical system of the cheffing industry is pretty damaged, it’s stuck in a constant cycle. Apprentices are treated like shit and then when they come into higher positions, they treat the apprentices like shit. I had a good apprenticeship but I had times when I was bullied and it shouldn’t happen and that was one thing I said, that when I became I head chef, it was just never going to happen. I didn’t realise it was happening once, under my management and as soon as I found out about it, because it wasn’t from me, it was from someone else, it was picked up and sorted out straight away. It’s not something that I tolerate and I think there are a lot more people who aren’t tolerating it now either, which is good.
It does seem as though things have changed in kitchens now. In some respect the open kitchens have helped with that. You’re on show.
It’s so embarrassing when you go into a restaurant and you hear a chef yelling. It’s such a turn off. People say to me, oh you’re a chef, cool, do you watch Gordon Ramsay? I say, no, he’s an idiot, why would I do that?
I have a strong sense that the emotions and whatever is going on in the kitchen goes into the food and then we eat that, so the love or whatever. It’s always better if you know it’s a harmonious kitchen.
Some of the best times I’ve ever had have been in the kitchen. You forge really great relationships with people. You spend a lot of time with those people so you find a way to get along with them. There's nothing better than a Saturday or Sunday service when you pump out 300 plus meals between two or three of you. You go into the cool room at the end of the day and there is nothing left and you think, shit, I’ve got to do it all again tomorrow. It’s so much fun though. It’s like you train all week to play the game on the weekend. It’s awesome. You’re tired, but it’s really good fun.
Just to go back to the menu. Andrew was saying, as everyone says, that it’s important that the menu is seasonal and that if avocados aren’t in season, then there won’t be avo on toast. I wouldn’t imagine that would be easy to do in Melbourne.
I’m yet to do it. I’ve been promised by our supplier that avocados are going to be ok this season. It’s very controversial.
How has this avo on toast thing even happened? I guess that’s a whole other conversation.
Supermarkets are selling avocadoes all year round and sometimes they’re $5 or $6 and avocado and they’re not very nice. So I don’t understand why people expect to come to a café and get a nice avocado for the same price that they would usually pay. It doesn’t make sense. I’m still hoping I can go down that path, but at the end of the day it’s a business decision for Andrew. If he decides we need to please the customers, then I will respect that. I think if we want to be true to seasonality and true to costing for a menu, then we should seriously think about the avocado situation. But that goes for other things too. By and large if you stick to a seasonal menu, you don’t have those problems of money being lost somewhere you wouldn’t expect it, or wastage because things aren’t lasting as long because they’re not in season, or they don’t taste very nice. That’s the other thing. You get the best flavour out of things when they are in season. Why not have the best?
When you come to make a menu or a dish, are you inspired by the product or are you reading books and getting ideas or are you seeing other people’s food and getting ideas?
I think I’m a bit of a sponge when it comes to that kind of stuff. Travelling is a huge one. I find it hard not to put heavily Mexican-influenced dishes on because when travelling in Mexico the food was absolutely amazing. I love Thai food. I love Thailand, I’ve been there so many times, I have to start going somewhere else because I keep going back.
We went in to Gabriel trying to do a sort of classical French, European menu, but I think that can be quite limiting, especially when I have a penchant for Japanese, Asian, Mexican stuff. It’s roundly European with a bit of whatever else was inspiring at the time. I think I’m a little bit selfish when it comes to the menus, because we do a lot of them. I often put what I want to eat, which isn’t necessarily your classic breakfast food. Why shouldn’t you eat rice for breakfast? Over half the world’s population has rice for breakfast. Maybe we should as well. People don’t want to eat toast and there are a lot of allergies, so why not do something different and have a congee instead of a porridge or have soba noodles with an egg in there instead of just having eggs on toast with mushrooms and so on. Striking a balance between what is appealing for customers but what is a little bit different to what everyone else was doing. I think that sums it up quite well.
What would your advice be to young people thinking of getting into the industry?
I would recommend it a hundred per cent. They can come and work with me. I’ll teach them. I think it takes a lot of pride swallowing at the start. A lot of people find it difficult to be told what to do all the time. I struggled with that and had a bit of a bad attitude during the first year of my apprenticeship. I think it all happens for a reason, though, and being able to go in and work and not just say you’re willing to learn but actually absorb things. If you have a really good teacher, it will set you up for life. If you want to spend your life in the industry, then be open. You will feel like a slave probably, but although I would expect everybody here to do anything I ask them, but if they ever asked me to do something, I would do it for them as well. It’s give and take. I think that’s the advice I would give. They’re not having a go at you, they’re just trying to get the job done.
Gabriel, 187 Gertrude Street