Hendri Budiman

Hendri, I was just thinking about how Coda is the same, but also quite different now and it made me think about when couples live together for years and then get married, they often say it feels different, when really the dynamics are just the same. I wondered, you have pretty much worked here and been the head chef here for a long time, but you've had someone else above you, does it feel different now that Adam has gone?

I think it feels slightly different with regards to knowing that someone isnt there to watch what you are doing any more, but also vice versa, I dont have anyone to rely on if something breaks. For example, back in the day when I first started, when something broke, I would ask Adam to get someone to fix it or buy a new one. Now I have a machine that needs to be replaced, and I think, ok let's make some money and then I might be able to buy that fryer. Its like pocket money, you have to earn it before you can spend it. I think it has matured everyone in the kitchen a bit more. In that same way, Adam wasn't in the kitchen that often, so we did learn that we couldnt always rely on someone else and you do gradually improve from there.

I was walking down George Parade, past Il Solito Posto to get here today and I realised how close a lot of the restaurants you've worked in are to each other.

I know. It's embarrassing. I didnt move very far.

Apart from Lorne. You really branched out there! But let's go back to the start because I am really fascinated by the fact that you didnt set out to be a chef, you went to Uni first. Can you tell me about more about that?

I didn't really know what I was doing after high school. My VCE was really bad, I couldn't do any courses that I really wanted to do. The only course I could do was business and so I did that to see where it would take me. At Uni, I did a lot of home cooking because I couldn't afford to go out because it was too expensive. I cooked at home for me and my brother and played around with simple things; omelettes, rice, I would ring my mum and ask her how to make things and then gradually I thought it was fun. I landed my first job at Starbucks. Back then Starbucks was a massive hit. I started working at City Square and I met quite a few hospitality people there. One of my good friends from there is now in Japan working at the Intercontinental as the General Manager. We started talking about hospitality and we would hang out at the pub next door and eat good food and I thought maybe I should try working in the kitchen. I didn't care what the role was. I just wanted to see what it felt like. I started a hospitality course. But I didnt really study because I know if I am in the profession I want, I didn't feel as though studying was a burden, it was passion and it was easy to remember everything without really studying hard. I got my first job as a dishwasher at Il Solito Posto. Back then it was quite difficult. Darron was the head chef and it was the British kind of teaching with a lot of yelling. I felt really scared when I went to work at 3 o'clock. I finished at 2pm. I was at school 8am until 2-m then I started work at 3pm until 11. That was for five days.

You must have been exhausted.

I think I was exhausted. But it wasn't coming in to work that made me exhausted and them money was good. Michael (Tenace) was a really good boss. He paid pretty good money. It was the experience working with that really crazy chef. He taught me a lot in terms of discipline, but it felt like I was in Gordon Ramsay's kitchen. I shouldn't say that. No one wants to work like that. You have heard stories, I am sure. It is the same story I tell all my apprentices, you guys have it good in this generation where you dont have to experience that kind of abuse. I was there for 6 years in that kitchen because I liked it. They started to acknowledge and respect me because I stayed there. I improved and just wanted to get better. It wasnt Darron because he left a few years later, it was Daniel who told me that he had nothing left to teach me and I should get out of there and I think I made the right move.

And that was a happy coincidence as well, because he said he had just eaten here when it opened.

Yes. He had eaten here because he ate out a lot everywhere. He said, you should go to Coda, it signals who you are. I was just starting to feel comfortable at Il Solito Posto and I wasnt sure I wanted to move, but he said, just go and if it doesnt work out I can recommend other places. So I came here.

When you got here, we talked about it being not really fusion, but Vietnamese and French and then some kind of, I'm not sure.

Some kind of intertwined Italian.

Was it hard to understand the food or did it all make sense because of the context and because of what Adam was doing at the time? What was your first impression of the kitchen?

When I first came in and I told Adam that I worked at Il Solito Posto, Adam loved Italian kitchens because he has a great passion for Italian food. That saved my arse for. bit. We kept talking about Italian cuisine. I knew a lot of details about things like carbonara, no cream, and he thought, oooh, he knows what he is talking about. We used to have prosciutto and mortadella here and some sort of terrine, a very euro style of food and so I was quite familiar with that, but I wasn't familiar with the Vietnamese side and the Asian side. So I was learning from the cuisine Adam was doing and then going out by myself to research more. There was a level of familiarity and history for me from when I was small, my grandmothers cooking started to kick back in. There were familiar flavours and so I thought, I quite like this restaurant because I was comfortable with the Italian, but then I was learning the Asian side of things as well. I had the best of both worlds.

I was interested in what you said about it being about the 'freedom of cooking' at Coda, what did you mean by that?

It started when Adam got busy with his other life. When I got the head chef position, there was quite a lot of pressure to change the menu. When I first got the gig. I wanted to show my signature, all chefs want to do that. I didnt really know what Adam wanted to put on a plate, but I knew what I liked to eat, so when I started to cook dishes, there was more freedom and people said it worked, it was different. It didnt have to stick to the French Vietnamese. if I went out and had something fun or the garnish was really interesting, I would think about how I could do something like that. I started to implement those ideas into my menu. So there were new ideas, but with the Coda DNA. We used to be the Italian, French Vietnamese, why can't we do this freedom to cook? When the weather gets colder, why can't we do this and I am sure people will appreciate it.

I guess too when you have built up trust with diners and the concept of Coda doesn't need to be pinned down to a certain type of cuisine but maybe it is more about a way of going about things.

I think it matured into that stage where people know that its not about the cuisine any more but if we do a dish, the dish will be really good and it won't be dictated to by a cuisine. When I was at Tonka, Indian cuisine dictated what I could cook. What I wanted to cook had to be Indian inspired. I don't really like that, but with Coda, I wanted to cook what diners wanted to eat instead of having the cuisine dictating that.

Did Lee Ho Fook help that? Where did that fit in?

It helped with the technique of cooking. Victor taught me a lot. When I went to Lee Ho, I thought, I know this, I know that, but I had to re-learn my Chinese cuisine and he brought me to that stage. There was a lot of knowledge. He didn't only teach me about Chinese cuisine. He also knows about techniques from France. And during that time I think he was quite Japanese inspired. He really took mainstream Chinese, Cantonese modern Chinese and perfected it. He taught me a lot, not just technique, but he taught a lot about the flavour profile of Chinese food that mimics French cuisine, like the a l'orange. Cantonese dishes also use orange. There are similarities and taking that context, he made Chinese cuisine great, not being labelled as a cheaper food option.

Right. What's the timeline?

I was at Coda for maybe a year. Then I left for Spice Temple for the opening. Spice opened around 2012. I did that for six to eight months and got called back. Adam asked if I wanted the chef de partie job. Thats where it started, to be honest, Spice Temple and Chinese cuisine. It took me back to my roots. But Neil does Chinese quite differently to my thinking of Chinese. Neil started my thinking about Chinese food but Victor finessed that technique and those ideas about what Chinese food was.

So, Coda, Spice Temple, Coda.

Then Lee Ho Fook in Smith Street. They opened in August, then Tonka then back to here.

And in amongst that, Lorne. That must have been a strange time, well it was a strange time for us all, but particularly for hospitality in lockdowns. So you made the decision to go with Mykal to Lorne and do an outpost Coda there. Was it different cooking in Lorne to cooking in the city? It's a stupid question because the whole thing was different with the lockdown, but what was it like?

That time had its challenges. I had six months off during that time. We moved everything to Lorne. My daughter was six months old at the time. The idea of Lorne was that we weren't doing Adams food in Lorne. It had to be different. It could have the signature of crispy prawn betel leaf and tartare and duck curry, but it 85% of the menu had to be different. Bayside had to have a lot of seafood and the food had to be lighter. During that time, I looked at the west-side of Victoria and there weren't really good Chinese restaurants. If I wanted to eat really good Chinese food, I would have to go to Flower Drum in the city, or Lee Ho Fook. But if youre in Lorne, we were the only Chinese restaurant in the western side of the city, who would maybe get a hat. We tried to get a hat, but we didn't. But thats what inspired the Chinese dishes, salt and pepper calamari, seven-day aged roast duck that we had. It brought people from Geelong into Lorne. That was the first thing I did, make a semi-Chinese restaurant with Coda DNA, keeping it fun and not too Chinese because people would feel that wasnt Coda.

Now that you are back in the city and it's your own menu, what are those things that are more Chinese-inspired or Chinese focuses plus it's winter so you are doing heavier, richer things.

We did just change the steak to a very China Bar style. It's Black Pepper beef. We make a black pepper sauce and add butter so it is heavier than usual and we add a lot of fried leeks and potatoes. I know that a lot of restaurants are struggling and I don't want our menu in Coda to have dishes that have one meat, two vegetables. We separate the side dishes so you can eat the way you want to. You can have the beef with rice, the beef with friend rice, the beef with fries. It allows for flexibility in the way you order. But I totally acknowledge that doing it this way means we can bring the food cost down. I think thats the secret most restaurants are using these days to cover the costs of certain dishes down. We don't want to charge $75 a steak, so then we can up-sell something else. I think it is the way most restaurants have to think these days. Thats how we survive.

In terms of your ongoing learning, it sounds to me like you are someone who likes to be challenged and keep learning, I saw you did a collaboration with someone?

Kori, yeah. Joanne.

Was that a friends thing? Is that important to you? To do collaborations?

To be honest, I'm not into pop-ups. But Jo-Jo is a very good friend of mine and she asked me if I wanted to promoted her back area. I said sure because she has been really nice to Coda for the last six or seven years since she was here. I am not into pop-ups where it is, hey look, this is my food. Coda is already my food, I dont need to do any pop-ups. I am not concentrating on my name being out there.

What did you do there?

Every fortnight there was a chef there who dd five courses with matching desserts for $75. It was good, very easy. I got the last gig and I saw how everyone did it with too many plate-ups so mine was very easy. It was fun.

And otherwise, do you get inspiration from books, Instagram, going to other venues, or from other people in the kitchen?

First inspiration is from Instagram. It's hard to get out to other places. Looking at Instagram, I can mimic the flavour but it comes down to balance when you are executing flavour. I can see what chefs in Europe are doing, or in South America, it is good to see what the trend is, that is a very good source of information. Definitely for the last two years I have been stepping back from just me making dishes, I want my chefs to put their dishes on the menu. That's how I was taught from Adam, putting something up from the team and not the head chef. Every time I make a dish, it's not just about me who likes it and puts it on the menu. It has to pass through all levels of chefs. They all have to think it is good. When I do that, then the food we create, they all like it. If they don't like it, by the time they put it on the plate, it is half-hearted, so it won't taste good. Everyone has to like it.

Then they are all invested.

If one of them says no, I can take that. But if 90% say yes, then you know that 90% of the dish will be what you want it to be. I'm not chasing 100%, that's impossible. I try to be perfect, but I can't be 100% perfect.

With all that in mind, what would your advice be to someone who was thinking about becoming a chef?

Learn the basics, don't chase the money, don't chase fame. Traditionand technique stays but the trends can be forgotten, always. So learn the basics and the techniques really well and stay true to them and you will get really good at technique and flavour and people will come back for that anyway, instead of looking at trends that pass and wont be there forever. Stay true to techniques and what you are good at. Be patient, there you go, be patient. Don't rush.

Coda, Basement, 141 Flinders Lane, Melbourne