The sun streams in through the huge windows where I’m seated at The Atlantic on Southbank. Queen of all I survey, and despite fantastic views of the Yarra and Melbourne city, I’m distracted by the array of fish and seafood dishes coming out of Nick Mahlook’s kitchen. Tasmanian oysters with red wine vinaigrette, raw and cured fish of various types and various preparations, split grilled leader prawns, grilled octopus, roasted hiramasa Kingfish with smoked mussels and little pops of saltbush on the side. It’s a feast and I’m keen to ask Nick all about it.
That was a beautiful lunch. Thank you. What a wide range of fish dishes on the menu.
It has to be like that, being The Atlantic. We have a seafood supplier and they hook us up with all the best stuff they can get.
It’s from all over, is that right?
It is from all over, a lot of farmed, a lot of wild. From all over the country. Some of it’s from New Zealand.
That’s good.
I did pick up on the accent. The John Dory is from New Zealand. If we have Hapuka or Blue eye that sometimes comes from over there as well.
I was telling my friend at lunch that New Zealand has Bluff Oysters and they’re really amazing, but they don’t export them.
No, we can’t get them here.
The Tasmanian ones we had were delicious but there’s something about the cold, wild southern oceans down around the bottom of the South Island. Mind you, the wildness of the ocean would be similar around Tasmania.
I reckon you can taste that in an oyster as well. When you get a rock oyster from an estuary, they’re gentler in the mouth, more minerally and you can’t taste that hard hitting ocean like you can in the ones from Tassie, or South Australia.
I was intrigued that you grew up in Lakes Entrance. That would be very fish oriented.
It’s big fish down there. I grew up fishing with my mates out in the tinnies every weekend and after school. My sister has a restaurant down there and I started my apprenticeship with her. Her partner used to be a commercial fisherman deckhand and we used to trade beer for fish for the restaurant so we used to get these fish bins of school whiting, calamari, little red mullets, just the by-catch if they didn’t have a full fish bin to send to market. We’d get that in and clean it all up and use it on the restaurant menu. So I’ve grown up with it in a big way.
It seems as though that’s quite unusual in Australian towns because quite often when I’ve been in small towns on the coast, I really want to eat the local fish and it seems hard to get.
It’s impossible. Still today there’s a small co-op shop in Lakes but it all goes to Sydney or Melbourne, straight to the market. It goes straight on a truck and you don’t even see it. Even the commercial fishing boats have cameras these days so if you wanted to do a dodgy like that, you can’t do it. The Fisheries will be down and jump straight on you. You can’t buy straight off the boat.
It’s such a shame because there is nothing better than eating fish fresh from that place.
Even when I was a little bit older, me and my mates used to go whiting fishing up the lake a little bit. Beautiful King George whiting. Every 12 we used to hook, we used to take them to the restaurant and get some money for them or get a couple of beers for them. We had fun fishing but that’s how hard it is to get fish from that area. It’s crazy.
I spoke to Hayden McMillan over at Etta in Brunswick East. He was saying he’s reticent to put fish on the menu because he thinks most fish are unsustainable and that we will come to a time where we won’t have any fish. What do you think about that?
He probably has a point there to an extent. When you use farmed fish, you expect that to be sustainable but that has impacts on the environment as well; the whole story that salmon farms wreck the seabed underneath them. There was one story about kingfish that escaped and it was supposed to be to the detriment of all the other fish around it. 40 000 kingfish escaped from a net. Look, farming is supposed to be the sustainable way but if you’re getting a wild catch product, fisheries have pretty strict quotas these days. Even the scallop industry, I remember back when I was growing up, the stopped dredging for scallops in Bass Strait and they used to come into the lakes. You look at it now and it’s 15, 20 years later and the industry has recovered really well, and they’ve started giving you patches of seabed where you can get scallops again. I think the fisheries are getting stricter with their quotas and systems, there’s a place for fishing. It’s never going to be perfect. I think it is being managed better. Who know if it will ever run out? Touch wood it doesn’t. If you go through the correct channels, buy from a market and not off the back of a truck. Don’t buy it off some local fisherman like I used to be. [laughs] That’s the thing, if you follow the right rules, I think it’s sustainable, especially with a good mix of farmed and wild products.
Something else that has come up a bit lately in my chats to chefs is the fact that the younger generation coming through aren’t willing to do more than their 37 ½ hours a week which means you can’t teach them all of the skills that perhaps used to be taught because you don’t have the time to devote to that. Do you get in whole fish and fillet them here? A lot of places have to get them in pre-filleted.
We have a fishmonger who works downstairs. We’ll get 70% in whole, some in fillets. Purely for the fact we have whole fish on the menu. Some fish we buy in fillets because we use such a big volume of fish. Over a weekend we’ll have 100-120 portions of each main course fish on hand. That’s a lot of fish. I have a fishmonger working five days a week. It’s a full-time job for one person. When it comes to training for that, in our oyster bar section, we’ve got four or five people there working with the fishmonger on the crustacean prep and the oyster opening, prawn peeling, so that’s kind of like the apprenticeship in the fishmonger section while they watch the fishmonger work. There is time for learning in our kitchen. It’s pretty good. Saying that, you’re right, with the hours available, you do have to watch how much especially the apprentices work. Some of the senior guys will work longer and harder because they’re from that older school generation. They’re not forced to do that, but they’ll come in earlier and leave later.
They must enjoy it and it’s just what you do in these jobs, surely.
You find with the apprentices or younger guys if they want to learn a day on fish, sometimes they’ll come in on their day off just to learn the art of it, which is really good. It’s good they have the opportunity to do that as well.
I suppose it’s like studying anything, there are times when you have to go beyond what’s required to get ahead.
I’ve done it. Everyone has done it. It’s what you do. If you want to learn something new, you have to chase it.
Just going back to the variety of fish on the menu, when you build a menu profile like the one you have on, is it seasonal or flavour based?
A little bit of both. We try and have different cooking methods in our fish; we’ve got raw, steamed, roasted, grilled and then the garnish we try and keep seasonal. You have to be careful when you put on the wild caught stuff. Winter is the best for most wild caught fish. In the calmer months, you’ll get more inland fish like whiting and garfish. Autumn id a good time for that. We build the menu around stuff we can put on, so farmed fish. I think on the main course portions, we have four farmed and two wild. You have to have that balance. I build the menu around the protein and all the garnish around it becomes seasonal. The John Dory has an asparagus fregula risotto and that will go for two or three months while the asparagus is around. Then we’ll change out the garnish and use John Dory again because it’s a real crowd-pleaser. It’s not endangered and we can get a good supply of it. The Ora King salmon stays on because it’s a farmed product. That was here before I was here and we just keep it on. The guests expect it to be on the menu and it has a real following.
We use stuff in the Fish and Chip shop and stuff on our oyster bar menu to correlate with those main courses so, say we have barramundi on in the restaurant, we’ll do the nice centre cut pieces of barramundi and then we use the wings and tail pieces in the fish and chip shop. You get that same quality but they’re just secondary cuts. We might use a cheaper cut of fish in the oyster bar to give it that different price point to the restaurant.
Writing a menu, it can be tough sometimes to get a great snapshot of Australian seafood but we can be a little bit different in all the preparations and methods.
Learn as much as you can and keep on learning. You never stop learning. I keep learning every day. Learn, learn, learn.
The Atlantic is such an institution in terms of where you are and the public who come here. How often do you change the menu?
Seasonally-ish. A couple of weeks ago we changed every main dish we had on, except for the fish and chips which don’t change. Next week we’ll change 50 % of the entrees and sides. The first menu change was bang on spring and the next a little after. Next we’ll do a summer change, not bang on the change of the season, but progressively. We find that it has less of an impact on the kitchen and it’s easier to introduce to waiters. They have to get their knowledge of the dishes so they can sell them and know what they’re selling. It’s an easier transition to do it gradually.
In terms of the different flavours, I was thinking, number one, can anyone be a chef? And then I was thinking about how there is so much creativity involved but you must have a library in your head or sensory system of all these different flavours that you use.
It’s funny you say that because I’m sort of forgetting a little bit. When I was in my twenties, and I’m only turning 34 this year but when I was 22 or 23, I was all, I don’t need to write anything down, I’ll be fine. Now I’m older, I’m trying to remember back to what I was doing then. I’ve started writing a lot more down these days. Things come back to you. Say you use salmon, you’ll think about what you might have used on another occasion with salmon, or what someone taught you when you were using salmon. It all starts coming flooding back. Sometimes you lie in bed at night and it’s salmon, salmon, salmon and you get thinking of things you used to do and you get ideas. Maybe you go out for dinner at one of the many places in Melbourne or wherever and you steal ideas from people. I don’t think anyone is putting their hand up and going I’m totally independent. Everything is borrowed, used, redone. It would be a rare restaurant that is totally original. I think everyone is pretty open to that.
I think from an eating point of view, a lot of our enjoyment of eating comes from when food unleashes a memory from an aroma or a flavour. For example, on your Raw Tastes dish, on the salmon there was miso…
It’s burnt spring onion and ginger relish…
Is there butter in it?
No.
But there’s a flavour that felt really homely and familiar.
The salmon is from New Zealand, maybe that’s it.
Ha! Well maybe it was a case of recognising home!
That’s the Ora king salmon and that’s an example of using the nice centre cuts for the main course portions and then we use the belly for the sashimi, which is fifty per cent plus fat. That could be the texture you’re getting.
It was almost shortbready to me.
Yeah right. It’s super fatty. That’s why we have such a sharp dressing on it to counterbalance that.
And the snapper in coconut milk…
That’s good, isn’t it? It’s so fresh. It’s got that fattiness of the coconut milk and the avocado but it’s so fresh. It’s like a little Thai curry with the kaffir lime. That’s why I don’t mind throwing out the rule book in terms of which cuisine I do.
That’s what I mean. You must have a repertoire of flavours so that you know what might go with what else without having actually tasted the combination before.
To me, that’s a classic curry flavour and we’ve put it on raw fish. I think it works really well. That’s the thing with raw fish, it will take on any flavour you want it to. It’s just like a blank canvas. You can go nuts with it.
In terms of starting off in a fishing town and catching fish and now you’re Executive chef in a seafood restaurant, you’ve had a great trajectory in terms of being at Stokehouse as well and working up to being head chef there.
I was sous chef upstairs until my eighth year there and then I went downstairs and opened it as head chef. And then we burned it down and did a pop-up and went to the city. After that I took a couple of years off. Stokehouse was a real breeding ground for really great chefs. There were great things to learn. The floor team was really great and management team. Frank and then I only worked with John for my first year there, but Frank was always really great.
The difference then from being a sous chef to head chef to executive chef, and I was asking before whether anyone can be a chef, it’s not just the creative side of things, once you get into those upper roles, you really have to manage people and money. Are you still on the pans?
I’m in there a fair bit. If I’m here and available, I’m in there every service, which is probably eight services I’d be in the kitchen. Other than that, there are financial meetings and so on you go to. But you learn that from chef de partie to sous chef level, you learn how to manage your costs by costing dishes and the you go on to ordering then the wastage that comes from over-ordering. That’s sort of a natural progression.
But when it comes to people, people are the hardest thing. Staff are so hard to find, good ones anyway. Then to keep them is even harder. if you can keep a chef for three years, I think you’re doing pretty bloody well. One year would be about average of they’re a good one. But if you can keep them for three years, it’s worth about six in the bank, I reckon.
This is the biggest venue I’ve worked. Stokehouse is pretty small in comparison. I’ve brought my sous chef from Stokehouse and an old chef de partie and because it’s so big you need a lot of managers in the place. I was lucky enough to bring two of my really trusted people with me and that stands for a lot when you’ve worked with someone for 10 or 12 years and they come over and you all know how each other operates. You’ve got eyes everywhere and you have similar training and palates. We can produce the same stuff if one of us isn’t in the building. To get sponsorships is really good, if you can get one of those for a few years. Then hopefully by that time they’re not sick of you and they stay with you. Australian people are harder and harder to get in the kitchen. My head chef and sous chef are Australian and then everyone else is International, out of 30 people in the kitchen.
In a smaller team, if you have three or four people who have worked together for a while and gel, you can get more staff retention but in a bigger team, one drops off, another comes in. If they stay for a while, there’s room for growth in the kitchen and they can really flourish in a few years.
When a new person comes into your team, what’s the most important thing they need to be aware of or that you would make them aware of?
Sometimes you can get lost in a big place so find someone to buddy up with. We always start people off in the oyster bar or cold larder section so they always have a buddy. That way they can be nurtured into the business. For the first three or four moths they’ll be spun out by the sheer volume of people we do and the amount of prep that goes through there and just the chaos of service, especially if they’re pretty green coming out of trade school. But around all the chaos, if they have one person that they’re working closely with, they should be fine.
What would you say to your younger self, or maybe what would you tell a younger chef getting into the industry these days?
I don’t know. Sometimes I feel as though I have progressed a little too fast. Maybe I’d say, learn everything, take it a bit slow, and stay at that learning level for a longer time. I think I’m in the position I am today because I have worked very hard to get here but at the same time, I wish I’d stayed back and learned a few more things off other people in the industry and maybe worked in a few more places around the country or around the world.
I did 10 years at Stokehouse and feel like I travelled around the world and worked with amazing people, but I didn’t really sample too many other pieces of the pie. Learn as much as you can and keep on learning. You never stop learning. I keep learning every day. Learn, learn, learn.
Crown Entertainment Complex, Southbank