Adam Woodfield

Hi Adam. How are you after a few big days of launches?

Not too bad now that it is finally all over. It was a big build up; I think we have been doing this for about six months. It's nice to have it all done. Now we can focus on the product and getting it out there to Melbourne and Australia and the world.

Hopefully, the world one day. Adam, I've read a bit about you. Are you originally from Melbourne?

Born and raised in Ballina and a bit in Sydney and then did my high school and all my apprenticeship in Melbourne, so Sydney, Melbourne, but I often say I'm a Melbourne boy.

I read that you did your apprenticeship at Stokehouse which would have been a really great place to start.

That was in its golden days, I reckon. I was downstairs under Jean Allen and that was the time when Michael Lambie was moving out and Paul Raynor was coming in upstairs, that period there. That was one of my most cherished memories I have in kitchens, that and with Bill Marchetti, David Thompson, but Jean AllenI was a second-year apprentice and he put me in charge of all the apprentices and thats when apprenticeships were a really good system in our industry. From him I learned all about par levels, stock rotation, managing a busy section which back then was the pizza section, big pizza oven out the front and every table had a pizza. From there, I worked my way up the hot line, while still making sure the eight apprentices were all doing the correct things plus also making sure that they were actually going to school. That was a big focus with Jean Allen that the apprentices actually went to school and learned the prac side of things because you had to learn that as well and not just cooking. The most rewarding thing I ever got out of Jean was finance; how to actually understand how much something costs and if you waste something what the effects are to the budget and then how much stock to have on hand, so ordering and so on. I was never much of a maths kid, I wasnt very academic at school but I had a love for home economics for some weird reason, but thats when I started to fall in love with finance and numbers and understanding how the restaurant industry should be run.

I think that's interesting an,d as a teacher, it is an important thing to remember that often kids haven't worked out what they are in to but once they do, then they are more interested in all aspects and want to find out more. I read somewhere that you loved making Quiche Lorraine with your mum as a kid.

Every Sunday nightwas Quiche Lorraine night with mum or toasted sandwiches.

And the pastry from scratch.

Yes. Single mother. We're not Italian, but she was brought up in an Italian neighbourhood called Riverwood in Sydney and all the neighbours got together and cooked. During the week she didnt have much time because she was working and had three kids to look after, so on Sunday she really put an effort in to make sure we all did something together as a family. I have an older and a younger sister; the younger sister was always more interested in the sewing side of things and my older sister also had the passion for cooking, The two of us would get in the kitchen with Mum and help her on a Sunday and as a kid you used to get to lick the bowl and all that. I always thought my older sister would be the chef, not me, but she ended up not getting into hospitality. I had a little knack for it. I really loved pastry work, because it was predominantly sweet and as a kid you could get in there and knead the dough. My mum taught me some of the basics and those Sundays gave us two hours together and we cherished those Sundays because nowadays they don't really exist that much. My wife and I have two boys and we try and do it with them and dinner time is really important to me. It can something pretty basic like burritos or something, but I always try and get my two boys involved to the point now where they are a little too involved and I think they might follow their father's footsteps which I am trying to prevent.

That's interesting. But you obviously love what you do. But it's a hard industry, is that what you would be worried about for them?

A very hard industry. I've been doing this for around 27 years. I've worked in three different states, four different countries and there are certain elements where it is s a lot of fun. I love every moment and I am really proud of what I have done, and I also see what happens to a lot of chefs and it's not always a healthy environment. It is getting better, I think, especially in environments like this, the hotel industry, they've got really good structures. And the restaurant industry; I've worked for many great operators and also some bad operators and unfortunately the bad operators always overshine the good operators. I've worked for Joe Elcham, one of the best owners I could have ever worked for and that was at Jimmy Liks. Chris Lucas at Chin Chin and the Lucas Group. That was an experience that I was so grateful to have, although it wasn't for me, I couldn't deal with seven restaurants, that was a big task. But learning what I learned from him and from the General Manager and the rest of the office was a very rewarding and a great experience. Then you have those smaller operators who try and cut corners a bit too much so that they can survive, I get that, but it does fundamentally force problems onto the kitchen. That's one thing I always find is that the kitchen is always lumpednot always with problems, but if you want to give something away, it always comes from the kitchen and never from the bar. If you only have three people on the books for lunch, there can only be one chef who then has to cover three or four sections because they have to meet payroll budgets. It's hard. When times are tough, that's when the business puts a lot of pressure on the kitchen and that's when it's not very healthy for anyone; owners will lose staff and get a bad reputation, but they'e just trying to keep their business afloat too. Unfortunately I would say that 95 % of owners have never worked in the kitchen or done much on the floor either and that is a real problem. But there are operators out there and I have had plenty of them and they do jump in and help out when they can. They might not be great, but they try and they are the ones who make you feel like it's a good place to work in.

Well, it's about hospitality, which should be in all its senses, so behind the scenes as well as for the people coming in. And I think you can feel that as a diner, you can feel the vibe of whether it is a happy place to work in and well run. You've had experience being an owner and in New York of all places. How did that happen?

When I was at Jimmy Liks, Joe Elcham, the owner almost had a deal go through where we had an operator in New York who wanted to bring the concept over there. The deal was made and my wife and I sold everything and we were ready to go. A month or so before, the deal went south. We already had our hearts set on it and we had bought our tickets so we made the move and during our time there, I was running a restaurant called Public and during my time there, I met this Sydney Gentleman called Luke Fryer, who had a couple of grab and go sushi trains and is also responsible for bringing Wagamama to Australia. I met him at Public one night and I was just talking to him at the bar, both of us Australian, and he asked what do you do here, and I said I was chef de cuisine at this restaurant, and he asked where I worked in Sydney and I told him I used to run a restaurant called Jimmy Liks and he said, are you kidding me? I asked if he had heard of it and he told me it was one of his favourite restaurants. That was also the reason I was working at Public because it was the owners favourite restaurant when he came and looked around restaurants in Australia. We got talking a bit, the GFC hit, so we all went a little bit quiet. When it started to come good, probably about 10 months afterwards, Luke reached out to me again and said, hey, do you want to go into business together and do a Jimmy Liks style restaurant in the West Village? I said that was my goal when I came to New York, to have my own restaurant. So I said, let's do it. Jumped in the deep end. Two weeks before opening, I had my first son, two weeks after we opened we had Cyclone Irene come through New York and blanket the whole city and shut it down for almost two weeks, so we learned quickly about the seasons in New York. Christmas time, everything is happening in New York, then summertime, where we were in the West Village, everyone goes to the Hamptons. It was like a rollercoaster and then we had Cyclone Sandy and all these storms every year and then we had our own challenges. We were way too early with this concept. That was the time when things like chequered tablecloths came in and that whole American farmstead feel came in. Everyone was doing that kind of stuff and we were trying to be Jimmy Liks and Longrain in the West Village. We thought a) there's nothing like itthere were a couple of pad thai joints in Brooklyn and Williamsburg and Queens, but we were doing something different. We were making our own curry paste, I was flying in Betel leaves from Hawaii because they don't grow anywhere else and to find apple or pea eggplant, forget about it. I had to buy a lot of ingredients from the East Coast and get them flown over.

When was that?

2010.

Ok, so ten or eleven years ago. I find it astounding that what you were doing was revolutionary when it was pretty standard here and we had been doing it for ages.

They didn't understand why they should pay over $20 for a curry. They didn't understand this one leaf thing when they could go and get something much cheaper. It was really hard. We were open for four years. I was at the helm for three, then I got head-hunted to open a restaurant on Hamilton Island and during my first year there, I was commuting from Hamilton Island to New York every three months.

Which I bet isn't as glamourous as it sounds.

The first trip was great, but as soon as I landed, I had all kinds of issues, staffing issues, the whole way the food was changing without me knowing, and the style of service. When I left, a lot of key people left as well because they could see there was change ahead. Without my passion for the food and my drive to ensure that it was authentic, as close as what you could get in Thailand, that would be all gone. Sadly it happened. They were serving curry with a little bit of rice packed into a cup so it was a little dome on the platethat was all happening. No more sharing, because Americans didn't understand share plates, they just wanted their plate. It morphed into something that I was happy not to be part of. When I saw that change happening, that's when I said I was selling my share. That's when investors knew it was over and it pretty much only lasted three more months after I left.

Southeast Asian food is your absolute thing. How did that happen? How did you discover that it was your thing?

I was brought up with French, Italian through my whole apprenticeship. I did a little stint at Est Est Est, Stokehouse, Marchetti and Stokehouse and Marchetti were the best training I could ever have. Bill was one of the people who told me how to stand there and take everything that is thrown at you, to make sure that you are never sorry for anything and you wear your heart on your sleeve and you give it your best and not to mess around with the food too much when you put it on the plate. The product we used to get flown in from the Northern Territory onto the Tuscan grill was extraordinary. I did two to three oyster festivals with him. That kind of upbringing was amazing, that style of food.

I started to get bored and sick of it at one stage, always going to a new restaurant and having to do the pasta section. I just hated risotto at that stageanother saffron risotto or something like that. Still to this day, I can't really eat risotto. I started losing interest. I went to my father who was a property developer in Melbourne, and I told him I was having a bit of a crisis and thought I might want to leave the industry because I didn't want to cook that style of food anymore and I wasnt happy. He tried to get me working for him earning $60 grand or go on a forklift and he'd pay me $120 grand, or I could get my crane licence and get half a million a year, so then I really wondered what I was doing. At the same time, Marchetti went under and I had a real moment. My girlfriend, who is my wife now, told me I had put a lot of effort into cooking, and I really loved cooking but maybe I should try something else.

My father used to always take us for Asian. We lived in Richmond, so we would always go to Victoria Street, in the days when Victoria Street was Victoria Street in the mid-nineties. I would try and go there and get into kitchens but they would never give me a job in an Asian kitchen. I loved it and I wanted it. Then the head chef of Marchetti got a job with these two guys from Hong Kong and they opened a restaurant called Prodigy opposite the MCG. That's when I had my first little taste. That was when Ezard was the restaurant to be at and Teague was doing amazing things and we wanted to do that tooEast meets West but Australian cuisine doing Hong Kong style cuisine. I got introduced to ponzu, palm sugar, fish oil, lime leaf, lemongrass, and all that. We were doing fish and chips but with ponzu aioli, that kind of stuff because we were opposite the MCG. It got me excited again. That's when I knew I had found my passion again. It was something new and I was learning something again, not that I knew everything about French and Italian cooking, but this was foreign to me and I got really excited. Then when that restaurant wasn't really going anywhere, I said to my wife, let's go to Sydney, and go back to my sisters and mum, back to warm weather and there is a really strong Asian scene there. I wanted to see what it was all about.

We got up there and moved into Darlinghurst. I would never really go for ads in the paper, I'd look in the Good Food Guide and see where I wanted to work and then go around with my CV and hand it in to the places. I looked up every southeast Asian restaurant, any Thai restaurant, anywhere that was popular, Longrain being the number one at the time. Then there was this other one and I didnt even know what it was, Jimmy Liks, and the name just sounded stupid. I was in Darlinghurst and it wasn't far in The Cross. I said to a friend we were living with who worked for Mushroom Music and he took people out to top bars and restaurants. I had got the interview with Will Meyrick and I came home and asked my flatmate if he had heard of a place called Jimmy Liks and he said, yeah, it's the best place at the moment.

I landed the CdP job there and that is when I fell in love with that style of cooking. I had never seen any of it before. I'd never learned how to do lime leaf and lemongrass so fine. Working with Mill Meyrick changed everything in my life. I didn't see my wife for probably seven years. From there, that cemented what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Melbourne had nothing like it and I worked in London and there was nothing like it. Then David Thompson was over there and when I was at Jimmy Liks he got his first Michelin star, the first Australian to get a Michelin star. I knew that style of food was going somewhere and sure enough, it is definitely the strongest cuisine in Australia by far. When you look at our industry, there is a lot of Thai and a lot of southeast Asian. And the most successful and busy ones have proven to be southeast Asian; Chin Chin$80 million a year they can turn over. It's the style of service I love; get them in, get them out, don't take bookings, communal dining. It was a gamechanger. From a finance point of view, this is how a business should make money. Everyone gets rewarded, the owner, the workers and the guests. I worked at Jimmy Liks for about six years and I saw that business model and style of food and I wanted to take it to New York. And then after New York, I wanted to take it to Hamilton Island. Then I came back to Melbourne and I landed at Chin Chin and the guy who took after me at Jimmy Liks ended up opening Chin Chin with Chris Lucas but was very short-lived, then Ben Cooper came in after and he has been running it ever since. So when I walked into Chin Chin, I saw all my systems from 10 years ago. So then I saw that one of the most powerful restaurants in the country was because of the Jimmy Liks systems, and the service. Jimmy Liks didn't take bookings, it was first in, best dressed. And that came from Longrain too, we watched what Longrain did. Longrain was high-end and we wanted to be accessible for everyone. That's where now, today, I have taken everything I learned in those venues and the middle accessible is where I want to be. That's where I see us at Salted Egg.

What should people expect when they come to Salted Egg? I read that for you, fusion is a four-letter word.

I have to take that back a little bit. It is something I really don't likewhen you come into southeast Asian restaurants, I don't enjoy eating fusion. This is predominantly Thai with some Vietnamese and some Chinese influenced dishes. I like eating something that is true. I find that I am learning something if it is true to its origin. I get a rise out of that because it is different for me. I understand there is definitely a market for fusion and there are people who love it, but that's not me and that's not what I want to do here. I think we have enough of that in the city. I think what I have always tried to do is to just be true to where the dish comes from. The technique, I have slowly moved away from because financially it is too labour intensive. At Jimmy Liks we used to do all our Nahm Jims with mortar and pestle because they way you pound something versus the way you blend it gives a whole other flavour, but we cant do that anymore when we have labour restrictions so I've had to think, ok, I'll use the blender instead of the mortar and pestle. Because taking 45 minutes as opposed to 2 second, it makes no sense. But then I can make up for it by not using bottle lime juice in the dressing. I can tell you now 95% of businesses probably do that. We juice our limes and lemons fresh every day and we make sure we have the right amount so we dont have wastage. We make sure the flavour profile is what you would have in Thailand.

When I work on a new dish, I'm no expert and I'll lean on my Thai chefs and ask them about a dish I have researched and eaten when I was in Chiang Mai. I know I'm not far from it but what am I doing wrong? What can you tell me that maybe your mum or your auntie would do to make it different. I don't want to do what everyone else is doing, I still want to try and put up dishes you might not know. We still have our crowd pleasers, but I want to bring out something where you might not understand that flavour profile and you say wow, what is that and where does it come from?

With the fusion, that comes at breakfast and is where we can be more playful. I have never really done breakfast before so I am right in the deep end. I love going out for breakfast. I love going to Kettle Black, that group and what they did at the very start when they got restaurant chefs coming into that market and really turn it around and I think that has done wonders for the caf scene. I really took inspiration from what they do and that's what I am doing here. I love the way they do certain things, the style of plating up and how they only use a couple of ingredients. Yes, there are a lot of their dishes that are instagrammable too and that's a bit about us too; some of our breakfast dishes need to be instagrammable. So it can be a little bit instagrammable and it can be a little bit fusion. We're doing things like steamed tofu with sesame and soy dressing, pickled ginger, a chilli oil, a traditional dish like that and then we have a playful one where we take the eggs benedict but we do a cassava rossti, red braised pork and poached eggs with a bearnaise sauce, so that's where the fusion comes into it. Lunch and dinner are very serious, until it gets to dessert, because there is only so much sticky rice and mango or bananas with palm caramel that you can do. That wont really sell to the westerner. They'll have it for a bit then they too will get sick of it. The Thais aren't really famous for being dessert chefs. Their dessert street snacks are amazing, but it doesn't really suit this environment. I have the biggest sweet tooth and I love finishing the meal with dessert. I think you always have to leave on a high. I don't understand how people can't have dessert because there is nothing better than having some chocolate or some ice cream or something warm and sweet and going, how good is that? And then leaving on a high. Cecile, my pastry chef has done an amazing job. We have a pandan waffle with all these lovely little elements on the plate like a young coconut gel, coconut crushed up macaron and then a chili raspberry tuile kind of thing with a bit of gold leaf. So really sexy stand out dishes. She is really pushing me to start having a bit more finesse with my plating up. I've got the Bill Marchetti mentality drilled into me; rustic, just put it on the plate and let it be. But I think that's something people will see when they come here, that certain dishes start to be a bit more fine. If they have eaten at Betel or Coca Chu, then I think when they get here they'll see that its a little bit more mature here on the plate. I'm a little bit more refined. I used to think I had to put a lot on the plate so that people would think they were getting value and then they would come back, but that is not the case. I'm all about if we have a piece of fish or some protein, it has to be really good and have a tangible story as well and put all the focus on that and then have two to three more elements to the dish and then leave it alone. That's where I'm starting to push myself a bit more. I hated tweezers, I have never used them but at breakfast, I'm starting to use flowers and all that. At dinner we have a couple of micro herbs, so it is slowly coming out. I'm trying to be a little bit more modern. But I think what people will understand when they get here and put the food in their mouth and go oh my god, that is taking me back to Phuket or Chiang Mai, and remember the times they had there. Then when they go upstairs to The Q and have something simple like the salt and pepper squid. That's a classic one. It teleports me back to when Thai food first came to Australia and how amazing and simple it is; squid deep fried with salt and pepper with fresh lemon and a lot of chopped chili. Something so simple is still a classic and I will never get rid of a dish like that.

You mentioned wastage in the kitchen. Is it important for you to be on top of that?

It's a big one. I'm a father and I am really conscious of the way the environment is going, especially for the kids. We have been very wasteful and here, I have been very mindful and tried to eliminate as much Genfac containers as possible. That was my aim when we opened not to have it, but unfortunately they always slowly creep into the kitchen. But we are trying to be more aware of how much plastic we use. We did it with the Lucas group, we got rid of all Genfacsstill used hard plastic Cambro containers in all kitchens that meant purchases when down. They saved a lot of money but also reduced landfill. When it comes to the kitchen, a lot of guys don't get taught about the financial side of things, but here I try and teach the guys when certain sections do butcheryfor example, you can have a commis chef to a cdp on larder and they will have to butcher down a whole kingfish to do the raw kingfish as a starter. When they do that, they have to figure out how much wastage goes in the bin, how many portions they have and then work out the finances. They have to go back to the invoice on the day we got it, how much came in dollarwise and how much they wasted. It is recorded each time and at the end of the month we go through it. We don't want them to see it as a competition but we want everyone to be aware of how much wastage is going on plus are there other ways not to throw everything in the bin? Josh Niland up at St Peters is doing amazing things and chefs nowadays are starting to see that. At Jimmy Liks, I got shown by my sous chef at the time what to do with the ribs of salmon and trout. You steam them and batter them, put them in flour and deep fry them, put them in chilli salt and then you eat them. You're just eating bones, but it is so delicious. I'm really trying to push these guys to think a bit morenot to go crazy and start serving spinal cords and all that but also to be mindful, hone in on your knife skills and then start thinking about what is going in the bin instead of just throwing it straight away. That way we can make some more money but at the end of the day, it pushes us to do more investigation and research and helps to reduce landfill.

Salted Egg

509 Flinders Lane, Melbourne