I'm a big fan of La Madonna in the Next Hotel on Little Collins Street. I love the glorious golden chandelier hanging in the spiral stairwell. I love the dining room that manages to feel cosy and enveloping despite its size and I love the story behind the name. When Danny Natoli first walked into the space while it was being built, he was so impressed by the scale of the room and the possibilities of it that he let out a "La Madonna!" and the name stuck. I spoke to Danny and Adrian for Broadsheet when the restaurant opened, and I had already had a chef chat to Adrian a few years ago when he was still at Saigon Sally and Tokyo Tina. I have always loved running into him and catching up. Danny and Adrian are friends as well as colleagues. They put up incredible food together, bouncing ideas off each other and working together to create dishes as well as the kind of hospitality they love; making people feel welcome and a part of things. I felt as though they were my friends when we did the Broadsheet chat and catching up with them again was an absolute treat. Plus, their banter is top notch. I thought I was just going in for a chat, but I got a whole performance art piece and a delicious drink as Danny made tangelo martinis and served them in the skins. We talked authenticity and seasonality in the European sense and their Sunday La Famiglia lunches of three courses of beautiful Italian inspired food with bottomless carafes of wine. You can listen to the podcast to really get the ambiance!
I was looking back at when I did my first conversation with a chef with Adrian. It must have been 2015 or 2016.
A: Yes, it was when Saigon was still open.
And at that stage you had only been a chef for six years and now you've been a chef for ages and I think it's good to check in again because a lot has happened. I was reading that chat and I dont think I paid much attention when you said it then, but you were saying that you were cooking Windsor Asian food but that your real love was Italian food and that your Italian food was much better than your Asian food because a lot of the time in Broadsheet or other food media, you are referred to as the Hong King street food guy.
A: I think it's just because people laugh about the Chinese guy who can cook Italian food. But people forget that pasta came from China.
D: True. Maybe, true. Who knows?
So my question is, is this your spiritual home now because you are cooking Italian here.
A: I think Rina's will always be my spiritual home. This was a challenge for us, taking a small local restaurant from Armadale and timesing it by eight and doing something in the city. We had both always wanted to work in the city just to see if we could make it in the big smoke.
D: And explore completely unique cuisine where we don't have traditionalists where just the idea of putting yuzu with pasta or putting miso in the salad dressing in an Italian restaurant wouldn't be right, they have their blinkers on so much to the traditions of Italian cuisine whereas we don't have that. We'll have it as a conversation where we'll say are you out of your mind, we are not putting fermented shrimp with a pasta dish, what's the point? But that is probably why we have a more unique set of customers who come in here as well and say, oh this tastes like the Chinese lobster and noodles but we have mixed it with al dente spaghetti and beautiful olive oil and a little bit of lemon zest rather than MSG. It's a chance to develop a culture of food. That's what Im seeing.
A: At a higher elevation viewpoint of cuisine. Japanese food and Italian food are both relatively simple and have the highest respect for the raw ingredient and then why not link them together, like how Vietnamese cuisine focuses a lot on acidity and raw ingredients and Mexican cuisine does the same. Most cuisines have a synergy to them at a high level.
I don't know whether this comes into this conversation, but I have been talking to people lately about what authenticity means. I spoke to Rosheen Kaul about her book, Chinese-ish, and she makes a point of saying, as does Jessi Singh at Daughter-in-Law, that it is inauthentic food. Is there a need to say that if you are at that level and really good at what you do and you are using ideas from one cuisine and maybe you are using products or flavour profiles or textures from another cuisine, do you have to clarify and say that you're not being authentic or do you just say, this is my food?
A: I don't think you do these days in Melbourne. It's just a part of the cuisine that everyone has an acceptance of other cultures and the fact that you can have one cuisine that leads into another. Its more beneficial. In the traditional form, my mum would say something has to be done in a traditional way. She has had a dish I have created with more modern interpretations and she asks what it is and I tell her that it is her fermented tofu that she normally eats with rice cakes but I've made a mayonnaise with it and she thought it was delicious.
D: Not having the same food culture that places like China and Italy have where the focus is around festivals, like a mid-autumn festival or where everyone will sit down and have the hairy crabs and it has to do with the season or the moon and it isa what they eat in that season. The same thing happens in Italy where they have truffle festivals or porcini festivals or in the north when radicchio is in season, everything has radicchio in it. Is it because Melbourne is a big city that you don't have that dynamic focus on season or is it because Australian food culture hasnt developed that way.
A: Or there's not enough of one demographic to support that.
D: Or theres not enough of one product to celebrate it in those seasons. I think it has a lot to do with it. If we produce radicchio, were going to have radicchio on fontina with risotto, a radicchio on fontina tortellini.
A: It's farmed throughout that region.
D: Yeah and they just sell that. And then even in the supermarkets, theyll just focus on that in their seasonality products. We dont see that here.
I hadn't really thought about it to that extent. I know in France when asparagus is in season they really celebrate it and they have a way of eating it; they tip their plate up and make a little vinaigrette in the bottom and dip the spears in and they dont eat it in other seasons. Is that because I lived in regional France? Do you think in big cities around the world it is the same as in Melbourne or across Europe they are super seasonal whether it is a big city or not?
D: In Europe I'd say much more so. Food is supposed to revolve around the seasons; that's the way it is supposed to be, it's the biodynamics of it, the cost of it. It's why you wait for a certain time of year to eat asparagus. You're not going to eat poached egg and asparagus right now in Melbourne. Right now it makes no sense. But you see the focus and the demand coming from supermarkets where there's an asparagus farmer in Ko Wee Rup who have a huge focus on asparagus, but this time of year they import asparagus from Mexico. It's the demand of the consumer because then the supermarket has bought an elastic band and a cardboard label that has to wrap around and cant be longer than 12 centimetres or something. If they weigh more, they are not getting paid for it but if they weigh less, they won't take it. Where the chefs are a problem is in the demand for perfectly shaped vege but there is another big push to have that ugly delicious food and not worrying if that banana curves the other way.
A: Or trimming off the end of lamb. Everything goes on the plate because everything costs a lot of money these days.
That's right. I was listening to Michael Harden on Triple RRR the other day and he was talking about how 3D printing is being brought into using waste food products to make things like crackers.
D: Don't tell him that. We got to a point where we thought, this has to look different on the plate. Why are we cutting up a beautiful piece of Kingfish and squaring it off if we are not using the other little bits into a crudo or something else, why are we chopping it off the plate?
So you have moved away from that?
A: Definitely.
Were you ever in it?
D: For sure.
A: Just being taught that way; this is how you cut a piece of lamb rump. The bits on the end are overcooked and look funny and don't display how nicely you have cooked it. That doesn't really matter anymore. What matters is what goes on the plate and what it is with.
D: If you want consumers to understand what we are understanding, that the beauty of the ingredient is all there. That bit would usually be chopped up and put into a staff meal but why not have it on the plate if they have paid for it.
We have worked together in the same places from the start, at Donovans, and our interests are the same and we know each other quite well. No one else understands our creative process. I throw ideas at Danny and he processes those ideas and understands where I am coming from and chooses which ideas to incorporate and which ones he won’t. People stare at us all the time and wonder what just happened there, and we have created a dish.
So then, is it your job or role to educate consumers? Or can you just present that and hope that people will eventually be ok with it?
A: I don't think we need to stuff it down peoples' faces that this is how food should look. But its about the way you present it and having the flavour there and the cooking techniques there. If it is a carefully presented dish, people will just think that it is amazing.
D: It's an ongoing conversation. You want to talk about the culture around seasons. It is still forgotten in a lot of cases. Today someone asked why the menu changes so often. The seasons change often.
A: And the weather changes.
D: And the cost of things change if there are floods.
A: Corn is $8 one week and $140 the next.
D: And your cabbage that you were paying $2 for is now $9.70 and you still have it on the menu for $14. If you are not quickly reactive to those things, you are left out of pocket.
Are you able to do that in a hotel setting?
A: We are definitely trying. We have learned a lot about cooking with the seasons from being at Rina's, but I guess it is about everyone catching up to where we are at and quickly reacting. Why are we doing so many menu changes? Because we are saving you at least $400 a week.
I know we have talked about this before, but that whole wave of restaurant chefs coming into hotels just before Covid, and the adjustments that are necessary. Is it a different way of thinking or can you just cook the same way?
A: The corporate environment hotels use as their backbone is more structured in terms of the way they want to see a flow of how the business is run but what is more beneficial for them with restaurant chefs ais that we are more reactive and the chain of command is a lot shorter before things happen, so what we can do in a hotel is bring it forward and instead of that stagnant feel that hotels can have sometimes, we can give a bit more vibrancy.
And Danny, you're still at Rina's a lot and Adrian you are mainly here?
D: Yes. I was supposed to be there half an hour ago.
Oh. Thank you for making cocktails and being here. Do you feel divided?
D: The contrast now is perhaps even more important to reflect on, understanding the role that little restaurants like that play in community or play in helping to understand strategies that we took their to bigger business and also understanding how bigger business structures work and can it be vice versa. The reason we got involved in this place was because they like the personality of Rina's. If you could have a cookie cutter experience from Rina's and bring it here, that was what they wanted, but how do you do that?
A: The soul of the restaurant is the same; the ideals that we had from when we opened it are the same but then we just have to adjust to the environment of a big corporate business and the fact that people coming through here are transient. There is a core clientele but everyone else comes back and forth and they experience the hotel in a different way. Some people are looking for the classic hotel experience and then they come here and get a big surprise. The dish they had last time when they were here in summer is no longer on the menu and they can always get that dish at Sofitel. But we don't do things like that here.
So you don't have to do BLTs for room service?
D: Worse. But it's also understanding the difference between the diner in Melbourne. We are pretty clued in with what we like or what we think a restaurant diner or a foodie type Melbourne diner would like. But a foodie diner is totally different to an in room diner. Someone who is in between meetings or flying in, flying out, they have an hour for a meal and they cant even leave their room. They just feel like a fish burger. It should be a good fish burger. We don't have to say, well we have some eel parfait on crostini, that's not what they feel like.
How do you cater to that?
D: We do a fish burger.
A: When we first opened, we thought, no, this is not what people want and they wanted that because there were no other options but then as we went on and we are a year in, people just want fish and chips and burgers and soups in their rooms. It was humbling to understand that.
It's that comfort thing. They're away from home, as you say. They are not staying for a long time and wanting that experience. They want something warm and easy in their stomach.
D: Fries.
A: Fries.
How great are fries? How is all the pickling and hanging of meat going?
A: Good. We are cultivating some great white mould on deer leg. It looks great in the fridges.
D: The budget has changed here as well. When you open a hotel in the middle of a world crisis with art work and this and that and all of a sudden that disappeared and the art work became colourful pickle jars and that became a useable part of the decoration. It's a curiosity point.
A: People come in and want to try them and we say, here you go. We take jars to the table and let them try.
D: It is definitely a secret menu item.
I know Adrian came from an IT background but clearly had so much background and it seems as though you were made to be a chef, but Danny, did you always know you wanted to be a chef?
D: I started in hospitality as a kitchen hand at 16 and then did a little bit of bar work but always ended up feeling like I wanted to be in the kitchen. I started in the bar at Fenix years ago and that was a time when there were some incredible chefs in the kitchen there; Raymond Capaldi. He had this way about him that was well and truly recognised in the industry and I started picking up little jobs in the kitchen or picking herbs in the bar. I wanted to be in the action in the kitchen. That was a long time ago.
You work really well together and you are friends and you bounce ideas off each other and off your team and be inspired by the seasons but how do you go about coming up with a menu and adapt dishes on the fly as you said?
A: We have worked together in the same places from the start, at Donovans, and our interests are the same and we know each other quite well. No one else understands our creative process. I throw ideas at Danny and he processes those ideas and understands where I am coming from and chooses which ideas to incorporate and which ones he won't. People stare at us all the time and wonder what just happened there, and we have created a dish. Like in the creation of these drinks, I was just saying random stuff to him and from your point of view, I was just rambling, but that's our process.
D: We just both want it to be really good.
A: Tasty.
D: We can criticise each other as much as we like, about how it tastes, if it's madness, if it doesn't work as well, and if the weirdness shouldnt work but it does. As long as it's good. But then being able to talk about that next level of the palatable ingredients is the fun bit; how you can add a little bit of an obscure ingredient and that changes the salinity a little bit or increase the bitterness. Serving that just now, when we tried it before in a glass half an hour before you came, it needed more bitterness, but that came by serving it with the pith.
A: Yes, it's a lot more punchy than when we tried it in a glass. It's more complex.
That's fun.
D: We don't get to do that enough right now because that's another story. That story is about how to manage such a big operation and still do fun little things like taking half an hour to create a cocktail in a tangelo that has just come into season. This is the fun bit.
You have to have moments like that to keep sparking. Do you think about food 24/7?
A: It's a big part of our life. We are both open minded and try what the other gives us or suggests. We will never really say no unless we are unwell. We always try. And instinctively when we taste it, ideas will spring into our minds quickly and we know that those ideas can synergise because we know each other.
D: Also little moments like this that we create. Thats why we get a good return of business in both places because if we do little things like this, like we make a sgroppino at the table with gelati and prosecco and vodka without anyone saying I really feel like a sgroppino right now. A table of 10 and we are there with a whisk.
A: There was a table of 10 who wanted to do something special for dessert and we both went our separate ways to the kitchen, came back, one if us had prosecco, the other one had ice cream and we were like, sgroppino? We went to the table and just did it.
D: Ladles of sgroppino in little piccolos.
That's that whole personality thing; your personalities. And it is bringing that local flavour of Rina's here. People love that personal touch and getting an insight into your personalities.
D: Theatre in restaurants is often not there; the way a room feels. We visited a Peking duck restaurant in Macau and watched the duck cook in a big wood fire and then they came over with a big trolley and carved the duck at the table. There is often a lot thats not in a restaurant anymore. The sommelier might get creative with their chat about wine but where does the theatre in a restaurant come from if it isnt on the plate. How can we create a memorable experience that probably won't be done even here again? They are fun memories. They are shared moments with the table and it's engaging.
That's the flip side of hospitality; what you guys do and create, looking after people and feeding them. The community feeling of being part of something and enjoying the theatre of it. The food can be excellent but of you dont have some of those other features, what makes it memorable? Let's talk about the Sunday La Famiglia lunches because I loved coming in and eating that food.
A: We are trying to create an experience. After Covid, what we missed the most was the company of our family and friends and we wanted to create a place that wasn't too rowdy for people to come with their families and enjoy each others company.
The food all comes out on the table to share.
A: Yes, we are doing Italian style.
D: And less choice. People who haven't been able to get together for a while, the last thing they want to do is sit down, look at a menu and work out who likes what. All the dietaries are taken care of, there isnt a dietary we havent heard of and cant cater to. There are a couple of antipasti, a pasta, a beautiful big joint of meat, a well-cooked shared piece of protein, and the chance to really focus on your company. The guests are the ones who create the experience.
A: We just started the winter menu that has charcuterie, some nice house focaccia and grissini sticks, olives, Stracciatella with spring onion and ginger, cured Kingfish with red cabbage ponzu and caviar, then moving on to the pasta and then a T-bone with Brussel sprouts. Then finishing with the tiramisu.
So good. Thank you.
103 Little Collins Street, Melbourne