What an absolute pleasure to talk to Aidan Robinson from Chic de Partie. Aidan got in touch with me through Instagram and I am so happy he did. He is one of those chefs who so love what they do that it almost shines out of them. Aidan always knew he wanted to be a chef, and more specifically, a pastry chef. He started his career at 15 in Manchester, did his apprenticeship at a Michelin star restaurant in Devon before moving to London and getting a job on pastry at Heston Blumenthal's Dinner. After four years, Aidan was ready for a change and was offered a job at the newly opened Dinner by Heston in Melbourne which he loved for the three years it lasted, before being told, along with the rest of the staff that they would have no job in a week. Valentine's Day, 2020, was the last day for the restaurant, which, for Aidan meant no sponsorship and major visa problems. We talk about all that in the conversation, so I'll skip ahead to the spoiler: everything is fine now, actually better than fine, Aidan is thriving making beautiful treats for his own business, Chic de Partie, working as a private chef to a retired Melbourne entrepreneur, and basically living life like it's golden. Photography credit: Carlz J Soda
Aidan, it is lovely to meet you.
It's lovely to meet you, shall we have a drink? Aperol?
What a lovely idea.
I found you through some of my friends you have spoken to.
I do seem to be speaking to a lot of ex-Dinner by Heston chefs and I have just spoken to another one on Monday, Gareth at Tarts Anon. Not for Conversation with a Chef but for Broadsheet. He was in the latest Broadsheet Cookbook.
Me and Gareth worked together, both on pastry.
You would have, yes.
And you know EK and Rosheen.
It's true. Dinner by Heston has been cropping up a lot lately.
A lot of us stayed and made something of ourselves, otherwise they had to go back home.
Absolutely. I was hearing Dani Valent's indignation and actually outrage on her Dirty Linen podcast back in 2020 when she was referring to how things went down at the end with Dinner.
I was one of the more unfortunate ones, I guess, because I had actually moved here from London. So when it did end, my sponsorship was invalid and I couldn't get a job because no one wanted to transfer that visa at the time with Covid.
Even hearing how much it costs to transfer a visa when staff are in short supply, they make it very hard for hospitality, $5000?!
And that was two years ago. It was crazy.
As you say, you had been here three years and you had your partner.
Five years now.
That's right. It was home and it still is home.
We only got a week's notice. I'm sure you've heard all the stories. We literally got kicked out on the street. After seven years, for me. Four years in London and three years here.
It's outrageous. And hearing Dani say that Crown is such a big employer and a giant in hospitality, it is unbelievable.
It's a shame how it ended.
It IS a shame but a lot of good has come from it in the end maybe. The people who left there are doing great things, and I understand it was a really amazing place to work.
Did you ever get there? It was an amazing place to work; good food, good service. So now it's only in London and they have just opened one in Dubai.
Dubai? I guess it would go down really well there. I was interested to hear that you became a chef when you were 15. That's a classic path for chefs to start early. Did you always know you wanted to be a chef?
I did cookery at school and started doing afternoon tea at the weekends. I did that when I was in my last year at school and then finished.
And that was Manchester?
Yes, that was home. I did that for a year while I sat my exams, and I was thinking about whether I wanted to go to uni or college. But I knew I didn't want to do paper stuff, I wanted to be more hands on. So that's when I did my apprenticeship with a well-known chef called Michael Caines, which had two Michelin stars and then that was it really, it took off from there.
Was your family a foodie family?
Not at all. My grandparents liked to cook and my granddad used to grow his own fruit and vege, so I got involved pretty early. But my mum and dad can't cook to save their lives.
Sometimes the desire to become a chef comes from parents who are really good cooks and other times, it comes from something that is within the chef themselves, I guess.
I think I have been cooking since I was 12 or 13. Baking with my grandma grew into something that I did every day.
The afternoon teas, I guess, are tending toward pastry. Were you always into pastry?
Always into pastry, yeah. Even when I did my apprenticeship, it was pastry orientated. I still had to cover food and safety of all the other stuff but purely did pastry and it has been 12 years now.
What is it about pastry? I was saying to Gareth, it is quite scientific and precise.
Creative, scientific, art works behind it. I enjoy that. I would never see myself in a kitchen but I have always loved the pastry side of it. At home or at work. Obviously working at a place like Dinner was very military like, very strict, and we followed recipes guide by guide. I grew into that and it became my family. Seven years. I think I started when I was 19 and then I moved here and I am 27 now. I worked in Devon for those two years. Have you heard of Michael Caines?
No I haven't.
He only has one arm. He had a car accident one night, you know, working all those horrible hours, had an accident, lost an arm, and then became very well-known after that. Lovely guy, a bit mental. That was in the countryside and I got a bit bored of that. I was 18. So I moved to London. I had a few interviews around London and then found myself in a job at Heston's. I loved it every day since.
So you're someone who hasn't had lots of jobs; you've had two major ones.
I probably did three years of apprenticeship and Michael took me on after that as a chef de partie and then I moved to London and started working my way up and then they moved me here.
Yes. But you wanted to go to Copenhagen?
Yeah. That was why I was leaving London. I had been there for four years and we had such a big team. I knew I wouldn't have the head chef job any time soon, so I thought I would move on somewhere else. Denmark was purely because two of my best friends worked there at Noma and Geranium and I could have got into one of those places, which would have been amazing. Copenhagen is a beautiful place. That fell through, but Ash, who is Heston's right hand man, contacted me and told me about the job in Melbourne; they'd pay for my flight, get me a visa. It was once in a lifetime opportunity and I have family here too, so that helped the decision too. It was a big move. I had already left home quite early, at 17 to do the apprenticeship in the countryside. That was four hours from home. I was already quite independent by then but moving to Australia was a big move. I never regretted it.
Was there a bit of a culture shock when you first arrived?
No. From living in London, the lifestyle here was so much better. And you get a lot more for your money here. London is so expensive. I'd have to share with three housemates and pay for a room. When I came here, I got my own place for the same price. I did know a lot of people at Dinner because they had already made the move for the opening the year before.
What's it like to work although you don't have a lot to compare to but I imagine you have a lot of chefs in the kitchen at a place like Dinner. How many on a shift?
There were about 50 in the kitchen and about 13 of us on pastry. And then in the restaurant there were managers and sommeliers, so the team was about 100.
Does it not become impersonal, or do you get to know all those people?
Yeah, you get to know them all. We had a three-day rota and had three days off. We were open every day so it depended on the rota, but you would always see everyone. It depended on how long people stayed. Especially in London, we had a lot of people who would come, and it wasn't for them, especially London. I used to work 80-hour weeks. That was normal. Some people couldn't get used to that. But even here, we had a lot of back to back shifts, so I would finish service one night at midnight and the next day I would be starting at 8am.
That's exhausting. How did that work with Fair Work?
That's how what happened, happened. It's strange how London still gets away with it. Different rules.
I know Dani said this and I have spoke to lots of chefs who love what they are doing so much that they are willing to put in the hours, but I guess it is about respect and what is fair and being paid for that as well.
I think when you sign up for a job like that, you know what you are in for, or at least, I did. I had been doing it since I was a kid. It was all I knew. I could never have imagined working 9 to 5 and having the night off. It's not really how a restaurant works, is it? I loved it and the pay was very good here, compared to London. I learned so much and everyone became family. It's just the way it ended. It was two years on Valentine's Day.
It’ll be two years in March since I started Chic de Partie and I have never looked back. I love it, being my own boss and meeting all these new people and the clients and their contacts.
You would have learned a lot and because I hadn't been to Fat Duck or to Dinner, I imagined that everything by Heston had molecular stuff but Gareth said no, it was more pared back at Dinner and a lot more classical.
That's why Dinner was so popular, I think. Fat Duck yes, it was very theatrical and you stay in there four hours having tasting menus and different experiences, like he takes you to the countryside through food and you're at the beach with sea shells and the sound of the waves. That's all amazing. But you don't do it every day. Dinner was a lot more stripped back, a la Carte. You could go there and have steak and chips and it will be the best you have ever had.
Were there challenging things on the learning curve to get your head around in pastry?
Normally when you say you're a pastry chef, people think you are just doing one thing all the time. But Dinner was such a big restaurant and we used to do so many covers, we actually had different sections in the pastry section. We would have the ice cream section and they would be in charge of making the ice creams, churning those every day, and then they would also have three plated desserts. Then we would have the tipsy cake sections and they did all the tipsy cakes. We would do hundreds of those every day. Then we had service at the pass and either Gareth or myself would do that. Then the back was the cheese and downstairs was production. So that's five sections on the pastry section. It was such an operation, hence so many staff and so many hours. Especially with the covers we used to have to do. I learned so much. It was very exciting every day. Every day was different. And we changed the menu seasonally as well. It wasn't always the same thing. And with the different sections, once someone became comfortable, we would switch them to something else just to keep the learning.
It sounds thrilling and as though you learned a lot, but I read somewhere that you said that you wouldn't go back to a restaurant.
No well, obviously I have started the business now. That came through my building. We had a Whatsapp group. I lost my job, couldn't get a job and then Covid and the lockdown hit. I had to decide whether I was going home or staying to try to figure something out. I joined the Whatsapp group in the building I am in. It was a good community thing in the first lockdown when no one knew what was going one and people needed things from the shop or whatever. It's so lovely. Im not in a big sky rise. It's a nice little old building. We are a community now. I was told to introduce myself so I said I'm a chef, I don't have a job, message me if you need a cake. Because you couldn't get one anywhere and people still wanted to celebrate their birthday, even in lockdown. I got 20 orders within the hour. It was mad. Everyone was trying to support me. But pastry chef and cake maker is a lot different. I've been a pastry chef for 11 years and I have made cakes at home, but I've not done that to the level I would do a dessert.
So how did you make that shift?
I asked people to message me something they hadn't been able to make. Someone messaged to say they had tried to make Portuguese tarts ten times and failed, could they order 20 off me. Of course. It gave me my confidence back and the ability to work again after the restaurant closed and I didn't know what to do. It was exciting again.
I guess even if it was something you hadn't done before, you have that knowledge of how things work and what to do. The cakes look amazing on Instagram. Your whole Instagram is amazing with the pink and blue.
That's the brand. I got those orders and got to know the neighbours and got their support. Then the weeks went by and I thought I could make something of it and started the Instagram. It didn't look like it does now. I was doing myself, taking photos. Chic de partie came from chef de partie and chic was because I like fashion. That was easy for me to come up with that. Then Instagram; it's crazy how Instagram works. It blew up. Dani got in touch and then I was in the Herald Sun and Good Food and all that stuff. Obviously that helps and gets your name out even more. Then it was word of mouth.
I think that's the great thing about a lot of big cities, but its a great thing about Melbourne, that people want to hear those stories and they want the background and they want to try new things.
I could never imagine doing what I am doing in London. Not a chance. People are very willing to spend money on good products here. Obviously the name helped it sell in the beginning; Dinner by Heston pastry chef. I make the Boozy Brioche. We used to make the tipsy cake at Dinner, a small single serve, for a dinner party and I reinvented it and did a bigger version and called it a Boozy Brioche. Stuff like that flew out the window.
When I started off, I was happy to do anything and try new things. As I said, I've been doing desserts for so long but not so much cakes. So I was trying to see what worked well for me and for customers too.
How many orders are you getting now?
That depends. I have just been on holiday. But for Valentine's Day and it's still just me. I'll go back to the house for a bit. So I got all the orders through Whatsapp and then saw the demand and applied for the food licence through the council and pretty much turned a spare bedroom into a kitchen with fridge, storage, workbench, all the equipment I needed. I knew how I wanted to work and to get a licence I needed everything to be right and that took a while to be approved just because of Lockdown. It took them three months to come and see me. But once that was all ticked off and approved, that was it. It'll be two years in March since I started Chic de Partie and I have never looked back. I love it, being my own boss and meeting all these new people and the clients and their contacts.
Apart from Chic de Partie, I am also a private chef. That was also through the building I'm in. One of my neighbours is an economist to Harold Mitchell. Harold is a retired entrepreneur, a lovely man. That came about because she was one of the ones who ordered a cake. I took the cake up to her and she told me it was actually for the next day. It was quite a big cake and apparently he had a zoom call and he wanted to share it all out amongst friends and family. So the next day they sent a chauffeur to come and pick me up, so I get chauffeured to Spring Street, where he has a two-storey penthouse, to cut up the cake and ever since it has been cakes, lunch, everything. It has been amazing. They are such humble, lovely people.
You're going to have to write a book about your life, aren't you? Maybe there's a movie in it.
Two years later and it still doesn't feel real, having this connection.
And you can have a life now, evenings and days off.
Chic de Partie is my main priority and I do the other on the side, once a week. But it's really good to have them behind me. They are really supportive and they've helped me grow into Chic de Partie.
So now, your visa is all ok?
I'm on a de facto with my partner. We had already talked about it, but we fast forwarded it because of my situation. It was either that or go back to London, and I wasn't ready to go back to London. Maybe in the next 10 years or so. This is home.
And you're making it work, absolutely work.
I have a website and everything now. I'm trying to make it work for me. I was doing a bit too much, because I can't say No. I was probably working the same hours I was working in the restaurant for myself, which is great because the more hours I was putting in, the more it was growing and growing, which was rewarding, but I would have burned out. Some nights I was up to midnight still doing orders, and still at home. I outgrew home months and months ago. I m trying to find the right place. I want to stay in the city. I'll tell you why in a moment. I'm looking for a small shop, not a cafe. I just need a kitchen, a proper kitchen so I can grow a little bit more and hire some staff. It's a lot for me at the moment; I'm taking the orders, I'm making them, I deliver or wait for pick-ups.
Is it only people in Melbourne who can order from you?
Yes. The product can't travel. They are fresh products that need to be eaten on the day or the next day.
It doesn't sound as though you need orders from elsewhere; Melbourne is keeping you busy. Is it all people at home ordering, or is it restaurants too?
A lot of clients are home-based. The reason I wanted to stay in the city is that I do a lot of wholesale too. I used to do a lot of wholesale for cafes, during lockdown, because I do a wide range of goods. I do the cakes, and the brioche I told you about and Portuguese tarts and macaron. People are enjoying the variety as opposed to just doing one thing and I like keeping it exciting for me as well. There's St. Ali, Entrecote, Abacus were all getting Portuguese tarts during the week. I was doing 200 tarts from a normal kitchen oven. I was up at 5am baking 10 trays and then sending them all off to the cafes. I've packed that in now, because I don't really need that anymore. It was a bit of support for me and me helping them out because they couldn't get the product and it got my name out. All the cakes for the Chanel, Cartier, Fendi and Dior VIPS go through me, which is insane.
That is insane and you must love it, from a fashion perspective, too.
Exactly. I really love that aspect and getting to know them. It has really worked out well. That was mostly during lockdown too when people were doing online shopping and if someone had a birthday, they would send something out. Thats why I want to stay in the city to remain accessible for them. I don't want to lose that relationship. I could move to Fitzroy, but it wouldn't be the same. Most of my clients are city-based.
Do you think about food a lot?
Yeah. Me and my partner are out every day around Melbourne, just supporting as well. Being in hospo, you either know the people working there or you understand why you love it so much because you just like to be out and about. That's what Melbourne is known for, right?
Do you have lots of cookbooks?
Loads. Im always trying to get new inspiration. But I don't have time for that. That's why I am trying to factor in some downtime for myself, because otherwise I would be working Monday to Sunday flat out. I've been trying to take Monday and Tuesday just to unwind, see friends, catch up with people and read my cookbooks and get inspiration.
I was living vicariously through your Hamilton Island photos. That looked amazing but you deserved that break.
I needed that. I wouldnt have been away since 2019 and just to change the scenery. We booked it 10 days before we went. To be able to go away and do that was a breath of fresh air.
You are so animated when you talk and it is so lovely to speak to someone who is so passionate about what they do. It is such an amazing story; it really is quite cinematic.
I've got a few things in the works this year, which is exciting, mostly through friends. Do you know Orlando? Again, somebody from Dinner, he was the head bartender, and he is doing really well and want to do a collab cocktail with Chic de Partie, so little things like that are in the works.
What a life!
I'm meeting all these beautiful people. It's great.