Aiven Lee

Hi Aiven. How has your day been?

Busy. We have a few functions on at the moment.

How long have you been open?

We opened during Covid, I want to say 2021. But we didn't really trade. We went through three lockdowns after we opened. It was during the period where we were constantly opening and closing. We couldnt get anything going at that time.

Right. And I read that you are doing food inspired by your childhood.

Yes. That seems to be where I often draw my inspiration from.

What kind of food is that?

My culture is Chinese Buddhist, so we pray and honour our ancestors a lot and offer offerings. Mum tends to cook a feast. So that's where the love for food started. I think Mum would cook 30 to 30 dishes for Chinese New Year. So she would start cooking a week beforehand and then put them in the freezer and start prepping all this stuff.

On her own?

Yes, on her own.

Goodness and is it vegetarian?

No, not always. It could be whole chicken, braised pork, fried noodles, a special style of spring roll. You name it, we have it. Steamed fish is a must. So there are always going to be a few items that you always have. For example, the whole fish, whole chicken tend to be a must.

And is that with certain spices or particular ingredients?

Normally Cantonese style cooking. Because I think that's closer to our background. Cantonese and hokkien style. My mum is Hakka, so a different culture again, so a wide variety of Chinese cuisine. But pork is always popular in Asia and it tends to be, I think the more common protein.

Did you watch your mum doing that cooking and think you wanted to be a chef? Where did that idea come from?

Well, when I was younger, I was naughty. So I wanted to go mess around in the kitchen with mum. So eventually then I started doing the simple stuff like rolling glutinous rice balls and wrapping spring rolls. And then sometimes it would be a little bit more exciting, Id help mum to clean some protein. When I say clean, you don't do much as when you are young, but that always seemed exciting.

And then what was the step to becoming a chef?

I always liked eating, making food that I like to eat. Initially I came to Melbourne and I followed the traditional Asian culture where you need to be a lawyer, an accountant, that sort of thing. That path is really not for me.

Which path were you on?

Accounting. That tends to be the case with Chinese background kids. You can ask different people and they'll tell you the same thing. But, I didn't like it. So, I went behind my parents' back and I knew I needed to start doing something else. I started doing cookery. And here I am.

And what do you like about it?

I like doing service, especially busy ones. It's quite exciting. It's all constantly on the go. It's more suited to my personality. I'm not the type to just sit down and sit in front of a computer.

Where do you start with putting together the menu? What are you looking for? Are you looking for a balance of flavours and protein?

Obviously, initially here we wanted to have a menu with more smaller plates and just a few main courses. Thats what we focus on, as you can see on the menu, half of it is literally smaller plates and the main course section is really short. And then we have some sides and some rice.

We are planning on having some different sorts of protein on offer. I think with the current culture, there are a lot of things that people don't eat. So we want to have something for everyone. And then we work with some seasonal produce, not too much. I think with Chinese cuisine they don't use seasonal produce too much, because they often goes on the path of pickling and preserving.

I love any kind of Feed Me menu. You've got Feed Me and then you've got Lux Me as well. That looks amazing.

The Lux Me is a bit more expensive. We put together, as the name suggests, some of our more luxury items. For example, we have the one of our favourites, the 18 hours baby abalone. Abalone always seems to be an exquisite luxury item in the Chinese culture. And then the ribeye; it's not cheap to have a good steak these days, but we source ours our from Cape Grim in Tasmania.

How delicious. How do you do your prawn toast? Because that was a big a couple of years ago. I feel like everyone was doing prawn toast and there was a variety of styles.

To make a good prawn toast, it's really hard. There are four or five ingredients in there. You can't deviate too much. Otherwise it's not prawn toast anymore. There are two main ingredients: obviously some form of bread and the prawn mixture, so that's two out of your five ingredients. We initially tried with a different type of bread; I went down the path of brioche at one point there was a craze about brioche as well. We tried it but the brioche already has a lot of butter and then you try to fry it, and it gets really sickening. It just absorbs all the oil with all the fat that it's already contained. We didn't like it at all.

We ended up finding that normal sandwich breads are the best. Sometimes you just need to keep it simple. This is simple sandwich slices and then the mix. I think where our product really differentiates to other people is that we really just really just use a lot of prawns. Also we find that a bigger size prawn tends to work better as well. So again, that costs as well. When you have a bigger sized prawn, it's often more expensive, but we wanted to make sure the prawn is good quality. And then from all the shells and whatnot, we make some a prawn shellfish oil and then we turn it into a mayonnaise and that just helped elevate the seafood element of the prawn toast.

Wow. That sounds delicious. Where else have you worked?

A large portion of my work experience comes from Long Grain. I started off when Martin Boetz was still executive chef there. He left two years into my training. I worked my way up from like CDP, sous chef and then eventually head chef as well. I was there for a good five and a bit years. I really enjoyed that place. I still sometimes miss working there. It was a good design. The kitchen was well designed to do what is meant to do. We had a great team at that time. Everyone worked hard, everyone helped each other out. There was a great team synergy. That whole time as well, we had a hat so that was something that we should be proud about. I feel like a hat back then means a bit more, I mean it's a bit controversial but yeah.

Is there pressure once you get a hat to keep it? Or is there always pressure?

There's always pressure. I mean like the owner wouldn't be happy if he lost it. They lost it after I left. I think I left and you know how in every other hospitality venue, when someone leaves then you start a chain effect. They got a new team and they just couldn't maintain a standard.

As a head chef, are you someone who's alongside the team or do you like to tell people what to do? What's your style of leadership?

Both. I'm quite hands on. A lot of the time it's because you can tell people what you want, but the end result's always going to be some somewhat different. I think you can follow a recipe but if you don't have the technique or you don't know the method a hundred per cent, the result always comes out different. I like to be hands on. I will show them a few times until I'm happy that they can achieve the result I wanted. And then of course its a lot more than just cooking, being a head chef, the responsibility is not just about cooking food or designing a menu, you have to control your costs. You have to keep up with the financial side. I always like to make sure that everything is right and not over order but try to keep the produce as fresh as I can. I think that that plays a big part in controlling the quality as well.

Do you like an open kitchen?

I dont mind an open kitchen. I think its more of a diner thing. I think people appreciate seeing a bit of the theatre behind the scenes. But there is a little bit more to having an open kitchen because you always make sure that the kitchen's clean and tidy at a glance. If you have an open kitchen and everything is black and dirty, people are not going to be very happy to dine there.

I suppose you can't have too much yelling.

Not too much yelling. I think it just comes down to like calling out dockets to make sure everyone knows what they need to do. We have a wok and whenever you have a wok you have a higher power canopy or exhaust system. It's often very loud. So sometimes it feels like I'm yelling but I'm not. I just need to make sure I'm loud enough so that they can hear me on the other side.

To finish with, because you've had a few different experiences and you've been in the kitchen for a while, what would your advice be to a young person starting out as a chef?

Oh, great question. We had someone in last week to do a stage, a friend of a friend who wants to start working in the kitchen. He's got a nice job at the bank and it pays pretty well. I think what a lot of people don't understand is that it's tough work and very low financial reward I suppose. So it really just comes down to understanding what you're getting into. Without the passion, it's really hard to sustain. You probably do it a couple years and you realize it's not worth it and then you go back to doing what you were doing and then you realize you lost three, four years of a life. So just really make sure that it's really what you want to do. I would suggest that before you start going to culinary school or pick up an apprenticeship, just go and work in a restaurant, even doing the dishes for a couple months and see if that's really what you want to do. Even if you're a head chef, I have to do dishes at some point, it's not something you can get away from. Ifyou can stand doing that and that's what you really want to do, then you can try to pursue it down the path.

Yum Sing House, 22 Sutherland Street, Melbourne