Amit Tuteja

Amit Tuteja: Hello Jo, would you like some chai? I hear you are a teacher. What do you teach?

Conversation with a chef: I teach French.

Funny thing is that when I was doing my hotel management in India, French was a mandatory subject for us and all. Both my children are multilingual. Billy speaks Indonesian Bahasa and Deutsch fluently. My daughter speaks Japanese and Deutsch and I was good in French, but I've completely forgotten, because if you don't practice, you lose it. We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary 2022 in Paris. We were in Montmartre and walking distance from the Sacre Coeur. My memory of the best beef ever had was a tiny place, two boys cooking inside with their mum and the sister serving outside; a little 12 seater restaurant.

I love that. I'm going in September, so I'll have to check it out.

Are you from New Zealand?

I am!

My daughter was born in New Zealand, in Auckland.

I'm from Christchurch.

I started from Christchurch. In fact, I opened the Denny's in Moorhouse Avenue.

Did you? That was a long time ago.

Back at the time Shortland Street was playing. I was supposed to only go for six months to New Zealand to help them open one restaurant: the Christchurch one. And then from there they took me to Auckland. I opened the one in North Shore and Queen Street in the city.

We travelled quite a lot as children because my dad worked for Air New Zealand and we got discounted flights and went to the States a few times. So, when Denny's came to Christchurch, it seemed like such a big deal. We didnt have anything like that.

There was a movie shot back then called The Frighteners.

Oh yes. Peter Jackson?

Peter Jackson! Yes! Back then you could smoke in the restaurant. Michael J. Fox would come in with the girl who used to play Rachel in Shortland Street. This is going back. She was a very petite girl. Yes. And they would smoke their Marlboros and have their grand slam breakfast. And you know, they would stay all day. Peter Jackson, with all his piercings and tattoos, he remembered me so well. There was a gentleman called John Clarke, he used to work for the ABC here, he was a TV presenter.

Was that Fred Dagg?

Yes, that's him. John and his wife's name was Helen. With my first restaurant that I opened on Gertrude Street in Fitzroy, back in 2000, John used to live on George Street. He would come in for occasionally and he would come in and he would sit down and have a yarn. And then one day he brought in Peter Jackson and the Lord of the Rings had happened by that time. And he came in with Peter Jackson and Peter Jackson remembered me from back at Denny's. It was quite a unique experience back then. I mean, I didn't look like this. I had a full head of hair. This is going back 20 year. So I have memories of New Zealand and food and putting it all together. It brings it back.

Gosh, you've really been around in the industry, haven't you?

I've been in the industry since 1986. I started my hotel management in Delhi. And then I came here in 89, October. Fresh off the boat, not actually a boat, I came on a plane. I used to have my college just down there on the corner of Elizabeth and Flinders, 222, up on the Red Cross building and walked down and wanted to get a job. So I walked into Young & Jackson's on the top of the corner and I said, can I get a job and no job. My accent was thick then, so he said, no job. He said, okay, but before you go, can you help me bring those glasses over from the public bar? It was a real grungy hub. Not as nice looking as it is now. I went in there from my hotel experience, I just picked up the glasses, gave them to him, and he asked if I knew how to stack glasses? I need a bussy. Will you work as a bussy here? I said, yes, and I got $8 an hour. That was good money then. So I started working there. While I was working there, I worked at Hilton on the Park, which is now I think is the Pullman now, in the banquet department. That's where I started my hospitality experience here in Australia.

This is '89. Then in '95 I was running The Keg in Albert Park. And that went under and Denny's approached me and they said can you come and help us open a restaurant. And I went to Christchurch.

So how did they know about you?

The guy who owned The Keg was a close associate of a guy called Jay Noble who owned the Denny's of Asia Oceania. It was networking. In those days there was no LinkedIn or internet. It was just people knowing each other. They said the restaurant manager knew I needed a job.

One of my managers now is learning to be in the kitchen. I do all the cross training between people. I like to that's what I learned at Denny's actually. When you become a duty manager in a restaurant, you should know and appreciate the job of every single employee front and back. So you can jump in and give them a hand.

I think so because when I was at university and I started working as a waitress, there was a real divide between front of house and the kitchen. And the chefs really looked down on front of house and were always annoyed with us. But I think it's better if you can understand each other. It must make for a more harmonious experience.

I worked in that era of the German chefs. So after leaving the Hilton -I worked a little bit in the fine dining room. I really wanted to get into silver service, how to carve meat on a table, how to do crepe suzette and stuff like that. I was very into French cooking. I was really fond of Bombe Alaska. Indian food was never my scene. I was never going to do Indian food. It was accident, and touch wood, a successful accident. When I was working in fine dining at the Hilton, I would only get like a temporary shift, a three hour relief shift. Then a job came up at the Chandelier Room at the Rialto Hotel. It was a fine dining room in the basement. It was the place to be. In those days there were five restaurants in Melbourne. There was Le Restaurant at the Regent, which is now the Sofitel. There was Maxims in at the Como, Max's at the Hyatt, Clifton Room and Chandelier Room. To get in there was a big deal and I got $13 an hour start. Wow. It was a big deal for me then, you could get tips to more than your salary I got in there and I started working with the German chefs, like Joachim and all that. And yes, they would look down on us and you had to speak your sweet nothings into their ears so as to get in the right books. I think that's where my management experience really came in. When I started working with people of different nationalities and stuff and saying, okay, this is what you say to people to get the best yield out of them. That's how I try to train my staff. I tell them, learn the dishwasher's job. Show him how to operate a dishwasher properly, how to efficiently do things. When you teach these things to staff young, then they take that knowledge further. Today some of the guys who have worked with me, they now are successful restaurateurs in Melbourne. One of them is doing very well, he has quite a famous restaurant brand in Indian food. There is guy from the Curry Club who's worked here. There are quite a few guys who've gone out and made a name for themselves,

Is this the first of your restaurants?

The first one was Gertrude Street Fitzroy. This Flinders Street one opened in 2008. The one in Gertrude Street was called Tandoori Times. That was 119 next to Anada. And down from The Builder's Arms there. I don't own that anymore. The owner passed and the sons didn't want to keep it so we had to leave. Then from there we opened in St. Kilda in Barkly Street opposite Big Mouth. From there we went to Yarraville, to Anderson Street. I still have that.

That's Tandoori Times?

Yes. Then I opened this one in 2008 and from here we opened in Tarneit. We opened another Desi Dhaba in Craigieburn two years ago and we've just started working on a plan for Ravenhall, which is going to be commercial food prep. No cooking, just prepping and logistics. We want to bring things as a brand into one place and then become a sales supplier. And then we open Melton in June.

Gosh. So how many is that in total?

Six in total.

Wow, that's impressive. You were saying before you weren't interested in Indian food. So how did it come about?

When I went to New Zealand to open Denny's, I got married in '97 and I left Denny's and I started working for Burger King. Burger King brought me back into Australia because I really wanted to get back to Melbourne. I really missed Melbourne. I was supposed to be there for six months in '95 and I ended up being there until '99 and my daughter was born there. I came here back in July '99 and was opening Burger Kings. I opened the one on Swanson Street which became Hungry Jacks afterwards, I opened about five of them. And then Burger King got bought out by Hungry Jacks. I had nothing and I'd only been working with them for about a year and a bit I had like $25-30,000 saved up andthere was this restaurant on Gertrude Street for sale. I didnt want to work for anyone anymore, I wanted to open my own restaurants and do my own thing. My brother and I decided to buy it and the rest was history. My wife used to work for the Commonwealth Bank, so she got us a little loan of 15,000. And we went into the markets and bought things second-hand: second-hand tables, second-hand chairs and said, okay, we're going to open Indian food, but we don't know anything about Indian food. Because it was just expected that we were going to be doing Indian because there was a dearth in the market. We used to go to this restaurant on Johnson Street called Guru Da Dhaba. It was famous for its cheap food, the cheapest Indian food. But the consistency was not there. The butter chicken would taste one way today and a different way tomorrow. And the quality service element was missing. We said to him at the time, would you like to partner with us? He didnt. Then we found this site not far away. And we knew there was a market for it.

There was an older gentleman whose restaurant in St. Kilda I used to frequent. It was called Amber. And his name was Mohammed Shahir. He was one of the oldest chefs. And we went up to Mohammad and I said, Mohammad, can you help me open a restaurant? Just help me open it for three months. I was happy to work in the kitchen because I've worked in the kitchen before. I knew how to do all the other kinds of cooking. But I didnt know Indian and what your mum taught you was another thing.He said, sure. He came in, we gave him $500 a week and he was very happy with that salary at the time. And there it was.

And that concept of the Dhaba, is that something that you felt was a bit different from other Indian restaurants at the time? That sort of roadside concept? And what does Desi mean?

Tell you what, I'm a motorcyclist. I love bikes. I love cars. Before my wedding, I had taken my motorbike on a GT Road trip. GT Road is the biggest highway in India, which goes through different states of India, east to the west pretty much. And a bit to the north as well. And whenever you are on a highway, you stop at these roadside places and mums of the area, whatever with the local components that they have, whether it's the vegetables in the area or the meats of the area, they put out 6, 7, 8 dishes and they are served to the truckies and travellers. They're very cheap, affordable meals only cooked for the day. 20 kilos, 30 kilos, whatever can be cooked and when it's finished, it is finished, and they are maybe just down to tea and biscuits and some sauce. That's all you can get after that.

From that, I discovered that locally those places carried a certain spice element, which was never available in the West. When you went to a restaurant here, either you got a really sweet butter chicken or you got your Rogan Josh and an entree was a samosa or a chicken tikka. They were not offering the real treats that come from the real restaurants of the highways, which India is all about; different languages, functionalities and using a spice to its right advantage. Not just mixing everything together and making Keens curry powder. That's blasphemous. Really bad. We never use curry powder in my kitchen. Even the garam masala that we make in here, we hand grind it. We are all about fresh. The word desi means somebody who belongs to the land. I am a desi from my part of land, you are a desi from your part of the land, and that's what desi means. Dhaba is a roadside eatery. So it is having a sense of belonging to the country and to be be in a comfortable dhaba, that's how Desi Dhaba came into being.

That's so good.

I come up with wacky ideas when I'm in the shower.

So what kind of food is that?

It has to be desi. So it has to belong. It has to have ghee in it. We use ghee, we don't use oil. The ingredients have to be freshly locally sourced. So if Desi Dhaba was to open in Queensland, it would be capitalizing on a local produce of Queensland. If it was to open in New South Wales, the ingredients would be from there. Till today, I know where to get my broccoli from and where to get my ginger from. How old the ginger has to be before it's ready for paste and juliennes. Younger ginger, you can slice it up, garnish it, beautiful nice and small, but it doesn't have the juice. The older ginger, you can crush it, grind it. You can even use the skin of it. It's beautiful to cook. So learning those things locally from our regulars.

So you are using local ingredients from here, but, are you importing some of those spices?

Spices, whole spices come from overseas. But they are freshly roasted and ground here.

Oh, so you bring them in raw?

Yes. The idea is to get them over here and redo it. I don't trust a pepper corn fully blended in. Because what they do, and it is very common in places like India or anywhere in the world to make an extra dollar, they will add pawpaw seeds in it. You can't tell. When you got a kilo of black peppercorns, you throw in a hundred grams of pawpaw seeds, you can't pick it out. The adulteration of food, it's quite common. Same with bay leaves. So once I have it, I know when it's roasted and what am I dealing with. And again, of course because we are buying it and onceRavenhall is up and running, I'm hoping that I can control it even more, because then I can bulk produce my spice.

So you do have things like butter chicken though?

Don't you know the story of Covid?

Oh of course. The driver who drove a long distance for butter chicken.

He came here. He was just outside here.

It's all falling into place.

The concreter, he did not go to Tarneit to get butter chicken. He wanted a city butter chicken. He came all the way from Werribee. Poor guy just got pulled over here by the cops. He said, please, can I take my butter chicken? They said no, and made him turn around. I went up to his home and I said, well, first of all Channel 9 came in and they said, what do you think of this? It was back in those were pretty sad times. Covid was happening, people were locked in. All sorts of things were going on. I actually really liked that publicity at the time. I said, look, although I don't condone this, but a year's butter chicken supply to you. So he got one year. He probably got it 20, 30 times and he enjoyed it and he never paid the fine. New York Times called me up and they said, are you proud of selling the world most expensive butter chicken?

That's great. The New York Times. Iconic.

The important thing is to understand the human element in a restaurant. The people coming in, they're not just customers, they're human beings. People are working, they're human beings. A lot of international students who come in, they're trying to get ahead. I came as an international student. Desi Dhaba was opened with that in mind. I wanted to keep open a place for Indian students or international students because they were working till late. Did you hear about the story Vindaloo Against Violence? John Brumby was in power of those days. He was the Premier and we were having some student bashing late at night. Kids were getting bashed for their mobile phones or laptops or whatever and they would be finishing late. Back then there was no 24-hour transportation on the weekends. Kids would be working and then they'd be waiting to save a few bucks, they'd be waiting for the morning train. And you know, the bad rogue element could find them as sitting ducks and so I thought, okay, why not open a restaurant till two, three o'clock in the morning and they can come in, sit down, eat cheap meals, pass their time a couple of hours later, take their train and go home. And that's how the restaurant came into being. It was quite funny, you know, because Brumby came down and he had his publicity. Shane Warne joined the bandwagon. Everyone came in. Victoria Police came onto it, everybody came onto it. The restaurant was famous from that.

Exactly right. It's hard to find places that are open. So do you still do that?

Till 2.00 am minimum, sometimes till three. I was just talking to my chef about the specials and all that and I said, look, what do you think about doing 4.00 AM close? I was able to buy the building over a course of time and I don't have to stick to any Melbourne rules. You can trade until anytime you want. At least on the weekends. There is market here for it.

What brought you to Melbourne. You would've been quite young.

A woman. I travelled for a young lady, a Kiwi girl. She came to visit India and I met her at an exchange program at this hotel called the Sheraton Hotel. We clicked together. She was from Christchurch, not exactly from Christchurch, a place outside Christchurch called Dunsandel. So from Dunsandel to Delhi. So Christina and I met back then and you know, it always left a mark on me and she was living in Melbourne, and I had an uncle living in Melbourne. So I had a choice of going to Cornell to study and I chose Victoria University just because I wanted to follow her. I was with her for about four years. So that was the reason why I came to Melbourne.

Amazing. Are you from Delhi?

Yes. Brought up in Delhi. I was only 20 when I left, and Im 56 now.

So, when people come here to Desi Dhaba, what's the experience you want them to have? Do they work their way through the menu or just have certain dishes?

Look, the menu is there, but idea is number one, when they walk in through that door, they should have a feeling of coming into India. The experience should be that they're back home. If you come into the restaurant in the evening, you will see that about 90% of our clientele is of Indian origin or Southern Asian origin. So when you're walking in those doors, you should get a feel as if you're walking into a place in India. Just like when I was on my motorbike. When I walked in to those places, I wanted to have that feeling of belonging to that particular little village or section. And that's what I create here.That's the experience. You can get a butter chicken or a rogan josh, chicken tikka, anywhere in Melbourne. And they are all great. I never claim that I make the best except for my goat curry, which is probably the best. But the important thing is to have a feeling of belonging. Sitting down, having a yarn with your friend and looking around. There should be nostalgia. Behind you is the old ads of the eighties and nineties. I try and reach every generation. There we have cricket again and a common ground that people talk about. You go to Bollywood, there's all sorts of things. The idea is to create the feeling of nostalgia, as if you're back in your country. That's the experience I'm going to give you.

Do you change the menu or is it more important that you keep the same dishes on because that's what people like?

There are staple dishes, things that you cannot take off the menu because you have created a loyal cult following. We have this dish calledBombay's Bhayankar Bakra, which basically means Mumbais dangerous goat. It's not even from Mumbai. I gave that name because of the alliteration. Three Bs. We three brothers, we all have our initial, anickname from bees and I thought, okay, how can I bring that family element into it? I came up with three bees,Bombay's Bhayankar Bakra. We picked up this really, really spicy dish from northern India. And Bhayankar means dangerous. Mumbai is Mumbai and Bakra is good. I can't take that off the list because people, when they eat it, they feel they have done something really special by eating something so spicy. Things like butter chicken, we are famous for that so I don't want to take that out. But yes, we do create a monthly special or a weekly special depending upon the season.

Are those monthly specials or different dishes are nostalgic dishes or are the chefs creating something a bit more fusion.

Fusion? I try and remove ourselves from that. Fusion does create dishes which are great looking, but I am not about fancy things on a plate. I don't want to walk into a restaurant and pay $300 or $400 and with my wife and then come back home and raid the fridge. That's happening way too much. And I'm not an Instagram restaurant. I want a restaurant to be where you get value for money. You should be able to feel full. So for that reason, the food has to be rustic.

Food has to have that element of your mother's cooking. When your nana or your mum would cook for you, she'd fill you up. My chef is a generational chef. There are two brother chefs and they have done a lot of cooking for us and cooking for family in Pakistan. He comes up with these unique dishes, which I haven't tried before. Last Thursday he made this thing called goat pilaf. Now I knew that there's a goat biryani, but Pilaf is done with a different kind of rice. He created the rice so that it came out sticky and it didn't appear so pleasant. But the moment I put it in my mouth, that's why I was eating tuna salad this afternoon when you came in because I picked up too much goat pilaf. That's basically how specials work. Specials have to play a role because a lot of regulars come in and they want to have a new dish. They want to try something which is offbeat. So here fusion is more Indian and Nepalese or Indian and Pakistani or Sri Lankan. That's fusion. But can you try and create, say a French dish with an Indian spice? It's not going to marry. Horses, for courses I say.

If we come in in the evenings, and there's 90% in Indian people here, will it be too spicy for us?

Look, there was a time when our places hadn't opened up. I remember the first time going to Christine's place and her mum, Rosemary cooking a curry for me and she had put pears in it. I thought, who would put pears in a curry? The curry was Keens curry powder. She wanted to just put her heart on the plate for me. And that was her understanding of it. That was 35 years ago of course. Palates have opened up. The Internet has played a key role in that. And people have really opened up to spices. Spice doesn't have to be hot, spice has to be an experience of aroma, of bouquet in your mouth. You should be able to exploit the spice to enhance the flavour. Whether it's fennel or cumin or coriander. It doesn't have to be spicy. There are several dishes which you can have in my restaurant and you won't be going and sitting on the toilet afterwards. Guaranteed. But if you do want to beat your chest and say, I want to do the hottest curry, that can be organized.

And so is it the goat curry that's super spicy? How many or which spices are in there?

It's a specific chili. Chili is measured in Scovilles: the heat of chili. That's right. So when it comes to the chili that we use, that sits at over a million Scovilles and habanera, is at 355. Normally you go to Coles and you buy the hottest chili, habanera and it's hot. But let's say if you were to go and doBhut Jolokiachili and cook with that, I swear to God you can't hear things afterwards. Your ears start ringing. But people love that. They sign a waiver on it, and they do it. So we give them a grading. We say, okay, you want to do aBhayankar Bakr, on ascale of 1 to 10, how hot do you want it to be? One being as hot as a vindaloo, 10 being full strength. And then if you're really stupid, give me a week's notice. I'll make you number 25. There is no 11 to 12. But yes, that can be done too. But the meat is still very tender. It should just fall off.

I'm not very good with the extreme heat. I like slight bit of warmth.

Do the rogan josh, do the chili garlic. There are several dishes in the menu, which are again giving you the feeling of spice but not boiling your bottom, so to speak. You don't want something which is going to go crazy on you. I can't stomach it. I could then, but at my age, I can't stomach it now. So I stick to my vindaloos. If I really want to have something hot, there has to be a nice glass of sav blanc or a beer with it.

You've had lots of different experiences across hospitality, and you obviously really love it. You're clearly a people person. What would your advice be to young people who were thinking about either becoming chefs or getting into front of the house?

Take the punt. You have one hit at life. If you're not going to do it now and think I'm going to do it in the future, the future is always the future. The present is the future. Work now and take the risk. What's the worst that can happen? You fall? You can always get up and do it again. My daughter was the head patisserie chef at Lune Croissant in Armadale and I somehow persuaded her to come work with Dad. So she's now looking after my Craigieburn store helping me set up a certain system that she has learned at Lune. Bringing in a few systems for improving staff relations. She just recently advised me, dad, why don't we have tampons and pads for women staff working for us? And I'm like, shit, I've been in this industry for so long and I didn't think of it. So small little things. This new generation is teaching me so much; they have it in them that they can go out there and do something and take the challenge, do something creative, and why not?

Desi Dhaba, 134 Flinders Street, Melbourne