I was lucky enough to be invited to The Westin Melbourne's nod to Wicked, the Musical, a glorious High Tea with a very prominent green focus. High Tea at The Westin is an impressive affair. The team goes all out on theme, creativity and flavour and the Wicked High Tea was no exception. I was keen to talk to Executive Chef, Apoorva Kunte about the approach behind a themed High Tea. I was also keen to talk to him again, because I had such a lovely time talking to him in 2022, and since then, he has been having all sorts of adventures and I wanted to hear more. Before moving to Australia, Apoorva worked in hotels in India and the Middle East, and he has been in kitchens for nearly 20 years. Apoorva is one of those chefs who is constantly striving to do better, to find out more and to share his knowledge with his team, as well as at the Cordon Bleu as a Student Assessor and now in his role on the Marriott APEC Culinary Advisory Board. I had the best time hearing about his latest research trip where he explored the fermentation process of cacao beans, both in terms of flavour and sustainability and he already has plans for the next several projects. You can enjoy the Wicked High Tea from now until mid-April.
Apoorva: Hello. Nice to see you. How was your high tea experience?
Conversation with a Chef: It was amazing. There was a lot of food!
There always is.
It's so impressive when it comes out and you've got all of the gleaming, sweet things.
I hope the green came across.
The green certainly came across and I was a bit worried about the green drink, but it was delicious.
Oh good. We had to play with the Wicked colours, and we used as many natural colours as possible with the pistachio and lime and lemon.
The green cake was very bright green. What was that?
That has pandan leaf. Then we used a lime puree. But we blanch the lime peel and then make it into a puree. But we had to add a bit of colouring to it just to make it that fluorescent.
It's very fluorescent, isn't it?
It's got a bit of blue to go into it to give it that fluorescent green.
It's so impressive. And so intricate too that little cakes like really beautiful. With the savoury offer, your executive sous chef I think came out and had a chat and told us what was in all of the savoury things. And then someone else told us about the sweet things. We were very well looked after.
That's what we want to achieve.
There were lots of people in here as well and there was a really cute birthday party of little girls.
We have a lot of them coming and booking with us or hosting events upstairs as well in our event spaces. Especially birthdays or baby showers.
I feel like I've been here quite a few times now. It's like a home away from home. I saw you on Cup Day for the Champagne brunch. And then I was in the other day, but I haven't actually spoken to you for the podcast since 2022.
Yes, when I saw you on Cup Day, I had just come back from my trip to Africa.
That's right on the chocolate adventure.
I would love for you to come down to the restaurant and try it.
I would love that. I don't even know what it looks like, where is it?
Upstairs. That's the problem. Not many of our guests know that there is a full-fledged restaurant that's serving fantastic food.
How many does it seat?
It can seat 80 and we have a private space that can seat 30, so 120. We are open on Wednesday to Saturday.
Is it mainly used by hotel guests then?
Hotel guests and a lot of pre-theatre diners as well; quick dining and the price is pretty good for all the restaurants around here.
Great. Just to get back to the High Tea, because I find it really intriguing. Do you like the challenge of being given something like: make a high tea to suit Wicked? Or is it hard?
No, I absolutely love these challenges. It gives us a lot of things to think about and then flavour and combinations to pair. With Wicked in particular, while I have not personally seen the show that's playing next door, I've seen clips of it on YouTube and whatever I could gather. There is a bit of camaraderie between the two main leads, and while they are completely opposite in their personas, they do share the same heart and soul of sorts. So that's what we wanted to bring in with the ingredients that we had a bit of mix to it. They stand on their own two feet in terms of flavour profiles, but when you pair them together, they do go well with each other as well. But they have their own identities.
It's probably easier with sweets is it, than with savoury?
It's much easier with sweets than savoury. My idea was to bring the term wicked literally to life by giving it a bit of punch in terms of flavour profiles. Like the salmon, the hot smokiness of the salmon comes in and it's got the sunrise lime going through it. The chicken has a bit of jalapeno and sun-dried tomato going through it. So it's got spiciness to it. With the cauliflower tart, you would assume a tart or a quiche to have egg and cauliflower, but we pickle the cauliflower and put that on top with the walnut crumb to add that flavour.
I particularly loved the little slider, the green one. It was so delicious, despite the colour, or as well as well as the colour. It was really a perfect bun, but also green.
We don't produce our own bread in the hotel, so I had to source that bun through a supplier. That green's definitely not a natural green. They add matcha powder to it as a flavour. But what matcha usually takes away from the moisture of the bread. So we asked them to enhance the butter and the milk component into it and make it much softer. And then we steam it ourselves here.
Delicious. And the scones of course are always a feature of high tea. There was a regular scone and then a really special one as well.
It was an apricot and white chocolate scone on there. Again, a combination that we thought goes really well together. But because the top tier of the high tea has so many flavours going into it, we wanted to keep the scones very subtle and either you have it at the start of your meal or prefer it at the end of your tea, depending on how you go, it does not really kill your palate or overpower your palate because there's a lot of flavour packed products there.
Everyone was very envious of me when I put the photos up. When I came in on Cup Day, there was a nautical theme as well.
So there's often themes. It gives the team a lot to brainstorm on. They are not all my menus. It's a team effort at the end of the day. And that's what I thrive on. If I am able to develop a couple of my chefs, I give them a copy of the to take home and say, Hey, that's a product that I came up with. I remember my first day as a trainee and the moment one of my ideas was implemented on a menu, I was so happy I still have that menu. I've added some part of me to this establishment and they value me and that's what I want to bring to the team that I work with. It's all a collective team of effort that we come along with. We brainstorm these flavours and do multiple tastings before we say, this is good to go.
How many of you are involved in that initial stage?
The entire team of six or seven chefs. I've got two pastry chefs and then four cooks. Yeah. We all brainstorm, come up with our ideas, put it down together, then we concise it, do some tastings of what we like and then eventually it's just me and the pastry chef and we give it out to the team as a blind tasting and see who rates what higher. We have the team up front who are serving our guests involved as well, because ultimately, they should be confident of the product that we are offering.
I just saw someone wearing a Formula One jacket and I was imagining what a Formula One High Tea might look like.
We have Wicked going on. That's why we did not venture into the Formula One. But I've got an Easter High Tea coming up. And I hope to bring a version of High Tea into the restaurant upstairs. And then at Diwali, an Indian High Tea. Because I haven't seen one anywhere else in the city. That's still in the books.
That'll be amazing.
A month long of Indian High Tea.
I imagine that it could be quite colourful as well.
And so many different flavours that our guests might not have experienced before. There's so much regional India has to offer than the popular sweets that you would find in a sweet shop or a restaurant as well.
I wanted to go to the region and see if there is something happening for those farmers or if they are actually getting the money that we are investing well. That was the number one angle of it. And number two was obviously my love for chocolate. I’ve always worked with chocolate, and consumed chocolate in different ways, but the entire process of it from the bean where it’s being crushed to make the cocoa mass out of it, I wanted to learn that process. ~ Apoorva Kunte, The Westin Melbourne
Obviously, you really like it here because you're still here. I really love watching on Instagram all of the adventures that you're having to keep things alive and interesting. You're obviously really into research and finding out more. I was particularly intrigued as I said to you about your trip to Africa for the cacao. What prompted that?
I think two things prompted it. One was sustainability. I love giving back, right from my childhood days I have been associated with charities. We would go from door to door asking for money and donations for a charity in India, to now where I do runs and walks and support Cancer Council or the Targets Foundation. The sustainability angle of it was really something that I wanted to learn about. There are a lot of the bigger brands of chocolates that talk about sustainability but what is happening on the ground level is what I wanted to see. For example, all the chocolate I use is fair trade. Or I'm able to pretty much link it to the farmer or the region that it has come from. But I wanted to go to the region and see if there is something happening for those farmers or if they are actually getting the money that we are investing well. That was the number one angle of it. And number two was obviously my love for chocolate. I've always worked with chocolate, and consumed chocolate in different ways, but the entire process of it from the bean where it's being crushed to make the cocoa mass out of it, I wanted to learn that process and I was very surprised, pleasantly surprised to see I had seven or eight chocolatiers with me who did not know the process at all. Theyve worked with chocolate. They know everything else from the processed product to the end of it, but they had no idea of how much work goes into the processing of it. To be able to reach that stage where the flavours of the fermentation technique change the entire flavour of the chocolate.
Where did you go?
To the Ivory Coast.
Wow. Was that easy to organise? Is that a dangerous place?
No, it was not a dangerous place. Ivory Coast is the largest producer of cocoa in the world. We reached out to some of our chocolate suppliers to see if we could go and visit. And then they helped organise trips to plantations and all of that. And it was really nice to see that they are also supporting the community and you could see water tanks being developed or schools being developed on the ground. And these cocoa farmers are actually benefiting from a lot of the things that we do. There are multiple brands available in the market and I'm not sure what each of them do, but I was happy to see that there is groundwork happening as well and they are benefiting from it.
You mentioned the process. How long is the process from the bean through to what you would use in the kitchen?
From harvesting the bean to the fermentation of the bean, it's a 10-day process. Once the bean is fermented, then it's the drying. That depends on the climate and if you do a natural sun drying or you are putting it in an oven and drying it.
So it's fermented before it's dried?
It is and that's where the flavour of the bean changes completely.
I see. How do they ferment it?
The same way wine is aged in old casks. They've got these wooden crates that already have the bacteria in it and then the beans go in it. They're turned around three times in a matter of three to four days. They keep regulating that to put oxygen into the fermentation process. Because after the first day, the sugar is completely gone from the cocoa. It's all converted to alcohol and then ultimately the beans are dried, taken to the factories. I think that process takes another 10 days or so, depending on the time that it requires to reach the factory.
It's a lot of hard work. Just harvesting one kilo of beans, you had to break through seven kilos or eight kilos of cocoa pods, so it's really the content or the yield is very low. And at the end of it, once those are harvested and fermented, then it reduces further.
How many beans per plant?
They are mainly pods. For every pod, they're seasonal in nature, so they alternate. Some of the species give fruit alternate years. And some of them are different because they're now hybrid as well, where they are mining two species to make one. It depends on the tree and the age of the tree. It varies.
Has it changed the way you work with chocolate?
It has. I think I'm a lot more careful in making sure that there's no wastage of the product. A lot more careful. Making sure that every part, if there is after use, like for glazing and use of cakes, are we able to recycle that product somewhere else or are we able to use it even if it's going into a staff canteen, but does not land in the bin. That's definitely been one of my things to look at. But also, I've started looking at chocolate from a flavour perspective. Earlier it was just dark, milk and white. Now there are different flavours in the dark and the amount of cocoa obviously impacts that flavour. However, the way each producer of chocolate or cocoa ferments the product also changes the flavour. A 70% dark chocolate, for example, from Callebaut, 70% from Valrhona, 70% from Belcolade, same cocoa content in them. But they will all taste different because of the fermentation techniques that they have used. And the bacteria that thrive in those tanks. More so they have introduced the sourdough bread bacteria now into chocolate as well. So that changes a lot of other flavour profiles.
What would that taste like?
I think very umami rich. A lot of umami flavours coming through. I tasted 12 different varieties of chocolate during the trip at different stages and then the amount of fermentation as well. That varies.
Isn't it fascinating?
It is a whole world and I think I've just touched the tip of it. There's so much knowledge that you can gain.
Right. What's next? What's the next adventure?
I hope to do a trip to Italy or Japan and learn more. Italy is to understand the cheese making process and again, the fermentation techniques or the aging techniques that the country uses. And Japan is about the finesse or the care that the Japanese take in, for example, a fruit that they produce on the tree and they wrap it, and make sure that the quality that they want you to have is exactly the same as when it's harvested. All of those things are what I want to learn, or the why of it.
When you're going on the trip and even when you're having the questions, how do you record some of these ideas and the things that you learn? Do you just remember them or do you write things down? Do you have photos?
I do a lot of pictures. I write things down on my notes on the phone, and then I flick through them every time the topic does come up. I always have a separate notepad which is broken down into seasons. And say, Im tasting chocolate or I heard someone say, oh listen, that pairing goes really well, however, that fruit only comes in a particular season, then I write it down. It's not reinventing the wheel. I'm sure a flavour combination that I am doing, somebody else somewhere in the world has done it or someone who's grown up with it. But we just do not have the knowledge because there's so much to learn. Then I look back on those ideas and say, Hey, let's now use our own knowledge and cooking techniques and finesse that list. So yes, I have a lot of notes. I tell my chefs, we've got a working document. It's called a master menu document. We keep anything that we think of, any idea that pops up when we are on our days off, or when we visit a winery or whatever it is, we just pop in a line and then that becomes our working document. Every time we need to do a menu change, we look through these and say, okay, is there something that pops up and that you still find interesting to invest some time in and recreate. And we do that.
I think it's a great way of doing it. I was telling someone the other day, when you start writing, say you want to get into writing and write things down every day that you observe. The more often you do that, the more you observe and the more interesting things you see that prompt ideas. The more you observe, the more you are able to observe. How great! Well obviously The Westin is in really great hands because you've got so many ideas.
I think it's me and the team. I'm nothing without the team that I work with, so hats off to them.
The Westin Melbourne, 205 Collins Street, Melbourne