When I step into Etta on a grey and bitter day, the first thing that strikes me is how delicious it smells in there. The open kitchen is a hive of industry and whatever it is they are preparing, I wish I was staying for dinner. The second thing I notice is how great the music is, and the third, how lovely it always is to talk to a fellow New Zealander. Charlie is softly spoken and I get the impression that he's not someone who likes to talk about himself. That doesn’t stop him from articulating his passion for good food and cooking in a way that made me grateful for the opportunities I have to listen to and share stories of hard-working and thoughtful chefs.
Thank you for stepping out of the kitchen to talk to me, Charlie. I wanted to ask first of all where in New Zealand you’re from.
I’m from Nelson, the top of the South Island.
Oh lovely. I’m from Christchurch. When did you know you wanted to be a chef?
I think it’s always been a natural instinct. I remember baking and stuff, when I was probably five years old. I didn’t go down that career path straight of high school. But in a roundabout way I came back to it.
Did you start cheffing in New Zealand?
I started cooking in New Zealand, I joined the Army and in my last year and a half, I changed to become a chef in the Army and went down that road. But I realised I had a different opinion about offering good food to people and it didn’t involve feeding the masses. So I left and forced myself to get a cooking job, which was just a little commis position at a local restaurant and then made the move across here. That was the path I chose to take and then I forced myself to work in challenging, but good places and it went from there.
I know you were the head chef at Ramblr before here…
I was at Town House and Embla before that. I was sous chef at Embla for two years and then I was everything, senior chef de partie at Town Mouse for two years before that. Ramblr was the first head chef job, which was a good learning curve, but it was never the food I was going to be doing if I was going to do my own stuff. It was a good progression, but definitely not a massive influence in what I’ve done. Definitely my style of cooking has been influenced by Embla and Town Mouse.
I wonder do you think…because Dave (Verheul) is a New Zealander as well…
That we gravitate to one another…?
Well, perhaps gravitate to one another, but also gravitate towards a certain style or is it a certain approach?
I think it’s a work ethic. I think that we naturally click in the sense that there is one common task to accomplish and it doesn’t matter who does it, we’ll just roll up our sleeves and do it. That’s always resonated for me in terms of who I’ve gone to work for, because that’s a mentality that inspires me.
It is interesting, because when I moved here, I just assumed that Australians and New Zealanders were the same people, but there are lots of differences, which maybe have to do with growing up in a smaller place as opposed to a bigger one and with different cultural influences.
Absolutely. I think it is a mentality and I’m not Maori or anything, but it’s that kind of grittiness and togetherness. It’s how I like to inspire my cooks; I’m happy to do the shitty thing that needs to get done to keep the restaurant running because that’s essentially what I’m here to do.
So, as head chef, that would be your style of leadership, to lead alongside?
Definitely alongside. I’ve been around long enough that I’m smart enough not to try and do it all myself. In saying that, you really do have to show a sense of comradeship in that you’ll get in and do the same job, as long as it gets done. If that means someone else has an easier day, then so be it. A lot of that also comes from the military background. That’s the ethos that is instilled from the get-go, that it is one team, as clichéd as that sounds.
I spoke to Steve Hogan, who is also an es-pat, and also ex-Army and it’s interesting, because when I speak to older chefs who have come up through the kitchen hierarchy with shouty head chefs and they have learned discipline by being a bit scared of that…and you are perhaps too young to have experienced that.
I was in the very last of that, in terms of the Army. I was very fortunate in that sense, because the Town Mouse was hard, but it was positive reinforcement.
Well maybe, as hard as military life and rules and so on are, there is that positive side of knowing exactly what is expected and having boundaries and goals must be good.
It’s one of those things, and it’s weird now, but if someone gives me a timing, I can’t not adhere to it. It’s the way a kitchen runs. If you say four minutes, then it’s up in four minutes, that’s how I expect everything to work. Some people haven’t had that rigorous time management drummed into them. If someone is ten minutes late, it’s massive. It’s not a small thing in the scheme of it all.,
As much as I can I’ll touch the fire and I’ll smoke something. Seasoning with salt and fat and smoke for me is something delicious and then from there, I just want to make food that goes hand in hand with minimal intervention organic wine because on one hand I take the time to buy organic products and source something delicious, so vice versa, the wine should reflect that. That’s what I’m trying to do, make stuff that is tasty and accessible and goes well with good wine.
Just to get back to what you said about the food at Ramblr wasn’t what you would do yourself, what are you doing now? What is your food?
That’s a hard one. It is just what this generation is doing…I guess we’re calling it Modern Australian. But what does that really mean? I’m a Kiwi. It’s just cooking with what we have around us and obviously for me, I’ve always gravitated towards smoke as a seasoning to food. That felt like a necessary part of food to me for a long time. Embla taught me that and it’s reiterated here. As much as I can I’ll touch the fire and I’ll smoke something. Seasoning with salt and fat and smoke for me is something delicious and then from there, I just want to make food that goes hand in hand with minimal intervention organic wine because on one hand I take the time to buy organic products and source something delicious, so vice versa, the wine should reflect that. That’s what I’m trying to do, make stuff that is tasty and accessible and goes well with good wine.
Right. Now I know Dave is a big tweezer holder. When I spoke to him, he was also clutching tweezers like you are now. What do the tweezers mean for you?
Like anything, it’s just part of my background for the past four years and I’d rather pick something up, whether it be a piece of meat or something with these than with my fingers or have a spoon in my hand. For me now I can’t start my day without my tweezers, my tea towels and my pens.
That’s your system.
Like everything, it’s a little bit of a tic, I guess.
Well it works for you. When I came here to Etta’s previous iteration under Hayden, he was saying that he wanted to stay away from too much meat and fish, for sustainability reasons. What are your thoughts around that? If you’re from Nelson, then you probably grew up around fish and shellfish. How do you approach fish and meat here?
I’m being smart about what I’m using. Any preconceived ideas of what Etta was have gone. Naturally I like to cook with vegetables, and I like to season with meat. Like I said, it’s easy to source a secondary product and treat it with intelligence and use it to season something that is already really delicious. It’s by natural progression really but the menu is still vegetable-heavy and there’s protein but there won’t be truffle unless they’re really fucking good and I want to do something with them. I’d rather take things that for me are more sustainable from a price point and treat them thoughtfully and try and deal with them with the least manipulation as possible; thoughtful cooking.
When you embark on a dish or menu, where do you start? Are you inspired by what other people are doing, or Instagram or the product itself?
This was an interesting process, doing the full menu relaunch. The starting point there was how would it eat as a whole if I was to do a degustation and then break it up into the menu so that everything evolved into an a la carte menu.
Do you want people to go through entrée, main, dessert?
No. It’s very much a sharing format, but I needed to think through how it would eat consecutively and then go from there. I needed snacks, then smaller dishes for sharing and then it involved int what was good at the time and what was accessible. I definitely drew on past techniques and inspiration from what was around me in Melbourne and Australia in general. I don’t try to say that anything is original, if I like something then I’m going to do it. But in saying that you pay homage to who the idea is. It’s a funny thing; it’s a generational thing again, I think. There are a lot of older chefs wo are protective of their recipes, but in this day and age with social media, you put something up because you want people to see it and be inspired by it and go from there. I think that’s a positive thing for the industry.
Well, there’s nothing new under the sun. When you’re out and about, if you do get to be out and about and eating other people’s food, with your knowledge of flavour, can you still be surprised by flavour?
Absolutely. I don’t know if it’s surprised, but you know if something is tasty. I don’t go to critique anyone, I go to eat and enjoy food. I go with an open mind and what to eat whatever that person thinks is cool and delicious. I think you grow out of…and get tired of overthinking everything you eat. If it’s meant to be a bowl, of pasta, it’s a bowl of pasta, there’s no thought process behind it, except delicious, tasty food.
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