Chris Wong

Conversation with a chef: Hi Chris, lovely to meet you, and congratulations on being in the Good Food's top 20 cafes.

Chris Wong: I don't think we really expected it.

What a great testament to what you're doing.How long have you been open?

About 3 months now. Not too long.

Bay Street is an interesting street and I feel like it's picking up now, so I think it's going to get a lot better. This is a lovely space upstairs with the broad bean dip by Annie Smithers work there. Annie Smithers is one of my favourite chefs. She's always really generous with what she shares in her stories and so on.

We actually have a good relationship with Annie because my wife, Christine actually grew up in Daylesford. And Steph, my sister-in-law, who also runs front of house, she worked for Annie as well.

I've read a little bit of your story, and there are so many things to talk about.

It's a bit all over the place.

Let's start with the food that you're doing here, which is Nordic. Does that come from your experience?

It kind of does. The funny thing is, a lot of people come in and they ask who's the chef? I try to stay out the back because everybody's expecting someone with blonde hair and blue eyes but it's actually from my experience, because I used to actually play professional hockey and the first time I went over to Finland was in 2009. I had a really good friend here and we grew up at the ice rink together, but he was moving back to Finland. And he said, why don't you come along and just play a season and then see how you go? So that continued until 2018, just before Covid. Every year, I would just finish school and do any exams earlier and then I basically didn't have a summer for about 10 years. I would go from here straight to Finland for the first 8 years and then come back a day before school started and do that on repeat. It was such a big part of my life, and I guess I missed that kind of food and that whole experience there. Winter's so different over there. Christmas is such a totally different thing over there, not like here. The comfort food was probably what I missed, and I really wanted to share that with Christine and my family, and her family as well, but I also thought for everybody else as well. It's not that easy to find here.

Where did the chef part of it come in?

It's weird because I actually always wanted to be in the kitchen. I grew up in Hong Kong because that's where my family is from. Food is just massive over there. You don't realise it, but as soon as you step out into the street, it's everywhere. My family especially my dad's side are really great cooks. They're not trained or anything, but it's just what they grew up with. I wanted to do that when I finished school or even before that, but it was kind of hard because I had a typical Asian upbringing. I was doing my best in school and then at that same time, I used to play the cello as well. So, cooking didn't really make sense at that time because I was playing hockey at a pretty high level, training every night on the weekends, we were flying interstate to play games, and it just didn't really fit in. I'm actually a trained industrial designer as well. Christine and I actually met at Monash doing industrial design. I didnt have the opportunity to go into the kitchen until Covid hit. Like I said, because I've always been so involved in everything in my life, that suddenly stopped. I couldn't play hockey at all and that was actually one of the last sports that restarted because it was indoors, full contact as well. That stopped for two years. It was hard because I had just finished playing professionally in Sweden. It was my first proper contract there. Then we couldn't do anything when I came back, my design work either. They cut everybody's hours, and I thought, if I'm just going to be sitting at home doing nothing, then I might as well go and do something else. So, it worked out well. I helped Christine's dad do some work. He does epoxy flooring for kitchens. The first job we went to work with him, I was doing some floors for Johnny Di Francesco's new factory. When he came and checked the floors I asked if I could come in and learn without pay. The first couple of weeks I was still working a couple of days of my usual work. Then I went in maybe three days for the first two weeks. I really loved it, and I said, I want to come in more if you will have me. They did want me because they were really short on staff, so it was perfect for them.

So then I was doing my design job 6am until 2pm Monday to Friday and afterwords Id go to Brunswick and work until night. I did that pretty much every day, and then I worked on the weekends as well. I thought it was better doing something than just sitting at home. I was always used to working then going to training as well all weekend, flying interstate to play games. It was no different.

You had that desire to be in the kitchen. Once you got there, did it meet your expectations?

Yes. I think it was good because a lot of people would say, just wait till you get in the kitchen and you might not like it. I thought, the only way to see what it's like is just to go in. I think having played hockey for such a long time in my life, the discipline is similar and working in food, especially, back of house, it's one of the professions where if you work really hard, you can really climb up the ranks. I guess that's quite similar to playing sport. I would never say I was talented or anything. But I thought, if I work hard, harder than the person next to me, then maybe I can get ahead of them and I guess that really resonated with me in the kitchen.

What were you doing when you first started at Gradi?

The first few weeks, I was chopping vegetables or helping out the dishwasher, shucking oysters, or whatever. All those jobs that nobody really wants to do. And then because we were so short on staff, it was basically, can you come and do this? At that time as well, they were just starting to do the vacuum sealed pizza bases, and they didn't have the factory yet. They were still you don't need to pay me. I'll come earlier in the morning and I'll help you do that because I just wanted to learn. I was learning everything. And then probably a couple months later, I was pushed into the pizza section and I was doing that. I was at Gradi for maybe two or three years. I got more responsibility and eventually they put me in charge on Friday nights.

How was the heat? How were the burns?

I've got a lot of burns, and it was hot in summer. The aircon never worked when you needed it to work. I was in front of two 400-degree ovens in Brunswick. They've got the open window behind you, so everybody can see you just sweating in front of the ovens.

At what point did you feel ready to take it out on your own with Porcupine?

At some point, maybe the two year mark, it was a little bit repetitive for me and I thought, maybe we can do something ourselves. I really wanted to bring Christine on board as well. The end goal was always to open something ourselves like this, but it's quite a lot of capital we need to invest. We decided to try something small first and we set up the food truck, and then we thought it had to be food people liked and were familiar with and that I had experience with? I thought, if I've been doing pizzas for quite a while, I could just transfer that to a food truck. The plan was to just do it on the weekends to see how it goes and we would keep our jobs.

So the whole time you were at Gradi, you still had your job?

I think there was about a year that I was setting up the food truck, still at the design job and at Gradi as well, just trying to balance everything.

What happens when you've learned pizza at Gradi, but then you set up your own pizza thing. Are there certain rules around which recipes you can take or use or whatever?

I talked to my mentors before I started, and they actually said, just do it. There's nothing stopping you or anything. I actually didn't learn any of the dough making at Gradi because they actually don't do it on-site. They do it at their factory, which is probably better for them because they have so many locations. I spent a lot of time making my own dough recipe while I was at Gradi, learning from my mentors outside of the shop and then it was testing, and I think I did over 30 recipes just to get it right. I think for pizza, the dough is the most important thing. And then the rest was easy, just getting really good ingredients for the toppings.

In a food truck, what sort of pizza oven do you have?

Our design background came in handy. There are so many things that our design background helps with. At the start, we were looking for a second-hand truck, but we just couldn't find anything that we wanted because we actually wanted some fryers in there as well to do pizza fritto. That is where we fold the dough and then we fry them because we wanted something a little bit different as well. We thought me might as well design our own truck. We ended up going for wood fire oven. At that time we were starting, the insurance companies wouldnt sign off on a gas oven, which is crazy because you would think a wood fired oven would be a higher premium on insurance. The oven was actually hard to find because a lot of the wood fire ones are quite heavy and they would have been too heavy for the truck that we were designing. Eventually we found one that was the right weight and everything, and then we designed the truck around that. But it's good because people have this notion in their head that a wood fire pizza oven is the best even though if you talk to any pizza chef, it doesn't really make too much of a difference, actually.

Is that still going?

We sold our food truck. That was the other thing with the food truck. The first few years, we did everything we could; events, festivals, festivals, catering. And then we realised it was quite a big risk, especially with the weather. Even this year, every Saturday or Sunday, it's been the worst weather. We were catering weddings on the weekend and setting up in the rain. After the first year, we stopped doing festivals because we just didn't know if people would show up, but the organisers would still charge you crazy amounts, hundreds of dollars just to be there. Now we just do private catering. We realised that a lot of the weddings or the private catering were in houses and they didnt care too much about seeing the truck or not, and we thought instead of figuring out how to store the truck, run all the equipment on it, we downsized to just a little marquee setup.

When did the idea for Lilijana come up?

We always wanted to open a shop. We knew it was quite a big risk to do it, but we knew if we didnt give it a shot, we would never know. We don't have kids yet and we built up a little bit of capital with Porcupine, but it was hard to express our creativity. I would do a few special flavours or topping combinations for pizzas ideas for canapes. But you end up making all margaritas or pepperoni pizza. I couldn't really stretch my creativity and it was hard to maintain relationships with customers because you do an event and the relationship stops there. A lot of people were asking if we had a shop where they could come and eat our food.

That's an interesting point, that other aspect of hospitality. It's great to feed people, but having that exchange with people is important.

Christine and Steph, my sister-in-law, they run the front of the house here, they love serving people and have them come back.We started looking in October last year. The original idea was we wanted to move back to the country to where Christine was from, Daylesford but it's already hard in Melbourne now and it probably would have been even harder doing something in the country, especially if you don't have a name or anything. We looked around and found this spot in Port Melbourne.

You were mentioning before about how you went through a lot of iterations of the dough for the pizza, but also the bread here. You had some ideas of things that you experienced in Finland and Denmark, but how do you then go about deciding on what you were going to serve?

We talked about that for quite a while. I thought about all my experiences in Scandinavia and in Hong Kong as well. In Finland and in Sweden and when I was in Denmark, its not very popular to have their traditional food outside, all their traditional food was cooked in homes. There wasnt anything remotely similar to that back home. I used to bring home loads of rye bread from Finland. I checked with customs. The first time I wasa bit worried. But it was packaged and it was fine.My friend's mum taught me how to smoke and cure the salmon, and we were doing that when it was negative 20 in the little smokehouse outside. Hid grandmothers house was just heated by the wood fire oven, and it's an integral part of it. She showed me how they baked the rye bread and how they use the residual heat left in the oven for the next few days to bake other things. I thought that was just so interesting, and I guess I'm somebody who really likes to learn. Foraging over there is big. I learned how to forage here from a friend here. She takes me out foraging to look for mushrooms and everything. I have been building up knowledge, especially the preserving and pickling. It's such a big thing over there because realistically, back in the day, they would only have maybe three months to grow vegetables. And the rest of the year, the sun doesn't come out or comes out for two hours. They have ingrained in them of how to pickle and preserve things. All those things throughout the 10 years I was there, you don't notice it, but you just build this knowledge. I always had an interest in food, so I wanted to learn how to do it. I wanted to bring that here when we opened Lilijana. It's called Lilijana because it's named after Christines grandmother who passed away in September last year. Our story here is so multicultural. Christine is Italian, but Nonna was actually Slovenian. There were things that she used to cook us as well that you just can't find anywhere else. I think it was this idea of, if we wanted to do something that means something to all of us? Thats why it's a it's a little bit Nordic and also a little bit continental European as well.

What are the items on the menu that are the most popular?

The Sea Plate really shows everything that we do here. Our salmon is cured in house. I see some people just getting in smoked salmon, but for me, because I don't have that hospitality experience as other chefs do for years, I try to do it the harder way. I bring in a full salmon, so that every day I practice. I hone my skills of filleting the salmon. I cure it the traditional way that they showed me in Denmark. We also have a ricotta spread. I make the ricotta here as well myself because that way I can control the consistency. Sometimes you get ricotta from somewhere else and it's too wet. The sourdough is baked here as well. That way I can control the quality of everything. The last thing on there is the pickles.That's one of the dishes I'm most proud of, and I think people can really see that we put a lot of effort into that. We always get good comments about our ciabatta bread as well. But then we tried to do things that might not be as familiar to people. I think once people try the food, they're happy to come back.

Obviously, you do love it, because you want to share that with other people in your classes as well. Do you actually sleep?

Maybe a nap here and then. The classes were Christine's idea. None of this would be possible without her. She basically runs the business. I'm just the one cooking, really.

It was a way to activate the space upstairs. She put all the prints up here and she's still really involved in designing or branding and running everything. It was a way to share the knowledge, and we have people, commenting, oh the sourdough is so good, what do you do? Its no secret, I'll teach you. So I run a sourdough class or pickles. They are so different to normal pickles, I do them they way they do it in Scandinavia. I just think it's good to share the knowledge and give back to the people who were so open to sharing the knowledge with me as well.

And as a newcomer to the to the industry, Melbourne can be a hard town, but you've already had great accolades, which is excellent. Do you follow the reviews? Do you do you read comments, and how do you deal with it?

I think, especially like now. I read Ben Shewry's book. I can definitely see where that's coming from. But I think for us, getting reviewed and being mentioned in places like Good Food and Broadsheet is quite a massive help. We are very lucky, because sometimes I can imagine if they didn't come in and we didn't get some of this media. It's already not easy right now. It would have been even harder. But I take it with a grain of salt. I think the most important review is, are the customers happy when they're leaving? Are they coming back? But when you don't have a name, it helps to spread the word a bit. If it helps people find us, then it's our job to make sure that the service and the food that we put out is good, and that's up to us to do that.

As well as all the pickling and fermenting and curing and smoking and making sourdough, and teaching classes, I get the impression that you enjoy continuing to learn. Where do you go for inspiration?

I go to classes myself as much as I can. I have a list of goals every year, and I try to attend at least three or four classes because I know I do lack knowledge. I have friends that I always ask. So with the pickling and preserving, if I have any questions, I ask Kyle Nicol from Hazel. He's really good. He helps me quite a bit with things and also, he's great at helping me figure out how to keep my kitchen sustainable as well. Everything I make, I try to use all parts of it. I fillet the salmon, but I keep all the heads and the bones, and I use it to make stock or after I make the ricotta, I use the whey to brine the chicken for our chicken sandwiches. I tried to figure out ways of how to keep our food waste down, which is great because I think at the start, we used to schedule our collection for a couple of times a fortnight, but now I think it's over a month because we're just not filling the bins enough. It's good for us too. It saves us money. Last year, I flew up to Sydney. Josh Niland was running a class, and I went to that as well. I've been to some of Annie Smithers' classes too. If there's something that I'm interested in and I think it's worthwhile going, I'll do that. Nowadays, there's so much information online or in books as well, and it's just a matter of putting it to practice and trying it, and if it doesn't work, just try again. I guess that builds my experience as well.

Lilijana Eatery, 169 Bay Street, Port Melbourne