Chatting to Christy Tania at her artisanal ice cream store, , in Windsor was up there as the most stimulating 16 minutes I have ever spent. Sparking with ideas and with a yes-to-everything attitude, Christy is inspiring, not only for her incredible way with desserts, but also for her thoughtful articulation of women in industry and a surprising lesson in love and relationships. Christy has worked in top international kitchens and has gone from strength to strength since she moved to Melbourne. You might recognise her from MasterChef, but read on to discover so much more.
Hi Christy, I’ve been reading about you and I absolutely think they should make a film about you. It has been a pretty exciting journey so far for you.
A lot of people tell me I should write a book. I want to but I don’t really have the time. Sometimes I’m out the back here, sometimes I’m out the front, I have bills to pay and emails to answer and so much to do. A book is like having a child, so I would rather wait until I have the time than produce something that’s not really good.
I saw that you’ve always loved creating desserts and cakes and you had that as a side business when you were still working for IBM.
I was basically doing wedding and birthday cakes and creating edible things. When did you get into it? Was that something you did from when you were little?
Yes. I always baked with my mum. My mum is very good at making things. She is very good at sponge cakes and simple things like that but she is good with sprinkles and making it look really good. I liked the way she used colours. I’m the kind of person who sees something or sees someone doing something and I think, oh maybe I can do that too. And if it’s not good, I’ll keep trying until I get it right.
Making the break and changing career is a brave thing to do. You left a really great job.
Yes I was branch manager at IBM in Singapore. Singapore is the headquarters of IBM, so it was a great job.
But you must have increasingly felt the pull to try something else?
A lot of people say it was a brave decision. I don’t think it’s a brave decision.
A lot of people say they wish they could do the same thing as I did. I ask, why not? I had been in the industry for four years and I was in a position where I had acquired a skill. I wanted to try something new and I thought, if it doesn’t work, I can always go back to working in management; I have the skill already and so a safety net to fall back on. Not in terms of money, but in terms of the skill I have. When people say they’ve been in their jobs for four or five years but don’t have the courage to try something else, I would ask them why. If it’s not for them, then they can always go back. I don’t think it’s a brave move. It’s the same feeling you have when you think about colouring your hair blue, for example. If you don’t like it, the hair will grow back. It might take some time but the hair will grow back. That’s how I see it.
[laughs] That’s very true. Did you go straight to France to start training as a chef?
Yes.
Did you speak any French?
No. I didn’t have to because the school was in English. But then at work you have to speak French and I went for interviews against French people for my spots and I basically learned French in those hard core kitchens being yelled at and having pots and pans thrown at me. You learn very quickly. At that time I knew I had to prove myself and work twice as hard and concentrate twice as hard as other people if I wanted to survive.
Do you think, apart from the speaking French aspect that you had to try harder because you’re a woman?
In general, not just in this industry, it’s hard for women. When I started, even my own parents said that they didn’t want me to work hard, and do a physical job, they wanted me to be pretty and smart and have an amazing career and a family. Then when you are a commis chef and you’re a female, people don’t see you as competition or a threat. Then you climb up and all of a sudden people see you as a threat. I don’t know why.
When I became a head chef, a female journalist came to interview me and asked me how it felt to be a female head chef, to which I answered what is the difference between a head chef and a female head chef? But then as I became more successful, I head a lot of gossip that I was successful because of my look, because I’m a female and I’m Asian, or I’m successful because I slept with some of the most influential people in the industry. And I thought, why are there not the same comments if you’re a guy? Then they came out with that I was a bitch and again, if a guy says the same thing, he is assertive and knows what he is doing, but if it’s a female, she’s a bitch. Now that I have opened my own shop, which was really hard to do, a lot of people didn’t believe I opened it on my own, with no backers, no mummy and daddy helping me. Seriously.
The reason I started doing conversation with a chef was because of the amazing conversations I had with my really great friend in Christchurch who was a head chef and she said that, pretty much as a woman in the kitchen, you have to earn respect, but a male chef has to do something pretty drastic to lose respect. I hate that. And I agree with your original question of why should there be a difference between a head chef and a female head chef. Why is there a separate award for Best Female Chef, rather than just awarding the best chef who might be a woman that year.
I agree but on the other hand, we still need the Best Female Chef Award. In the Oscars where you have best Actress and Best Actor, it’s the same thing and in that industry it seems as though you have to sell your body to get somewhere, you heard what happened with Harvey Weinstein. But in this industry, having the Best Female Chef Award gives hope to women that they might be able to won something. If we just had Best Chef, it would never happen.
That’s disappointing.
It’s the same for every industry. For us, in our industry, people think our love life must be horrible, that we can’t have kids, but no, not really. I’ve been with the same partner for six years. That’s another reason I think there should be a film about you because your meeting with Luke sounds wonderful. It is. He is the guy you just saw now giving me the keys. He works for me and I realise that in a stable relationship, whatever industry you are in, if you are genuinely happy for one another, so for example, if he thinks, I am here to support her, so that she can become even bigger and I am happy for her, there is nothing less masculine about that.
That’s right.
I’m lucky that I have that person, but a lot of us don’t. The problem is that female chefs don’t get enough support from those around them. When I first appeared on MasterChef, people assumed I was a lesbian. Because of my short hair and because “most females in this industry are lesbian.” Then I thought to myself, perhaps that’s because females know how to support females. Maybe that’s why a lot of the prominent ones are lesbian because they have been well supported by other women. Men don’t know how to support women.
But that’s so depressing.
Females know how to be happy for females and women know how to be happy for their men. I have a man who is amazing, and he is also hot, but there are not a lot of men who know how to be happy for their female partner. That’s just the way I see it.
I’m so lucky that I have a stubborn mentality that means that if I don’t nail it, I keep trying until I do.
Just going back to MasterChef, how did that come about?
They asked me when I was head chef at Om Nom and had just opened. Let’s be honest, who wouldn’t go on there if they were asked? It was February 2014 and I came to Australia in July 2012 so it was a chance to be someone in this industry so I thought, why not. Then I thought, it’s just my 15 minutes of fame. I went along and said whatever I wanted to say and had fun and the judges asked where the hell they’d found me because I was fun and I could definitely come back. So now every year they ask me, do you think you can do this and I always say yes first and then worry about it later. It’s a bad habit. Like, can you make a dessert that floats? Or can you make a dessert hung by a balloon and can you make the balloon edible? I just say I’ll try and then work it out.
That’s really mixing science and food.
That’s life, though. I’m mixing business with pleasure. I use all of my brain here that I was using at IBM.
I guess there is the problem-solving aspect to both roles. Did you learn those kinds of techniques in France?
They teach you the base techniques but you have to practise and practise and practise. It’s like when your parents show you how to ride a bike and then you have to put in the hours to get good at it. It’s the same in cooking. You have to practise a lot. For me, I’m so lucky that I have a stubborn mentality that means that if I don’t nail it, I keep trying until I do.
Where are these ideas coming from and how do you work out the steps you need to make your ideas happen?
I just have the ideas. Sometimes I look at other people’s work and am inspired or I look at something else and think about using different material for different things. For example, I learned about chocolate work and then I learned how to make the chocolate works that I want to do, so bending them this way or that way. Now I am collaborating with a Melbourne fashion designer for Taste of Melbourne’s 10th anniversary. She is an upcoming designer and has a lot of wonderful prints and I look at her prints and tell her that I can make it look 3D and edible. Once you know the techniques you can pretty much make everything edible. I can get expression from anything. As long as you can get the technique right, you can get the sugar or chocolate or ice cream or mousse to work. Work the way you want to work and the sky is the limit.
You’re making traditional ice cream with crème anglaise, aren't you?
Basically I am making ice cream the way it is supposed to be done, but making it into something different. That’s why I call it re-inventing your way of eating ice cream.
It looks so delicious and I love the names. What’s in the Charlie Bucket?
It’s banana ice cream with banana bread, butterscotch and peanut butter.
Wow.
Put it this way, I don’t make things I don’t like to eat. You ask chefs whether they eat their own food and sometimes they say that after they have cooked a lot of it, so if they have cooked a lot of savoury, they want to eat sweet or if they’ve cooked a lot of sweet, they want to eat savoury. But no, we eat a lot here. You saw me when you came in, tasting the ice cream. A lot of the staff who work here love the ice cream and they told me that I have ruined ice cream for them. They can’t buy it from the supermarket any more; it just doesn’t taste right.
Shop 2, 1a Peel Street, Windsor