When I walk into Hotel Argentina, Dan greets me with a kiss on the cheek, “That’s how we say hello in Argentina,” he says. I love it. After our chat, I am treated to a delicious array of dishes from the new menu, inspired by the food he grew up with in Argentina. He tells the table that what he is bringing out…his mother-in-law Rosa’s pickled eggplant, grilled meats and octopus with house-made chimichurri, baby corndogs, zucchini flowers stuffed with blue swimmer crab, grilled veal tongue with white anchovies…would be par for the course at Sunday lunch in an Argentinian family. He explains that it’s all about lots of the food on the table for everyone to share and that Sunday lunch can last for hours as everyone eats and talks and spends time together. Sitting at the long table upstairs eating delicious food as the sun was setting, it felt lovely to be part of that tradition.
Dan, let’s start at the beginning. Did you always want to be a chef?
I studied industrial design. That was a long time ago. I always loved cooking. My grandpa had a rotisserie, which in Argentina is a place you can buy a lot of cooked meals and my mum is a fantastic cook. I went to high school and studied industrial design, but I always wanted to be into food. While I was studying, I thought I would get a couple of shifts in a local restaurant and that it would be really easy. I went to the restaurant and asked if I could work in the kitchen and they said no. I went back the next week and asked if I could get in and they said no. I told them I could do it for free and they said, yes, no worries, come in. I was there two days a week, then two days became three days and I was studying in high school as well and it was hard doing those two things at the same time.
What were you doing in the kitchen there?
Prep…and just loving it. I did everything from peeling potatoes to cooking…they let me do everything. After I finished high school, my dad wanted me to go to university, but I didn’t want to and thought I would go to cooking school. I had a big chat to my mum, and she said if I went to cooking school, it had to be the best cooking school, otherwise it wouldn’t work. I managed to get into the best cooking school in Argentina which used to have a waiting list to get in and you have to go through a process to even be accepted.
What is it called?
The Bue Trainers. It used to be the only school at the time that gives you a national certificate. All the other ones used to be cooking schools but you didn’t get a certificate from the government, this was the only one and was recognised all around the world. That was the beginning.
Was that classic training?
Yes, classical French training. It’s a swiss school. It was all French techniques.
How long did that take?
Two years. But the way it works in Argentina is that you go once a week to school and then you do another 40 hours minimum in the kitchens.
What were the kitchens like that you worked in initially?
The school was so connected with the major hotels and restaurants in Argentina, that you could pick the top ones. It would be the equivalent here of saying you wanted to work at Attica or Vue de Monde and the school would have a connection and could send one student per year to work there. I worked at Claridges, then I did a stint at Hyatt. At that time, Hyatt was the best hotel in Argentina. It was insane. It was a big hotel and it had a place at the back called the mansion with a restaurant and my dream was to go and work there. I did three months there and then they asked if I would like to stay on as a paid chef, so I stayed there for an extra year and it was good fun.
We had two French chefs as head chefs, with three Michelin stars, so the level was incredible and there was a big brigade.
What was it that you loved about the kitchen?
It’s very hard to describe. I think it’s the knowing of the unknown. You never know what is going to happen. Your day can go in so many directions, you can’t plan your day. Here, you may want to have a plan but it can swing in so many ways. That’s what I love the most; the adrenaline, the excitement of not knowing what can happen and being able to solve problems as they come. That’s what keeps us all entertained in this industry.
I’ve been thinking lately that it must be really hard as a head chef because you have worked really hard to get there and you’ve created the menu and so on and you don’t know what’s going to happen in your day but you have a whole lot of other people looking to you, but it’s your food and you want it delivered at your standard, that must be really stressful and you’d need to get that balance.
The thing is you need to be one of them and you need to work alongside them all the time, you can’t just delegate. The way I work in the kitchen is that I am one of them. I jump onto a section and work that. Of course there are days when you have to run it in different ways but I try to give chanced to my sous chefs to run the kitchen and I jump in and cook so that they have the chance to be able to grow. Once you develop that relationship and they understand what you like, they can come up with ideas and we try it and then everyone can taste it. It’s good to get to the point where everything is ok and I can leave them sometimes and have peace of mind because is everything is running well.
Your day can go in so many directions, you can’t plan your day. Here, you may want to have a plan but it can swing in so many ways. That’s what I love the most; the adrenaline, the excitement of not knowing what can happen and being able to solve problems as they come. That’s what keeps us all entertained in this industry.
Is this your first head chef role?
No. There have been many, many, many.
You were an apprentice at the Hyatt…
That was in 1997.
Are you for real? You look too young.
I’m 41.
No!
That was in 1997. In 2000 I moved to London and worked for Peter Kromberg at the Intercontinental, which was fantastic. I was there for almost a year and a half. Then I worked on cruise lines for a year and then I came here. I was brought here to work at the Sofitel restaurant when it used to have three hats. I worked for Marcus Moore and Andy North. I had three years at Sofitel and then we were going to leave, but there was a project at Crown and took over the head chef at Number 8 from 2003 to 2005. Then I opened Les Boucheries Parisiennes in Toorak with Phillipe Aubron, then I was the head chef at Oyster Little Bourke and we got two hats. Then I moved to the Albert Park Hotel, then Livebait, then I worked with Gary Mehigan. I was the Executive Chef at Fenix for six or seven years. I was at Collins Square as well. Then George (Calombaris) asked me to take over Brunswick, so I took over Brunswick and I left because I wanted to open my own thing, but it is a big risk and it costs a lot of money. Everyone kept saying I should do something with my own culture, then George asked me to take over Williamstown and do my food. We came here and tested the water and everything was good, so here we are now. It’s good fun.
Are you able to apply the techniques you learned through your classical training to Argentinian food?
The problem is that people think that Argentinian food is more like a northern or Southern American food, like Colombian or Brazilian or Peruvian. I’m from Buenos Aires and Buenos Aires is half Italian and half Spanish. The food is Mediterranean. We just change the ingredients. The transition from Greek food to what we are doing now is pretty smooth. The techniques are the same, but different flavours, big flavours.
What are the main flavours?
There is a lot of meat and offal, a lot of coriander and cumin seeds. There is a lot of vinegar and pickles. Buenos Aires is in the plains so we have a lot of meat.
Are you doing offal here?
Yes. We have sweetbread, tongue, black pudding. We want to put some more on but in the beginning we’ll just do that and see how it goes.
How long has Hotel Argentina been open?
A week. It’s been good. Great feedback. The food is very honest and it’s what I like to cook. It’s different when you are cooking something you are really really feel connected to rather than something you know but it’s not in your roots. I grew up with this. So I know what I’m looking for, I know the taste that I want.
How do you go when you have all that knowledge and you have to distil that into a first menu?
First of all, I have been here almost 18 years, so first thing you look at is what people eat. You can put anything on the menu, I can put pig feet on if I want to, but I’m not going to sell it, so as much as I am doing a menu inspired by my childhood and so on and what we love, we are running a business as well, so we need to be logical as to how we apply what we know to what people are eating. There are a couple of risks we are taking putting sweetbreads and tongue on but we know that they are risks that once you try them, we may be able to change you. Some things like pig intestine that we love in Argentina, no one is going to buy that. You need to have been brought up with that and we are conscious about what will sell. That’s how we write the menu. We need to think of the guests. I don’t want to scare anyone. We started writing a lot of things in Spanish and then we thought it was too hard. We would have needed a long glossary and is it worth it? So we tweaked it and made it easy to read so that the people would feel a connection with the dishes.
What’s the ideal experience for diners? Is it to share a few dishes at the table?
That’s the thing. It’s a big menu and you can take it in any direction you want to. You can share the dishes or just have a little bit of fish and salad or you can have 10 different courses. It’s entirely up to the guest how you want to do it and how long you want to spend here. That’s how we eat in Argentina, we keep asking for more things and more things. That is how we designed the menu. I believe you have to give a lot of choices so people might really want to have two things, so they think, oh I’ll have to come back to have that one.
28 Ferguson Street, Williamstown