Dougie Thompson

I reckon Dougie Thompson is the nicest guy in hospitality. He has been in the game for 15 years, working his way up from kitchen hand to head chef in a few venues around Melbourne before he and his wife went on a two-year adventure around the world in search of street food. When he got back, the country was on fire and not long after, we were in lockdown. To keep himself busy and to help others, Dougie went into true hospitality mode, joining the Alex Makes Meals crew up at The Hardware Club, making meals for frontline health workers, then doing online cooking entertainment with his friend and Conversation with a chef alumni, Sam Pinzone, called Bad Chef, Worse Chef. He is currently run off his feet with his creation, Dinner At Dougies House, which started when he posted photos of what he was cooking and locals asked him to cook it for them. That has now turned into a five night a week venture where he gives his profit to various charities and where he very happily gets to come up with a different menu very night. Talking to Dougie made me so happy and I absolutely think you should hop on his Instagram @dddougiez and Facebook Dinner at Dougies House for vibrant photos and Dougies soulfilling commentary. Dougie Johnson is what Melbourne in lockdown needs. Thanks, Dougie. Photography credit @danny_parreno

Hey, Dougie, thanks for getting back to me and for your time because from what I can tell you are super busy at the moment.

It is pretty busy, yes.

I noticed that youve been doing so many things in lockdown. Even right at the start in the first lockdown, you were helping out at The Hardware Club with Alex Makes Meals, cooking for the frontline health workers.

I met so many great people there, it was such a great experience. Especially in that first lockdown. It was a bit disconcerting, as a chef, when youve busted your guts. I started off washing dishes 15 or 18 years ago at a local caf and I worked extremely hard to get to the point where I was working with some of the top chefs around and as soon as I got to that point, when my career seemed to be going really nicely and all of a sudden, the rug was pulled out from under and it was a really stressful time for me, so I was going down and hanging out with the guys down there and doing a bit of cooking and learning some things from those guys; it was a really positive experience.

They are lovely people down there; I had a chat to Nicola Dusi and he is so lovely.

Hes a beautiful man, isnt he?

Absolutely. So lets just go back to the start before we get to what youre doing now, maybe, because it always fascinates me how people get into it. Did you think you were going to be a chef and you started washing dishes, or you happened to be washing dishes and that got you interested.

To be perfectly candid, I had a bit of a drug problem when I was younger and I ended up in a position where I wasnt particularly employable and basically the only job I could get at that point when I wanted to try and sort my life out, because I had a little daughter and I really wanted to get my shit sorted and the only job I could get was washing dishes, basically. I started washing dishes at a Mexican restaurant and then one day a chef didnt show up for work and the boss put me on the cook line and I started from there and just kept on pushing. I realised fairly early on in the piece that the kitchen environment can be particularly challenging for people because there are a lot of things going on; not so much now, but 15 years ago, it was a hard place to be; there were a lot of big personalities and angry people and things like that and I slotted into that environment so well and I loved it. I loved the crazy energy and I loved the pace of it. Being a big tattooed, mohawky guy, I suppose I wasnt intimidated by a lot of the scary chefs. From the moment I stepped into the kitchen, I knew that was the place I wanted to be.

And clearly too, you then developed a passion for food and a variety of different kinds of cuisine, international and so on. Looking at your photosI suppose youve now had 15 years worth of experience, but how are you coming up with all those ideas? Have you learned those things along the way ? There seems to be a lot of experimentation as well

My wife and I at the start of 2018 sold everything we owned and went travelling the world. I went on a street food chase, basically. We wanted to go and experience as much of the world and as much of all the cultures as we could and we spent a year in south-east Asia and Sri Lanka and worked in hilltribe villages in Northern Vietnam, building walls in rice paddies and cooking with the locals. We worked on coconut farms in Sri Lanka, learning how to make our own coconut cream and making awesome curries. We lived in the Andes, in Peru and learned a bit about the Quechua cuisines. We lived in the Amazon rain forest and learned how to shoot and cook snakes. The nearest fridge was 100 kilometres away, so we lived a lot on dried rice and beans and learned how to do really clever things with that. We just spent all this time travelling and because we are both such food-focussed people, we learned so much on the travels. It has really changed my whole game about what food I choose to cook and what food I choose to eat.

Do you think that it was important to have had a foundation in cooking before you went and did that? Did that help you know what you were looking for?

Absolutely. It also changed the whole way that I cooked. One example is, when we were in Bolivia, we were in an Ayurvedic commune. They had what they called a food forest where they grew all these native foods and it was completely organic. But because it was run on Ayurvedic principles, I had to learn to cook without chilli, without spices, without onions and garlic. I was working there as the camp cook, more or less, well, I wasnt hired as the camp cook, I just kinda assumed that role, which I usually dojump in the kitchen and start cooking. But to learn how to create flavour bases for soups and stews and curries with no onions, garlic, ginger or chilli is a whole different ball game and it makes you start thinking outside the box a little bit; learning where the compounds in your flavour bases actually come from, rather than saying, well this is how I do it. I had to think about those individual elements and break the down into what building blocks those flavours can bring to a meal; it makes you think about it in a whole different way.

Thats amazing. Did you document all that? I supposed you took lots of photos but it would make such an amazing book!

Ive got so many photos.

It sounds incredible.

It was literally the experience of a lifetime. It changed my life. The other thing was, getting back here and trying to resume a normal life, after these two years of adventure and especially when we got back here, the whole country was on fire and that was pretty stressful. As soon as the fires were out, Covid came and I really struggled with the transition. I ended up in quite a dark place, between the first and the second lockdown. I think thats what pushed me into doing this charity project Im doing now. I was so worried about myself and what I had lost and feeling sorry for myself and I thought the best thing I could do right now is stop thinking about me and maybe start thinking about someone else, especially after living in some very remote areas. I still had a nice air-conditioned house and a comfortable way of life and food on my plate; things like that. I got so annoyed at myself, sitting around feeling sorry for myself all day, and I told myself to get of my arse and do something useful.

It really sounds to me like hospitality and cooking and being a chefsometimes its the opposite to your experience, sometimes it can lead people down a path to quite dark behaviour but it feels like at every point, it has been the exact opposite for you.

It is the exact opposite. It actually saved me. I was on a path of some very destructive behaviour. My problem is I have a very low boredom threshold. If at any given time, things arent really exciting, I start doing dumb stuff so its really important to keep myself busy.

Well, I think you have succeeded in that. I can see that you did Bad Chef, Worse Chef with Sam

I love Sam. We crossed paths a number of years ago and we keep connecting; we are actually doing another project next Thursday; were doing a fundraiser for RUOK. Hes one of the RUOK ambassadors and I know that during this Covid crisis, the suicide rate has just skyrocketed. We are going to do a Dinner at Dougies house together and donate all the proceeds to RUOK and try and raise some funds for those guys to keep doing what they are doing.

That's awesome.

Tell me a bit more about Dinner at Dougies House. Is it just at the weekend or is it throughout the week?

Im generally doing five days a week. Ive actually taken a week off this week because, first of all, it kind of took off out of nowhere. I was putting up photos of my dinners at home onto Facebook and people were saying, oh will you cook for me? So I started selling a couple of meals out of my garage, basically. It went from 10 or 20 meals a night to 30 meals a week. At that point I had to move into a commercial kitchen. It happened so fast I was a bit on the back foot trying to keep up and I didnt have time to set up the business side of things properly and get all the bookwork done and all that sort of thing. I moved out of that tiny little commercial kitchen on Thursday and I thought Id take a week off just to get my ordering software sorted and all the rest of that stuff. Im moving into another kitchen tomorrow and were going to be back and up and running next week.

Do you cook whatever you feel likedoes it go week by week?

Every day is a different dish and every week is a new menu.

How exciting.

Ive made it particularly difficult for myself. The idea is that I know a lot of people have suffered from Uber Eats and working from home and under high pressure in their home offices and so on, so the first thing I wanted to do was to bring a bit of freshness and niceness to people because I know how it feels for me, when Im in a hard place, just having a nice, fresh, interesting and tasty meal really brightens up my day, so I thought, especially around here (Coburg), if I do that but with vegan options as well. My brother and his wife, ones a carnivore and ones a vegan and they have so much trouble ordering in or eating out. So I thought, if I offer a main meal, a vegan meal and a vegan dessert every day; every day something different and every day something new, then it should really be a nice little change for people who are used to having to get crappy food off Uber Eats.

Absolutely and it also provides a challenge for you.

The local community got right behind it. The people are really enjoying it. I chat a lot to my customers and we have a good back and forth and I know a lot of their names. Some people who have ordered dinner five nights a week for three or four weeks at a time because they really enjoy it so much. It turns out that somehow, I hit this formula completely randomly that seems to be working.

How does the charity aspect work?

I pay the bills, I pay the wages, I pay myself a bit of a wage, which works out to about $4.50 an hour because of all the hours Im putting in, but its slightly more than I was making on the Jobkeeper, so thats a plus. Everything else goes to charity. My main charity I support is Scarf Community. I dont know if you know those guys, but they do such great work. Especially at the moment with so many venues being closed, they need all the help they can get and there are a lot of young kids out there, struggling for career options so I figured that would be a good close to home place to start.

I do special events as well. We did a Peter Mac fundraiser on Saturday with my good friend, Jerry Mai, for Shannon Martinez, because she has been diagnosed with cancer. We thought, as a show of solidarity for her, wed do a big fundraiser at Annam in the city and we raised a couple of grand for Peter Mac. Then were doing the work for RUOK and generally just trying to put some positivity into it. I think people really like that as well. When we are all under pressure like this, it is really nice to see that people rallying around a cause.

This is what hospitality should be; bringing people together and helping people out.

Thats exactly how I feel about it. Unfortunately, its never going to make me a millionaire, but it does make me very happy.

And it sounds as though you are very well-liked and well-known by, as you were saying before, a lot of big-name chefs, how did you become so integral to the chef community? How did you get to know them all?

Im just a friendly guy. Ive always been pretty chatty and I guess I have a fair bit of confidence and Im not afraid to go and chat to people. Ive worked in the scene a long time and I have met a lot of people on my travels and I always try to leave positive impressions behind me. When I got back from overseas, I think with the confidence I gained from cooking with grandmas in hill tribe villages and cooking curries with old men in Sri Lanka, Ive learned restaurant ways of cooking, but all of a sudden I had this fund of knowledge that not a lot of chefs generally have, so it really boosted my confidence to start pushing myself onwards and upwards and I think that came through in my career opportunities.

Absolutely. On the other side of this and optimistically looking forward to the future, would you keep going with Dinner at Dougies or would you go back to the kitchen?

I really like what Im doing now. Travelling the world and spending time with a lot of people who dont have very much, and seeing the way they live their lives, I lost my drive to make a lot of money and own a successful restaurant or anything like that. At the moment, what I really like the idea of, is having enough to live off and have a nice life, but to try and keep doing positive things. That actually works for me more than the idea of lining my own pockets. I cant really predict whats going to happen over the next six months or so because the situation is so fluid, but I am going to try to continue doing what Im doing, as long as its practical because I get such a kick out of it.

Youve done the head chef thing before so its nice to make it a bit more your own and make it suit your lifestyle as well.

I never thought that Id be doing this. I have a bit of a problem with putting things into cardboard boxes, to be honest. Its a challenge to put meals into a cardboard box and have it bump around in a hot bag for half an hour before anyone eats it and trying to get that quality right is such a hard thing. But I can see different ways of this project working once lockdown ends. I think Im just going to keep it fluid. People seem to be liking what Im doing so Im just going to keep on in the same spirit I started with and see how far I can take it.

Well you have such a lovely presence on social media as well, with the little film clip that Danny Parreno did and all your photos of food. Theyre uplifting to look at and you can tell from your comments, that you love it.

The funny thing is, Im actually a complete technological retard. I am so terrible at technology that I can barely operate an email, but somehow Im a Facebook marketing genius. I dont understand it.

You are! Id better let you get back to what you were doing because I know you are really busy. Thank you so much; Ive loved it, Dougie.

No worries, its been great to chat.

Dinner at Dougies