Eitan Doron is in at Half Acre 24/7 at the moment. Even when it's closed. Such is his desire to get everything right and create the kind of hospitality we all dream of where food, service and ambiance blend together to create harmony. Eitan gave me a lot to think about. I love it when that happens.
It’s so beautiful in here. It’s like an oasis. You wouldn’t even expect that all this was in here.
Do you want to see the event space. It’s through here.
Oh wow. It’s beautiful in there as well. Do you oversee the food for that as well?
No, I am just at Half Acre but we have some plans for the future to use that space for concept dinners. I don’t know if you saw the French guy with the beard who just walked out, he is the Executive chef for Food and Desire and oversees five different venues. That’s mainly catering. They have really amazing product for the amount of people they cater for per week. It’s unbelievable. But they are really well organised.
For me, it’s the highest level of hospitality I have ever seen. Every detail is important from the napkin to the steak to everything.
The owners were already running Food and Desire before Half Acre?
Two owners, Asaf and Leigh. Recently they changed the structure and added another partner, Adam who is the owner of Half Acre. They moved the production kitchen from Kensington and opened the event space. I think because the land is so big, they had to use it.
What did this use to be?
I think it was an old millhouse.
How long have you been open?
Three weeks.
That’s very new! And now a bit about you. How long have you been a chef?
Maybe 20 years in the kitchen, but 15 that I count. I trained in Israel in French and Italian restaurants and then I did a pastry course in Israel and travelled the world. I spent some time in India, Thailand, New Zealand and Melbourne. I really got excited about all the different flavours and cultures.
I think it’s a seven to eight year cycle that as a chef you realise something new about what to become in the future and also about the past. So I think the first seven to eight years I learned the basics and then I decided to go and do that pastry course to be able to take the next step to go from a line cook to being able to manage a kitchen. I took a head chef position then moved to a sous chef position in a fine dining restaurant in Israel, then I came to Australia and I have basically only had head chef positions here. I did about two and a half months in Attica. That was my first job in Australia.
Your reputation must precede you. Surely it’s quite hard to get into Attica.
I think they just needed people. Look, it’s not the kind of food I like to cook. It’s not the kind of food I can relate to and envision myself. It’s not about level or complexity, but it’s about what I feel attached to.
What sort of food do you like to do?
I think things that remind me of the past. My childhood, my upbringing. I like to try and replicate things in different ways. The produce; that’s something I like to start with. Let’s take kohlrabi. Everyone hates kohlrabi. Do you know one person who likes kohlrabi? That’s my challenge now. I want to do something I’ve never done before. I can’t name one chef or one restaurant who got famous from kohlrabi. That’s where I get my inspiration.
I read that you had your own place in the city.
Yes, The Deli Counter.
Everything I read about it, people were raving about it. They said it was the epitome of hospitality; it was so welcoming and if someone asked what the fish of the day was, you would bring out the whole fish and show them and then go away and fillet it. I really loved the idea of it. It must have been so nice for people in the city to have something like that; almost homely hospitality.
It wasn’t just the food. It was also the attitude behind the counter. I treated people like they were my friends. So I felt comfortable saying good morning but at the same time, where the fuck have you been, it’s been two weeks and I haven’t seen you! It was a cheeky joke but at the same time, I meant it. They’d say they’d been on holiday and I’d ask how that was and how was their wife and so on. One of the problems of the business was that I had a very small pool of returning customers and we had some structural problems in the business; with the branding, but the food and the team we had there really got the concept.
It was like our home and we wanted to welcome everyone. It didn’t matter if they like their coffee extra extra extra hot. That’s what they like and if someone comes to my house and wants black tea with milk and six sugars, I’ll just do that because he’s my guest. I’m the kind of chef who doesn’t make problems for the Front of House. If someone wants a well done steak, I’ll do it. A lot of chefs won’t cook it well done, they say it has to be medium rare of whatever, but it’s part of hospitality for me.
I think things that remind me of the past. My childhood, my upbringing. I like to try and replicate things in different ways.
I looked at the menu online and there are some nice little starters and lots of plant based dishes amongst them and then some protein offerings and then pizza. Is everything cooked over fire? Is that the idea?
Yes. The pizzas are in the woodfire oven. All the steaks and the fish and some of the vegetables are done on the grill. Come and have a look. The corn is on the grill and we pretty much strip the cob. The cabbage, we’ve done it grilled before but now we’ve found the wood fire oven gives it nice crunchy edges. Pumpkin…we roast it in the oven and then finish it in the wood fire oven…cauliflower is in the woodfire oven. Oven dried tomato…hopefully in a couple of weeks we’re going to smoke them, sort of slow smoke them. All the meats and the fish are on the char grill. Also on the salads, some of the elements, like we grill the pears to give them extra flavour and then all the pizzas. The pineapple in one of the desserts is done on the wood fire. We try to use open flame and also there are seven different techniques around open flame.
Have you worked with those before?
Yes, but not as a main cooking element.
Have you been burning yourself?
Oh yeah. Look at these.
You have to get used to all the different temperatures and keeping it going and then what happens when you put the new wood in.
We put the coals on the side and feed in the wood from the side with tongs and at different stages of service, we might be like, oh no that’s too hot, so we have to adjust it, or it’s not hot enough. From next week or the week after…we just need more bodies in the kitchen to be able to do it all, but we are going to do a lot of vegetables on the grill. So like the leeks, we strip the outside leaves and then we just put the on the colas themselves, so it steams the heart of the leek and the outside is sort of charred. It’s really nice.
You obviously feel quite confident trying out different techniques, but what about more junior people in the kitchen. Are they a bit nervous?
That’s why I’m here seven days a week.
It must be scary if you don’t know what you are doing. And also they might ruin the food.
It’s a learning process. Also for me. I might have been cooking 15 to 16 years but at the same time, this is all new to me. The owners have been understanding. They’ve been long enough in the game to give us the facility to test things out before we opened. We’ve been working 16 to 17 days just on the pizzas, to work out the temperatures and all that. It’s great and people love it, but when I pull a pizza out the oven Ithink, hmmm, maybe a little bit more water would make the dough a little bit more crunchier, so we work on the dough and working on the temperature and it’s something that will never end.
True. I spoke to Tim Young at Matilda and Declan Carroll at Angus and Bon and they both cook with fire and they said it can take a long time to get used to it and to get people up to speed.
We’ve got good equipment and great support. We work with a budget but we don’t have a budget to get something perfected so if that’s the goal, then Asaf, Leigh and Adam will support me a hundred per cent. So yes, I work for the company but it feels more like a partnership.
That’s really good. But I didn’t see kohlrabi on the menu…
It’s not on the menu yet.
So you’re experimenting outside the seven days you’re working here. Like Heston doing scientific experiments on food at midnight. Are you doing specials as well?
No. We are sticking to the menu at the moment. We are trying to push the idea of the shared menu. It’s quite hard for some people who just want entrée, main and dessert. The way the kitchen is designed and the concept, it’s quite hard to put everything on the table at the same time. We don’t want to challenge ourselves with extra stuff we just want to nail the menu first. Also it’s a learning process to see what the people like. The weather is getting a bit warmer now so I want to change a few things.
It’s like a big country kitchen here. I wish this was my kitchen. You were saying that the kind of food you like to cook brings back memories for you and that’s so true for the people eating it as well. When we smell or taste something, it can transport you back to another time. How do you access that and interpret that on the plate? Do you have a big repertoire of ingredients and flavours you can call on or are you reading books or looking at Instagram?
Books. Not Instagram. I try to exclude myself from that world of social media. I don’t really get inspiration from tv. Some Netflix, like Chef’s Table and I last night I watched Salt Fat Acid Heat. It’s an American lady and episode one was in Italy and it was about the fat element of olive oil, cheese, pine nuts in pesto and how the fat elements blend together. That gave me a sort of closure for me to where I’m at in my cooking career. I look back and I also look around me and I see a lot of techniques…I’ll give you an example…New Zealanders do the hangi. They dig a hole in the ground and put in hots stones and put in the meat and the vegetables and whatever and seven hours later you have a meal. The natives in Israel do the same thing. The Russians do the same thing. Aboriginals do the same thing but they just call it something different. That’s a cooking technique invented by cavemen and it’s funny to see things traveling around the world without Instagram and Facebook.
I’m very cautious. A lot of chefs say they invented a certain thing or its their recipe. It’s tricky. I think we are at the stage where everything is already invented. We just change things and do new additions for things that have already been done for so many years.
When you eat different products or someone else’s food, can you still be surprised by flavour?
Sure. I’m more surprised when I eat something simple because I’m not a big fan of lots of flavour and techniques on the plate. I prefer simplicity. A really good sandwich can shock me more than an amazing piece of art on the plate. One of my favourite restaurants is Rumi in Brunswick.
I spoke to Joseph Abboud.
It is simple. He is so true to his background and roots. His flavours are amazing. I had a dish there fove or six years ago that I still remember. It was unbelievable. Goat cooked in yoghurt. It was served with spinach and broad beans. It was really simple; four or five ingredients, nothing fancy, no foams or gels but it was just wow.
My most memorable meal was when I was in France and I had friends who were always out foraging and they had some mushrooms from the forest. Maybe cepes or bolets and they made an omelette with fresh eggs. It was the best thing I have ever tasted. Do you look and see how people are reacting when they eat your food or are you too busy?
I like to see their reactions. The last couple of nights I was running the pass so I could check and see what people like and gather more information about future creations; what people would like to see on the menu. Also to get an answer you don’t want to hear like, oh I thought I’d see chips on the menu. Great. But I don’t want to put chips on the menu. The vege and the meat are the big sellers so far. Anything cooked on the grill.
L?isten to the conversation here.
112 Munro Street, South Melbourne