Elias Salomonsson

Elias Salomonsson: Hi Jo.Welcome to Circl. Let me show you around. We have a very, very open kitchen. You see where all the action is and all the magic happens. Xavier says that all the magic happens with the wine. I'll say it's all about the food, we'll meet somewhere in the middle. Down here, depending on table configuration, about 20 covers. We try to fill that up first as we scale up. We are going to be keeping this more for walk-ins. Maybe in the future we'll look to actually reconfigure it and actually have more like bar seating. That's a little bit further down the line. But just look here. We have 150 wines by the glass. All on the Coravin. We have a massive champagne focus as well. We call the drinks folder The Bible. It has 130 pages or something like that.

Conversation with a chef: Where do you keep all of the bottles?

I'll show you upstairs.We have two levels. At the moment, there are only two levels.

This is like a wonderland.

It sure is. There is more dining here. We keep it reserved for larger tables and theres a private dining room.

Oh, my goodness. The wine goes on and on.

You are always surrounded by wine.

I love it. It smells very new.

Everything is brand new. On the bottom floor it was Bar Saracen.

Of course, it was.

Back in the day I'm not sure if they had two levels. I think it was only one level. But I think on the top floor was a hairdresser.Do you want to look in the cellar? I think the last stocktake they did, there was like 4,300 bottles of wine in here. There's not a lot of the same wines. Maybe one or two of each because we want to just keep changing it, keep doing new things. The same with the food, where it keeps changing seasonally and we just keep doing new things.

My favourite bottle, which I'm never going to ever buy because it's so expensive. They get very upset when I start touching their wine. It's a 1978 Petrus. That's what I would like to drink. But, me personally, that's the whole concept, right? That's why we have 150 wines by the glass to make it more affordable to the average public. You do get a lot of people that come in and they'll buy a Petrus and they'll spend 20, 30 grand on it. But we're doing a lot of wines by the glass, because me personally, I'm not going to spend two grand, or three grand or four grand on a bottle of wine, but I'll spend 150 bucks on a really good glass of wine. There are definitely people that come in and pay that though. $20,000 for a bottle of wine.

Who are those people?

When I worked at Vue de Monde one of the most memorable bottles, I can't remember exactly what it was, but that was a $60,000 bottle of wine t, it's insane.

Well, you have to love it, don't you?

You need to know exactly what you want. We do get people that come in and they know exactly what they want already, because they love their wine. I love wine, but not that much. We do have a lot of focus as well on champagne, because Xavier loves his champagne. And not just having champagne as a celebratory drink but we want people to know that you can have champagne with every course that we have on the menu. That the whole idea of it. Not a massive focus on Champagne houses, but more champagne growers, smaller, more bespoke champagnes. That's pretty much the restaurant. So far. The only big thing we're still waiting to get done in terms of construction stuff is the facade.

Talk me through the menu. There's this menu and then a dinner menu. You have a caviar section.

I love caviar, but the price point of caviar is usually considered to be something that's not achievable for your average punter. I want to change that. Same as Xavier is doing with the wine. That's why I've sourced Transmontanuscaviarfrom KAVIARI. Its a massive company. They supply caviar to three Michelin are restaurants around the world. What they do is they just focus on multiple styles of caviar. But there are very different price points. Just because it's an affordable one doesn't mean it's a shit caviar. It's very soft, it's very delicate. For me, it's not about making a big profit. For me, it's just to be able to get as low a price as possible so more people can experience it. Same as what we're doing with wine.

This snack is delicious.

It's a brown butter crumpet.

That is so good. What a good combination.

We do make a lot of crumpets. We call it the Circl crumpet factory at this stage.

The crumpets are just so buttery and delicious.

They're cooked in brown butter. And then when we heat reheat them, we just brush brown butter on top as well. Butter makes everything better, I

Do you have a particular butter you like to use?

No, not really. If price wasn't an option, we could go with all the Lescure butters from France, but it doesn't make the menu affordable. For me, it's important that the price point is affordable. We want people to be able to afford to come once, twice a week and if I start using two premium ingredients, it's just not going to work. A perfect example is the Blackmore Wagyu. We're using the tri tip, which is quite an underutilised cut, but it's still perfect steak cut. I could have gone with a rib eye or a strip loin, but the price point of that is through the roof. So by using underutilised cuts or underutilised products, I can get a better price, but people can still enjoy nine plus Wagyu. And I think Blackmore is probably the best Wagyu in Australia.

I see you've got some native ingredients in there as well.

I think when you're in Australia and you're surrounded by all these products, it'd be weird not to use it. We're not a native restaurant per se, but using native products just makes sense because you're in Australia. There are native products available, it just makes sense to have it on the menu, and they're so full of flavour and they're so full of life. I'm super happy with that.

I just had a chat to Ben Shewry from Attica, whose book is coming out soon, and he talks a lot aboutunderstanding the food and the cooking on the country that you're, that you're in, or the country that you're on. I really like that idea. I think it's a really good reflection of where we are.

Yes. But like I said, I'm not trying to do what Vue de Monde is doing where almost everything is native or anything like that. I'm just using native products, not because, oh, we have to use native products. We're in Australia and it works with the dish.

Great. So you've got snacks and then entrees, mains. What's the ideal way for people to work through the menu for you?

When we first designed this menu, it wasn't really designed to be shared. But as soon as we started doing our soft openings, people love that whole sharing style of menu. So we quickly just re-figured a few things, like adding options for the whole duck and half duck. And same for the Tri-tip. You can either get a 500 gram piece of the steak for $140 or a 250 for $70. So people have the option to get either a big one or a small one. It's all about making sure that people can try as much as possible. From an operation point of view, it'd be way easier to just do a 500 gram piece and a whole duck. But then I won't sell as much duck. And I think that's a shame. People want to try it. But if you're only two people, a whole duck is a lot. Well, now you have the option of having a half duck as well.

Where do you go when you start planning a menu? Have you got lots of ideas written down already? Where do you start from?

It's a very good question. I think it really depends. This is a brand new concept. Its not an existing restaurant. So it was trying to understand the brief of what the restaurant is going to be and what we're trying to achieve. Then you're trying to build something that's achievable within the kitchen, which is obviously quite a small kitchen. So it is something that you have to be able to manage within that frame of understanding. Not the easiest thing to do, but a lot of fun.

There's a lot of ingredients as well. I always admire chef's palettes. These are some really interesting things going together. Pickled mussels, dill mayo, and potato crisp. I love that.

I'm a big snacks person. I always think that's the best part of the menu. Snacks. And then everything in the middle is great. And then dessert. What I want is that when people come in, they just pick whatever is appetising to them. All the flavour profiles are quite different on there. There's nothing that's similar in the flavour profile and that was intentional because everything can be paired with different wines. If you want champagne, great. Most of the snacks work with it. But if you want a special type of white or you already know what you want, the Somm can then help you, this works really well with that, and so on and so forth. But champagne for me, works with everything. Our bestsellers at the moment is the Circle caviar tin, the goat cheese eclair and the smoked eel tart. Flying out the door.

I bet.

This is a play on what I used to have as a kid, when you're on holiday and you open a tin of pickled mussels. So we're actually serving that in a mussel tin. Then we build it up ourselves. We have our beautiful mussels from Portarlington with different veggies or carrots and celery and shallots. And then we do a little dill mayonnaise with a hard boiled egg mixed through it. And that's all served in the little tin. Then we get a Japanese mandolin and we just spin out the potatoes, brine it, and then fry it. You get long potato crisps that you then break apart and you build everything on top and have it as a little cracker.

It's really interactive. I love it.

I love that as well. It is great when you go to a restaurant you get to actually do a bit , similar with the caviar, you get to do some stuff while you eat

And as you say, it's evocative of childhood memory. So it's that whole Proustian thing as well. Its a special way to eat.

Other people are doing savory goats cheese eclairs. But it's not something you see all the time. That's a fun way of doing it. If youre not having fun while you're cooking, that reflects on your menu. For me it's all about having fun trying new dishes. We are just in spring now, so even though this is our third week of operating, we're already changing our dishes because we're moving into spring and all this great asparagus and everything is coming in.

Do you have notebooks or are you a spreadsheet guy? When you're having these ideas or you're seeing what the supplier's got, where does that information go?

A little bit of everything. I have some stuff on my laptop. I have my trusted notebook that never leaves my side, and I have my phone. A lot of the information comes through my phone. I get emails, text messages, pictures from suppliers, what's happening. And I'll screenshot that and I'll save it in my favourites. When I actually have a few minutes and I sit down and I start planning ahead, I'm, right, asparagus is coming in, we're going to do boom, boom, boom. How is that going to work? And then we kind of keep going like that.

Is there a grill down there? What kind of heat have you got?

No. Ive got double combi. I have a plancha, I got a target top and got a salamander. That's it. Ive got a fryer as well, but it's very small. There wasn't really a space. I love cooking over charcoal. There's just not the space for it. When I grew up in kitchens in Europe and it was very rarely that I had like an actual charcoal grill in there. It was mostly pans.

I feel like nowadays Jospers, they're a dime a dozen. Everyone has a Josper.

It's fun for the chefs to be honest with a Josper. If I could, I probably would have a little hibachi set up, because why not? But you don't need it. I've been cooking with pans more than I've been cooking with charcoal.

How many of you in the kitchen?

Ooh, good question. Five.

Oh goodness. It's a small space. How does the choreography of the kitchen work? Especially when you're in front of everyone?

We prep on both sides of that kitchen island bench. But then for service, everybody's on their section and the good thing about a small kitchen is that you don't actually have to move that much. Everything is pretty much within arm's reach. On very busy nights, we might have extra people. I'll do the pass from the outside because it helps me to control it a little bit more. I'll help the front house run the food and so on. But it gives them a little bit more freedom in there to actually move. It is a tight kitchen. There's a lot of slithering past people, but it does work. You work around the space that you have available.

Given that you're a dessert person, talk to me about the desserts.

I like to have slightly different desserts. Classics mixed with some contemporary. We have changed this a lot as well. Even though we've only been open for a few weeks, we do tart specials. At the moment we're doing a blood orange tart on the actual menu. But usually we have an actual tart that's a special. It tends to be chocolate, because people do love chocolate. Last week we did a chocolate tart with Dulce de leche in the bottom. A dark chocolate ganache tart with a stracciatella orange ice cream. Served with a little bit of orange marmalade.

I don't have a sweet tooth, but that does sound really good.

The chocolate mousse that we have on the menu, we use 72% dark chocolate. So it's quite on the darker side. And we feel like we insert dulce de leche and Pedro Ximenez inside the actual mousse. So you get that richness when you actually cut into it. Pedro Ximenez crumb, chocolate crumb, and then creme fresh ice cream. For me, it doesn't have to be overly sweet to be a dessert. You can almost have savoury elements to it. The dessert that we just took off the menu was a vanilla and wattle seed parfait. And even if that sounds like it's going to be sweet, the wattle seed actually brings that savoury, nutty roasty note throughout it. And we serve that in a little tart shell with a celeriac disc that we sweet confit. That gives it that earthiness as well. And then macadamia and wattle seeded praline as well. And there was lime gel just to cut through it. So that was almost like a savoury dessert as well. Like yourself, not everybody likes sweet desserts. So we always try to have a balanced dessert menu, even if we only have three or four desserts. But you have to have a chocolate, you have to have something that's very fresh and light and like a classic.

And just thinking about your memories of childhood?Did you grow up in Sweden?

I sure did. I'm from the very, very south of Sweden in Malmo. I used to work in Copenhagen as well when I was a young pup, when I just started as an apprentice. It is great growing up down south because up north in winter it is very depressing. You get three hours of sunshine down south. It's still depressing, but it's not as bad. Growing up, my grandmother, was in hospitality when she was younger, so there was always food around, she pickled her own herring and stuff. When I was young I had to help her prep the herring, get everything ready for pickling and stuff. And being from that older generation, there was no wastage as well. Everything got used up. And that's what I'm trying to influence on my menus as well, is that you use everything. Because even if you don't use the fish stock, you make a use for it. I have the bones, Im not going to throw them away, I might as well make a stock. And even if I'm just using it for staff meal, at least I'm using every single part of the animal.

It's a good point to make, that the older generations did that. That's how they did things, in many countries. And we do talk about it now as though zero waste is a new thing.

But it's not a new thing. Even chefs for many, many generations. You're paying for the product, so you might as well use every part of the product as much as you can. That's why Josh Niland takes it even to the next level.

You saw your grandmother doing all of that, but at what point did you think chef life would be for you?

To be honest, I've always loved food. When I decided to become a chef, it wasn't a surprise to my family. That was always going to happen at some stage. I was going to be a fireman actually. I don't know why, but that was the plan. But, like most chefs, school was not really my forte. The school system is a little bit different in Sweden. Instead of going to college and university, I went to something that's similar to what a TAFE would be in Australia, which basically prepares you for going into the working world. But it's like your high school in Australia. Once you finish Year nine, you then go to college where you either keep studying whatever you want to specify in, science, social science, whatever it might be. In the year I was going to apply to go into something like ambulance, fire, police and military, you had to have my top notch grades. So I thought, I'll do something else. Cooking was always my second choice. I got in and just fell in love with it. Never looked back.

What do you love about it? Is it the creativity? Is it the thrill of service? Is it pleasing people?

It's not just one thing. I love an open kitchen because when you serve a dish, people are eating and you can see on their face that enjoyment. You're like, ah, thats good. I nailed that on the head. That dish is spot on. It's creating memorable experiences. I think that's what hospitality all about. It's not just, oh, I'm going out for a bowl of pasta and then forget all about it. No, I want people to come in and remember this night for 10 years. I used to live in Ireland before I came to Australia and I still remember to this day I went to Patrick Guilbaud in Dublin. It was a two Michelin star restaurant and I still remember this green apple parfait I had. And that was 14 years ago. I still remember it vividly. I remember the plating and everything. That's what it's all about, having these experiences that just blow your mind. Sometimes you blow it big and sometimes you blow it small, but people need to come and have a great time. I think that's what we do.

And it's hospitality. You are looking after people.

Exactly. You're servicing people. You're doing it in a way that they're relaxed, they're just having a good time and they want to come back.

Did you have chefs when you were learning, chefs that stand out for you?

Hundred per cent. think as a chef, you keep learning. It doesn't matter how far ahead you are in your career or you're just starting. I've always had the impression that you need to be like a sponge, absorb as much information as you can. The bad stuff, you just squeeze out what you don't need, all the toxicity. I'm not about it. It does not have a place in my kitchens. But all the positive things like, the way of managing staff, the way of cooking, just retain as much as possible and just learn as much as possible.

At what point did you have that head chef role?

When I was quite young actually. Because I started working in the industry when I was 15, 16.And then when I got to Australia, I did the classic working holiday visa. I was almost going to be here for a year. And 10 years later I'm still here. Especially Melbourne, I love Melbourne. It's such a good city.

Did you come straight to Melbourne?

I was in Melbourne first. I had friends here. And then I went on my little trip up along the east coast. I just realised that doing the classic working holiday visa thing is not for me. I decided I wanted to stay in Australia for at least a few years. So basically, I then had the mindset of getting a sponsorship. I started working in smaller cafe wine bar type things and just out of necessity, I got a head chef role there that as my first head chef because the head chef left. They had no one. I just went with it there, I learned a lot from mentors throughout my years. Recently before I started with these guys, I was the group executive sous chef for Scott Pickett.

I love Scott Pickett.

Scott is such a good mentor and his executive chef Stuart McVeigh is one of the best chefs I've ever worked for in my life. He's just amazing. Cool, calm under pressure. He has that same mentality that I'm striving to have. I only worked for him for two and a half, three years but I learned so much in that time because I wanted to absorb as much information as I could.

They are such great restaurants too, Scott's restaurants. You worked in Copenhagen as well and Dublin?

Not in Dublin, I worked just outside of Limerick in the Southwest of Ireland. I basically went there to finish my apprenticeship. I've always been good with English. In Sweden you learn English from a very young age. And ever since I was young, I've always known that wasnt going to live in Sweden. Sweden is too small. My hometown was 350,000 people. Everybody was happy getting a family straight away, buying a house. I wanted to travel and experience the world. That's why I love Melbourne. The CBD is still a fully fledged big city in the world. But you go 15, 20 minutes out and you're in suburbia. In New York where everything is just skyscrapers everywhere, I don't really like, I like having my house with a garden, the parks, walk my dogs in private.

You were saying before that you like going out to eat. Do you cook at home as well?

A lot. I love going out to eat, but it takes a lot of time. And time is a precious commodity, especially now with opening a new restaurant, time is of the essence, so to speak. I love cooking at home. It's also more affordable to cook at home My favourite thing to cook at home is probably lasagna. I love lasagna.

Lasagna is quite time consuming, isn't it?

Yes and no. It's all about planning ahead.

Have you got a fixed recipe or do you play around with it?

I really depends on what the vibe is of when I'm cooking. If I have the time, I will start cooking my sauce in the morning, have that ready by night and then build it and cook it off. I love cheese. So it's usually a cheesy affair as well. And just depending what I have in the fridge. I hate waste. So I chuck in a little bit of everything just to use it up, leftover bits of cheese, Parmesan rind, you'll always find that in my fridge. It gives you that thick umami flavour.

What would your advice be to a young person starting out as a chef?

2020 hindsight, right? I wish that I'd been more of a sponge. Absorb all that information. You try your best when you're younger, but it gets easier when you have a bit more understanding of it. Do a little bit of research, try to figure out what it is that you want to learn. And then try to find who does that the best or who you want to learn from. Then just go there and be a fly on the wall, be a sponge, absorb as much information as you can and just learn. In the beginning, it shouldn't be about salary and this, that and the other. It should be about picking up all those useful skills that you're going to have for the rest of your life.

Perfect. Thank you. And thank you for this delicious food and wine.

Circl Wine House, 22 Punch Lane, Melbourne