Esca Khoo

Nice to meet you, Esca, I've been listening to podcasts about you today.

I've been listening to yours too. It's quite retro I think, the music and so on.

It IS quite retro. It is very low fi and I am much more about the content than the technology.

It's very nice. You are such a busy woman. You are everywhere.

YOU are everywhere. I feel as though I am speaking to someone famous. I've listened to Dani Valents Dirty Linen episode and Kylie from Travelling Senorita.

She's really nice. I don't know, Jo, it's just that in May this was not the situation. In May I was just a chef and I was going to join Society and I had wine bars to choose from but it was Covid times. When I was at Longrain, I had the idea of going to Peru or Brazil or something like that. I come from an island and I didn't really realise how beautiful it was until I became a chef. Because there are all these famous chefs like Alex Atala and Maria Martinez and a host of other Mexican and Peruvian chefs, they also have this Amazon, this rainforest, this island and they were shining a light on the food and putting it on the map. I was really intrigued and I wanted to go and see why they were doing things and how they were doing things. Where I come from in Borneo, there are so many tribes and so much flora and fauna. Whenever I see Sir David Attenborough talk about Borneo and he always talks about it so much and he talks about the animals and the logging and the palms and the orangutans not having trees to live in.

I must admit that's what comes to mind when I hear Borneo; deforestation, palm oils and oranguatans.

Exactly. And rafflesia flower, one of the craziest flowers ever. I grew up as a Malaysian Chinese teenager and I was trying to learn about Western Culture and I have been taught a lot of things in my career and in life but no one had ever taught me about things about Borneo. So I feel like I have a mission to celebrate Borneo and to be like the restaurants in Peru and Brazil and to actually use the ingredients and work with traditions and history. Why do dishes come about? Why do they eat sago puree? When they have a lot of sago or tapioca, they use sticks to pull it up. They'll get something like chopsticks and pull it up and cut it somehow and dip it in sambal and sauces. They were just trying to survive with every resource that they have.

Is that grown there?

Yes, everything is grown there. They don't have the capacity to import. They are also natural foragers. It is really interesting.

And fermentation is a big thing as well.

Yes, exactly. I don't think they even know how to ferment. When I went to Borneo, I asked them how does the fermentation work? How do you make Tapai. Tapai is an indigenous rice wine. I feel like everyone has their own rice wine. Korea has their own rice wine, Japan, Vietnam, theres moonshine or whatever. I asked them what their fermentation process was, and they basically gave me a chain of yeast which is the same kind of yeast that ferments starch in beer and sake, its a cross between those two. They cook the rice, they bless it, they put it into earthenware and hope for the best.

And probably because that's the way it has always been done.

Exactly. And I'm amazed that we have a lot of wild bees. The honey there is wild and sour, fermented almost. They have an excess of fish that they ferment but they don't turn it into fish sauce. They ferment the fish and then they eat the fish. It's like herring in Scandinavia. And then durian, they ferment durian, and I don't know why you would do that because it is already stinky. I still don't know why, and I am still trying to search and understand why.

I suppose it prolongs its life.

I guess. These things are so much in abundance, the fish and the durian. So I am trying to rediscover my roots. Growing up as a chef; coming to Australia thinking I would be a soccer player, trying to escape, then falling in love with Australia and wanting to call it home, but I had difficulty getting the hours I needed for my visa working as a chef because I kept getting rejected. I had to sell my soul to the devil and work in factories and catering just to build up the hours and it was a constant fight against the odds. Residency was really hard to get. I had to fork out a lot of money and I had to be really good at English. The English test was really difficult; it was extensive and not only that, you had to have a lot of work hours and you had to be in Australia for long enough and to have been a chef for longer than three years. There were a lot of difficulties. I was learning a lot about Spanish, French, Italian, American, all sorts of food but I never learned about the food from my area.

Ok. And the food that your mother cooks, is that from your area?

No. It's like when you have been in Australia for a long time, you don't really cook with indigenous food, you cook pretty simple Aussie favourites, right? So she would cook favourites from a Malaysian Chinese family.

That's really valid. Im actually from New Zealand, however, I have lived for 10 years and I see what you're saying. You've lived here for longer than me.

You're right.

You came on your own when you were 15, which is incredible. I was looking at your Instagram and up the top of your profile you have 'perseverance, resilience, belief, courage and kindness', and as I listened to your chat with Kylie, the travelling senorita, that was very in depth and as I listened to all your stories, I thought, all those words are absolutely your life.

Yeah. I tried to look for words that match what I have done, a summary, basically. That was the max I could think about. I'm sure there are others like happiness and so on, but they are the key things I factor in and I feel are significant.

You probably don't have time to watch tv shows, but when I was listening to this conversation, it reminded me of Ted Lasso, have you watched that?

No. Not yet.

It's about an American grid iron coach who goes to England to coach a soccer team, so there is heaps of soccer in it. He puts a big sign up in the changing room which says 'Believe and it is very much a show about kindness and community. When you were talking about all the things you have had to go through, it struck me that belief is such an important thing to have about your origins, yourself and the people around you.

It wasn't always easy to use this word, belief. I lot of times I believed I could do it, and things don't always work out, but you have to keep telling yourself. You have to imagine achieving it. The first time I came to Australia or the first time I got permanent residency, or the first time I was on a plane or the first time I was on a podcast or the first time I was a head chef. I never imagined those things. I have never thought, ok in five years I will be a head chef. I just tried and hoped it would happen but I don't think about it not happening either, I just try and think about it happening and I don't know when or how, but I hope so. But I imagine a lot of things. Whatever happened recently, I never imagined that, to be honest with you. I didn't think that would happen. It is really hard to process.

Well you have suddenly shot into the spotlight and that IS hard to process. You were at Dinner by Heston and Noma and a lot of other great places. Have you had a head chef role before?

No. Actually I didn't apply for the head chef role. I applied for a sous chef role. I believe in building the blocks and I had never been a sous chef, nor had I ever been a head chef. But what I do know is that I like cooking. I guess when I applied for the job it was an opportunity to cook Asian food, which is why I applied for it and the Executive chef, Darren Lauder has a hotel background and he said that we would be cooking all sorts of food from around Asia and that was my vision to one day cook and celebrate Asian food. I did a trip in 2019 where I went around Asia and spent all my savngs on that trip to research. I went on a trip with the Sea Gypsies, I went to Yangon, the Philippines. I was in the scariest parts of the Philippines where people get shot, but I was just looking for lechon, suckling pig, and I didnt know it was one of the most dangerous areas. There were a couple of places I didn't visit, such as China and India, but I ran out of money. But that is usually what I do; I save up money for the purposes of learning or understanding or experiencing. For example, my stages or stints at restaurants; a lot of people might say I was just trying to chase the name and yes, working at those top places, they are pretty big names, but I've made a sacrifice to do that. I am sacrificing my own hard earned money to learn. I just want to understand why they are one of the best and why they do what they do and what kind of food they are creating. To be a great chef, you cant just work at fine-dining restaurants, you have to work at a lot of crappy and difficult to operate restaurants. So I have worked at a host of those places.

You have: burgers, Italian where you weren't paid but you were paid in food.

Pizza, catering, breakfast, pub, cafe, a wine bar, restaurants, casual, fine-dining, a pop-up in a tram with the chef Peter Gunn from Ides. It has been a journey. I just want to learn and have delicious food.

Is that what you said in your interview to be sous chef and they said, ok, let's make you head chef?

Well that's the thing. The chef said, I want you to own the menu and I asked if I was creating the menu, so I basically cooked with a lot of memories. We don't have much staff in the kitchen, so I had to think quick and efficient. I made food that I was familiar with and things that were memorable for me from travel or childhood or from working in restaurants. Everyone tasted the food and though it was good and from then on, they said, it's your food so I guess we'll call you the head chef. And I though, ok, sure, I'm the head chef.

There's more to being a head chef, and certainly in a hotel, to cooking really good food. You've got the money side of things, labour, leadership. How have you found those aspects?

They do have a lot of people with a lot of knowledge and skill here and I am all about learning and observing, ever since I was a 15-year-old. Every day I will learn until the end of my life. I am taking it all in and it is very overwhelming but I am grateful that I have donewhat I have done and met the people I have met. On the kitchen side of things which is what I normally do, I treat the staff like my children or my brothers and sisters. I treat them how I would like to see the next generation of chefs come out; less toxic and more fun and happy. Sometimes, because I have been trained in kitchens that are toxic, it is really hard to get away from slight temper tantrums, which I am trying to avoid and I don't want in the kitchen. I guess I do the Heston way which is give valid reasons and understand what happened ad why it happened so we can prevent things from happening and having a better understanding between one another and what we are trying to do and what we are trying to deliver. In the end, with all these things happening, what's important is that the staff are happy, the guests are happy and it is the circle of life where everyone is happy, so trying to teach them in a way that is fine dining without the fine dining. I can be wrong too. I tell them if I don't make sense, please tell me because we just want this to work and we want to have fun working together.

Kitchens are such pressured places and you have the deadline of getting things out onto the table and you have all these things happening at the same time, it's hot, it's probably fairly cramped and then you are trying to convey your vision and get everyone doing the same thing. It's your name on the menu.

Which it doesn't have to be. But it is all that, and sometimes with Covid now, you get a lot of guests who can be unforgiving. Times are tough. You have demands from the guests, demands from the head of departments, demands from all sorts of foodies, from yourself, from myself too. I am hard on myself too. Every time I taste something, it is never good enough. It is the DNA structure of a fine dining chef to be like that.

How do you manage that?

It's hard. But I guess I go into the key factors; as long as it is tasty, as long as it is generous. Those two are the most important things. As long as we are learning about the cuisine and growing and having fun, that's all it can be and I am content with that. But me as a chef working in all these fine-dining restaurants, I have learned to not just settle on what is there. It is always going to be evolving. That's how food should be anyway.

Asian food should be re-imagined and brought forward to the future. It all starts with a lot of the chefs here. Being influenced here; we have so much beautiful produce and meats and ingredients from nature and the supplier, we should really move forward in this region and in this world. For example, nasi lemak could be made with sardines instead of anchovies or we could use hazelnuts instead of peanuts. Maybe a stir-fried dish that is quintessentially China could be made with kale and silver beet instead of bok choy, because we have a lot of kale and silver beet here and it so beautiful. Maybe radishes can replace boring cucumbers. Using what we have is a good way to say it, rather than using what has always been used.

I guess that indigenous people in Borneo would have done that much as they did here in Australia, where they didn't deplete the stock; they used what was there in that season but didn't exhaust it and then seasonally, they would move around to different places and food. I think that has to be the future of food.

It has to be the future. You can't look at a dish and say that is the end of it. Yes the flavours should be finalised and it should be nostalgic, for example, maybe a lechon can be served with a different type of vinegar that we have here, it doesn't always have to be coconut vinegar. Yes, there are a lot of coconuts in Asia, but here no, here we have a lot of other ingredients and maybe we can turn that into vinegar. It is all about educating each other and learning and growing and looking at the possibilities of everything. That's how we grow and look forward to the future.

That's really interesting and as you were talking I was thinking, you know, for a while fusion has been a dirty word, people are anti-fusion, but maybe we shouldn't be looking at it as fusion or cultural appropriation, but maybe we should be thinking of the future.

The future of the food. There's a lot of talk about sustainability and non-wastage and that is always going to be there or eating more vegetables but we should also grow the cuisine. That's our job being in the present moment; we have a part to play in the future.

So you have your memories and the things you have learned about Borneo and obviously you have your classical training, but where else are you getting your ideas? Are you thinking about food all the time?

Yeah. All the time. I constantly think about food. I think about what to eat now, what to eat later, what I'm going to eat on the weekend. It has always been all about food. I find that food is just the best thing that life has every created. It is something that is so strong and so powerful. The fact that I can cook something and make you smile, it speaks so much. Or that one plate of food or a table of food can connect two different cultures and they barely even speak the same language. It is mind blowing. I guess it goes way back to when I first saw the chefs on tv. They were cooking, they were smiling and that brought me joy. And it connected me; from the tv screen to me in Borneo and they probably filmed it in the UK somewhere, but it made me want to come here. It turned out to be a career. I didn't know it was going to be this crazy; the training is so toxic and people are humiliating you and sabotaging you and calling you names. I wasn't aware of all that before, but what I did know is that this is my job, my career, I chose it and I never gave up on it. I have never thought of being something else. I never thought it was a job, it's something I like to do.

There is obviously a great passion there and what you can bring to it that has pulled you through. I really hate hearing those stories about the toxicity in kitchens and humiliation and all that. I hope it's changing?

I hope so too, but I have a feeling it will never change.

Right. Why is that?

Because there will always be chefs coming from there and if they don't change, things will never change. But also it really depends on us. The new generation of chefs coming up, we really have to guide them, we really have to treat them with respect and care and professionalism. Hopefully that influences the whole community and we never see toxicity. But because of fine dining restaurants and high-end prices and exquisite details and perfection, it will never end. There will always be a demand for high quality standards and because of the heat of everything, you will never see toxicity out of the kitchen. Unfortunately. But if you cook relaxed, casual easy-going food, that doesn't call for perfection: two centimetre sticks of cucumber or perfect disc measured in all types of ways and forms then you would probably see less of that. That's why in the kitchen I don't hire people from highly experienced backgrounds because I just know they are going to bring a touch of toxicity and ego, which is not good. But then again, they need to ask themselves why they are like that? I ask myself this. After working in all these really really toxic kitchens, and that is the only way to put it, I slap myself in the face and ask myself why I am talking to people like that? Why am I yelling like that or why did they yell at me like that? And I said to myself, I wasn't like that before. I was a cheerful chap that loves working in a team, like in football. Football is all about the team because you can't achieve the goal without one another, but I was influenced that way and I told myself, don't be like that. Just be a normal guy cooking food and if something is wrong, let's talk about it like normal people in conversation to understand why its wrong and what can we do to make it better and then move on. With a lot of love. It is never personal. But yeah, kitchens that say they don't have toxicity, it's impossible. They are lying, unfortunately, and that is the truth.

Let's lift this a bit. Tell me about some of the dishes on the menu.

Yes, the dishes on the menu. Well we are in the last week of the OG menu, the original menu, so basically it is a mix of memories and things I have seen and flavours I really enjoy eating from my parents and family to other peoples' families, to shows on tv, to experiencing myself in the moment; things like tasty peanuts which I had in the streets of Cambodia and I didn't know what they doing; they were just tossing peanuts with a beautiful seasoning and I ate it and fell in love with it. That's one of the starting snacks you'll get and I just call it Tasty Peanuts. To dishes like Hinava of Borneo which is something that I don't think is something that anyone has ever seen, but is very familiar. It is like ceviche, or kinilaw, but it all happened because of an abundance of things; an abundance of lime, ginger, chilli and fish. That is on the menu and working that with the season, nature and whatever is beautiful right now in Victoria.

I think a lot of places in the world are blinded by what has always been classic. I think they should open their minds and their eyes to what is actually beautiful out there. The other day in springtime I was walking around Merri Creek and there were so many white garlic flowers. I know what it is but people were asking me what I was doing and I told them it was garlic flowers, so instead of buying garlic, you can use garlic flowers. It is an added component that nature is offering you. The more people know, the better, I guess. All the dishes here are just re-imagined and re-interpreted but it is nothing to do with challenging the classic. I guess it is just about trying to show you a different perspective and an open-mindedness about quintessential dishes and staples.

Is it hard to move on to a new menu?

It is hard. But I know that I will always bring it back. This will always be my repertoire because every dish was created with a purpose because it has to merge and connect with me inside. I need to have emotional feelings with the dish. I don't just want to create dishes that make money. I have to just create a dish. I have an emotional feeling towards the dish whenever I create it. The reason why I love this cooking world is because of that. And eating is a really big part of it too. I really enjoy eating, but there is another sense to it; a level of touch and spirituality, a spiritual factor to it. That's why I do this.

You are very generous with how much you tell us and I feel really honoured that you have shared so much with me and with the others as well. You are very open, which is amazing.

Thank you so much. I hope I can inspire, or at least get people to be more open-minded about their own cuisine. It doesn't have to be Asian. But luckily Melbourne is doing it so well. But I also want to help the immigrants because I am a former immigrant and I know how hard it is. I just want to tell them not to give up, but to keep on going. I struggled so much, I nearly got deported numerous times. I had so many reasons to fail IELTS, the English test, but just keep doing what you are doing and trying and putting in as much effort as you can. If you envision it, it can just happen. That's what I am trying to do. It is so much all at once. I think I have a responsibility and I am more focussed on trying to inspire the immigrants. Australia is a melting pot; it isn't just one culture. It is crazy to be in Australia and you have all 196 countries; people from there coming here. It is insane to have that in a city or a state in Australia. It is amazing to be able to call Australia home to be able to do what I am doing, to be able to meet the people I am meeting right now and to be able to cook my own food. I have learned all these techniques to be able to paint other peoples' picture and now I guess I have the paintbrush and I am painting a big picture and hopefully it can inspire other people; people who want to become chefs, people who are struggling being chefs, in their careers, in their life, with Australian citizenship or permanent residency or a visa and telling them that if they keep going with it, they can get somewhere with this picture, don't leave the industry, please.

I love that, but be gentle on yourself, it can't all fall on your shoulders. I think you are an amazing role model to others, but make sure you use your own support team because that's a lot.

It is. It has been crazy. I never wanted to be a head chef. I just wanted to cook food. Being a head chef, I'll give it a go. But if it doesn't work out, I won't force it, I'll try. If I'm not meant to be a head chef, its ok.

Absolutely. There are many chapters in our books.

I don't need to be a head chef to be happy. What I know is that I want to cook good food and make people smile through food. And whatever it is, that's my goal; cooking food and making people happy. That's the reason why I did it first. Getting influenced by awards or stars or top restaurants and all these names, they are just distractions. They are not the real reason why everyone does this everyone who is in the food game because they know how powerful food can be. Its not because you can make gels or aerated chocolate foams – that's really fun – but the whole reason we do it is because it is just a beautiful world. It is similar to the beautiful game of soccer. That's why I fell in love with it. It is actually just so beautiful, this food. We can eat and talk and build relationships and friendships from it.

Miss Mi, Melbourne