A visit to is like going through the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but without all the coats to push through to get to the magical place. Graham Hill and Georgina Russell have managed to distil the very essence of the neighbourhood bars of Paris and Madrid and brought them to Melbourne, changing their lives in the process and, I like to think, slightly changing ours as a result.
Graham, I was having a think while I was driving here, not that it’s far, I just live up the road.
A short think.
True! I was thinking about how I’ve described Smithward to other people as a portal to Paris, and for a French teacher, of course, any thing that makes me feel as though I’ve been transported to Paris is always a good thing. So it’s like going through the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but you don’t have any coats to push through. You have really captured what it means to enjoy beautiful flavours and quality products in the same way that little places in France and Spain do. What was your journey to this point, two and a half years after opening?
And there were five years planning before that. I’m glad you mentioned feeling as though you are transported when you’re here because that was exactly what we wanted it to be. It actually all started when we lived in London and would go to Paris a fair bit and we were sitting in a wine bar that we had fallen in love with over the course of the evening and we said that if we ever lived in Paris, this would be our local and we’d come here every night. Then we thought, well, we’re not going to live in Paris, our French is terrible.
Over the course of the three weeks traveling around Spain and France, we kept coming back to the conversation about this wine bar. We talked about how we couldn’t have that as our local, so we should open our own local. By the end of the three weeks, we had talked ourselves into it. We had no hospitality background, whatsoever. Well, I did some short order cooking when I was a teenager, but the first glass of wine I ever poured for someone was our opening night. It was a real shot in the dark, but yes, it was very much inspired in Paris and in Madrid, especially, that was where we got the idea for cooking and preparing all the food behind the bar and keeping it simple.
Most of the places we dearly loved in Madrid seemed to be run and owned by a little old man. That’s the aspiration. One day I’ll be that little old man behind the bar with a bow tie. There seemed to be so many places over there that weren’t just trying to be authentic, they were authentic. They felt as though they were family run and possibly handed down from generation to generation. They weren’t there because someone had crunched numbers or had seen a trend or whatever.
We wanted to do this as a lifestyle change as much as possible, because it was about changing our lives and doing something we enjoyed. The thing about the Paris and Madrid experiences we had was that it was simple, in that we would be eating the simplest thing and think, wow, there are only two ingredients, it’s amazing. Where did they get this?
It’s wonderful, isn’t it? I’ve just been reading a book my mother gave me based on an American journalist who falls in love with a French guy and ends up living in Paris and then Provence. Initially I was dubious, but the couple, he has a PhD and works as a consultant in the cinema industry and she’s a journalist and they opened an ice cream shop celebrating the flavours of Provence. They’ve won awards and opened shops in Paris and Marseilles. But anyway, the way the writer talks about food and going to the market and discovering the new seasons strawberries or chatting to the cheese lady about a particularly gooey cheese, reminded me of when I lived in France and that absolute joy people have for the new season’s ingredients and quality products. I’m not saying that joy isn’t here as well, but it was perhaps a time in my life when I had time to appreciate it more and I need to get back to that. So it’s lucky that we have people like Georgina and you who understand the joy and want to share that.
We had five years of planning and rewriting our business plan over and over; it was the most impressive business plan you have ever seen, but some of the things that we didn’t anticipate that would be highlights are having someone sitting on this side of the bar and I’m prepping food and turn around and serve it to them, pour them a wine and get that instant feed back of them saying it’s amazing or overhearing them saying that to whoever they are with. People have a genuine passion for what they are experiencing and for some reason we didn’t think that far down the vision of what we were going to do. We knew we’d be serving food and wine to people but we hadn’t really thought about what happens after that. That’s been a totally unexpected delight and it really keeps you going and gives you a boost.
It’s nice that you can be…well, not at the coalface…
At the really small oven place…[laughs]
Yes! You’re right where it’s happening. The chefs in the big kitchens don’t necessarily get to experience that and they might read something through social media or journalism, but it’s nice to hear it firsthand. I caught up with a French friend last night and she was talking about how complicated New Zealanders and Australians make food and that, as a French woman, she is happy to have a piece of cheese, a cucumber and a tomato. Have you had to train, or educate, the people coming in here, or do people get the simplicity concept?
Most people get it. We do have people who come in and still hope for, I guess, a traditional Australian experience where you’ve got everything and you can get chips on the side and all that. We’ve never had anyone leave because we can’t offer them that. When people walk in, you can twig whether they need it slightly more explained. I remember someone coming in and wanting dinner and wine, and saying that all we had was cheese. I told them that yes, we do have cheese, but we also have charcuterie. You could make a dinner of just our cheeses. The sour dough bread has just come out the oven an hour ago, so you’ve got the freshest bread you could possibly have. They ended up having a ball.
Absolutely. It’s a little bit of a celebration of the French institution of the aperitif. I really like that idea that quite often in France you’ll be invited to someone’s house for an apéro, knowing that the host isn’t making dinner, but there will be snacks and drinks, and quite often you end up staying the whole evening anyway.
It’s a sign of a job well done when people come in and say, oh we’re just coming in for a glass of wine and three hours later, they’re still here and they’ve tried everything on the menu. That’s a good moment.
I sound like one of those really annoying people who say, if you’re not enjoying your life, just change it, and I realise that it’s not that simple but we have actually done it. I don’t often step back and think, but we have actually changed our lives and made that big jump.
Are you fussy about your products?
Yes. We take a great deal of care, especially with the cheeses. We work with Olivia at Harper and Blohm in Essendon. We curate the cheeses. I know which wines I’d like to get and then we think about the cheeses that will work with that. The charcuterie is all low preservatives and low sulphites, and that’s important to us. The Raclette is our feature dish and is made from organic milk from Timboon, made by a third generation French cheesemaker down in Geelong.
[my eyes widen]
Yes. You look amazed, You should see the faces of French people who come in here. They can’t believe it’s Australian. The local thing is really important to us as well. We make sure all of our wines are Victorian. We like the locality to flow through into the food as well. I think we are probably the only place that sources all of our wines by hitting the road and going out and meeting the wine makers. My wife and I go out once a month on Monday and Tuesday and drive through Victoria and find the smallest possible winemakers you can find who are doing really good stuff so we buy all our wine direct and know all our winemakers and we like that.
It’s European influenced but we’re doing it with Victorian food and wine.
I think that’s perfect. I was chatting to Peter Jo, or Kimchi Peter as he’s known – he has just opened Shik in the city – and he was saying there’s this idea that if you’re doing, say, Korean food, it either has to be authentic Korean or it’s fusion, but he has a different view of things than that. He wants to use local ingredients but Korean techniques. We haven’t really allowed for that in our way of referencing food. When we talk about food, we feel the need to pigeonhole everything, but I think it’s important to remember that in those other countries, using local, seasonal produce was where it started and is what made them “authentic”, so I think we need a different approach to how we refer to a style of cooking or food preparation like yours or Peter’s.
Occasionally someone will come in and ask if have any French wines and I tell them that I don’t but that we have these fantastic Victorian wines and why don’t they have a taste.
I’ve been following some of your wine sourcing journeys on Instagram and I just went on a road trip myself up through the volcanic plains, but my boyfriend is more into the volcanic aspects than the vineyards we went past.
We had a couple in on Saturday night who have been in a few times and they said that when they went away for Easter to the Pyrénees, they did a trip based on our Instgram and went to the wineries we went to.
That’s cool. You’re an influencer!
Yes and it’s very nice.
You create and cook behind the bar.
Everything happens behind the bar. This is the kitchen, which is actually smaller than my kitchen at home, which is hilarious, so I’m preparing food for 50 people in that space. I always like it when people ring and ask whether our kitchen is still open. I look around and say, yes, it is.
I do as much preparation during the day as possible. All the wine bar stuff gets moved out of the way and it becomes a prep kitchen. A lot of the things are cooked to order during service. I have a real bee in my bonnet about pastry at the moment and I’ve been doing a lot of handmade puff pastry.
Is that all self-taught?
Yes. I don’t have any qualifications as a chef. My qualifications come from spending a lot of time cooking very intricate dishes at home and making my poor wife wait until 9 at night for dinner because I’m reducing something down once more. I’m a very passionate cook and food person. Fortunately the space and the facilities here channel my aspirations in that area. I have an oven, a couple of induction hotplates, a slicer and a raclette grill so I have to think about what I can do with those. I really like to do, well not classics, but basics that take a lot of time that you wouldn’t bother trying at home. Like double baked triple cheese soufflé. There’s a fair bit of prep work and it’s not something most people would ever attempt at home. But I have a lot of time. I might not have a lot of space or equipment but I have time to focus on those things.
It’s the same with the pastry. Today I’ll prep the pastry for tomorrow’s dish. The sourdough is a three day process from start to bake and it’s seven days a week, so I come in on my days off and do two days work giving the dough some attention.
What’s your latest pastry creation?
We just finished a little cheeky one, a raclette cheeseburger. It was great fun to make. We used premium beef mince from Jonathan’s up the street, a double layer of raclette and a tomato relish and then I wrapped it in our own puff pastry and baked it. So it was like, we’re not going to be flipping burgers but I can bake a burger in the oven to order. We do what I call a sausage en croute, and everyone else calls a sausage roll, but I love doing that because you can really see the lamination in the pastry. It’s layers and layers and layers and it’s almost like a croissant situation. I like experimenting so each time I do it, I’ll up the butter ratio; how much butter can I put in this pastry and have it still hold together? There are a lot of decadent, time consuming to prepare but straightforward dishes.
It’s great that you can do what you like all the time. You’re really living the dream.
Yes we are.
Almost three years on, it was obviously a good decision.
Sometimes we get people in here and I tell them the story I’m telling you when they ask how we got into it and in the back of my head, I sound like one of those really annoying people who say, if you’re not enjoying your life, just change it, and I realise that it’s not that simple but we have actually done it. I don’t often step back and think, but we have actually changed our lives and made that big jump. We do have several regulars who are contemplating becoming winemakers further down the track and want to do the same thing in giving up their steady careers and do something with wine and I am very supportive of them. When you think you’re ready, you’ll know and just go for it.
48 Smith Street, Collingwood