Funny story. I actually met Ha in the spa pool in my apartment building. He was talking to some other neighbours in the pool about restaurants and about his cooking school, Otao Kitchen, which obviously piqued my interest. I told him about Conversation with a Chef and very happily for me, he agreed to talk to me. I had walked past his original cooking school venue on Victoria Street so many times and had often thought about doing a class or having a chat to the chef. On the day I walked down to talk to Ha, it was 32 and I hadnt realised that he had new premises, still on Victoria Street, but a little further down. I was a molten version of myself by the time I got there, but the school was cool and high ceilinged and quite beautiful. Ha had a big bottle of sparkling water for me and generously gave me a lot of his time and told me his story. Ha is originally from Hanoi in Vietnam and pursued cooking studies in Wellington, New Zealand before coming to Melbourne and working at a hiking lodge on the Great Ocean Road for six years. He now runs a highly successful cooking school in Abbotsford. I'm now booked in for a dumpling Master Class next week and I can't wait.
Hello, Ha.
Hello Jo, how are you?
I didn't realise that you had moved. It's a beautiful space.
We actually moved to this site in July and then got shut down because of Covid lockdown and so we are now back to some sort of normalcy. Our last venue was very small.
Yes, this is much bigger. What was here before?
It was a medical centre. I gutted it all and I actually ran the project, so I am very proud of myself. It is one of the things I learned when I was in New Zealand. I renovated in Christchurch and in Wellington. It is so expensive there, so you have to try and do everything yourself.
Well, it's a DIY nation.
That's what I learned very quickly because you can't afford to do it otherwise. But thats how I learned those skills.
It is interesting that all these things you do in life, you never know where they are going to lead and then that has helped you with this place, so that's great.
I also project managed the first venue. And I did some renovating at the hiking lodge I was working at on the Great Ocean Road. It is good to be able to do things for yourself but sometimes it is stressful. This was a big project, worth about $450 000, so it was a lot of work.
It would be and that is a whole other level. Often when I speak to chefs and I mainly talk to head chefs, we talk about the fact that not only are they thinking about the food, but they are thinking about food costs and now you are thinking about renovating and building as well. At least you get it the way you want it.
Thats exactly right. One of the issues with cooking classes is that you need the numbers; it's a numbers game. You can't have a cooking class for just two or three people. People want to have a bit of community and to be social. More people are better except that Covid doesn't help.
When I first started the business, I thought that eight or ten people would be perfect, but thats not possible in the real world. When you are bigger, you have staff and so more support.
What's the biggest size of class you can do?
We can do 40.
That's pretty hectic. Are you up the front teaching and then do you have other staff circulating?
Yes, the other staff help out. We have a camera and we project what the chef is doing onto the tv.
Ok. Well, let's just start back at the beginning. You were born in Hanoi?
That's right.
It's such a beautiful city. I was there in 2014. I did a cooking class in Hoi An, but I loved Hanoi. I think because I'm also a French teacher and you can see the French influence there. It's a big city.
It is. I was born there and my parents are still there and most of my family. I am the only one who went off. I liked to travel a bit. I was able to save some money and go to New Zealand to a cooking school.
Did you do a bit of cooking in Hanoi before you went?
Vietnam is a bit funny because cooking is not considered a classy job, it's a labour job. But I worked for some NGO's, not for profit organisations, as a translator and interpreter on a couple of projects in the north-west of Vietnam. I wanted to work in hotels and food was something that I thought would suit me and I went to Wellington, New Zealand to a cooking school.
Why Wellington out of all the other possible places you could learn to cook?
My former partner worked at the International School in Hanoi and a lot of kiwis taught in Hanoi and a few of them worked for NGOs. The New Zealand Embassy only has three staff, but we knew them all, and that was a good connection. After September 11, it made a lot of people want to go home. We wanted a place where we could enjoy ourselves and where I could go to school, so we decided on New Zealand because we had a few friends there.
I know that New Zealand food has really come a long way in the last 20 years and Wellington has some amazing restaurants. What was it like in 2003?
Wellington is a great place and one of the reasons I chose Wellington is that we knew people who had relatives who worked in the food industry. I went to the Wellington Institute of Technology, or WelTec. It was a good school, but one of the things I found hard that had nothing to do with coming from a big city to a smaller one and leaving family behind, but I had a Scottish teacher and I couldn't understand a thing! When I was in Wellington the food culture really picked up and the restaurant I worked for when I finished school was at the Intercontinental Hotel and it was the restaurant of the year which is similar to a chef hat over here. Over time, the food got better, it was still quite expensive though, and Wellington is such a small compact city that it has more eateries per capita than New York City.
That's interesting, I didn't know that. And New Zealand was the forerunner of really good coffee. I know Australia thinks it was, but it was New Zealand.
Be careful about comparing with Melbourne, you'll have rivalry!
I remember in London and in New York, for a long time you couldn't get really good coffeewell, what we considered good coffee and Wellington was a hub for eateries and for really good coffee. The weather though!
The weather is interesting; but on a good day, it's great. We had a friend who had a house on Oriental Parade with 97 steps up the hill and on a good day you can see the harbour and there was a really good view.
Yes and there are all the little bays around from Wellington. It's very lovely. So you did that and then what happened?
I started a cafe with a former business partner in Mount Cook, a suburb of Wellington. But then we went straight into the economic crisis, well not crisis, but in 2007, the economy wasn't great. I don't think Australia felt it, I think Kevin Rudd pulled money out but New Zealand went into a bit of a dip and I thought it was a bit difficult to keep going so after a year I got rid of that cafe and went down to Christchurch. My partner got a house on the hill which I renovated, on Cashmere Hill.
Ah yes, the fancy part of town.
Then we spent nine months renovating but then I felt like new adventures and I had visited Melbourne and I liked it. But I thought I would come here and go into training rather than working as a chef but I didn't get the job as a trainer for a facility in North Melbourne. The job down at Great Ocean Road for the hiking lodge came up. They were looking for chefs and managers. It was a very remote position. So now we are looking at me living in Hanoi which is so busy and then going to New Zealand which was alright but then going to the Great Ocean Road, it was dead quiet. It was ok and I started to enjoy the country and sometimes I didn't see anyone for two weeks.
What kind of food were you doing? You were cooking for people who were hiking?
That's right. Three meals a day plus morning tea and afternoon tea and canapes. The lodge only catered for 10 people and they paid about $2300 for a four day hike per person. I worked there for six years. It was only three hours from Melbourne and I got three months off in the winter which was a really good thing so I could travel to Europe, the US and all over Asia, so I really enjoyed working down there.
People kept asking mewell, some funny hikers had paid for the hike but didn't want to walk, but they wanted me to teach them cooking. It was a bit hard because the facility wasn't set up for cooking classes. But then I had the thought in my head.
Time was going on and I had been away for 10 years, and my Mum and dad were pressuring me to go back to Vietnam and I thought I would go back there and maybe do a cooking school there. So I wanted to polish the concept of the cooking classes and I did that while I was down there. In about 2014, I thought I would start, and the owners of the lodge were really supportive and I didn't work for them three days a week and I would drive down to Melbourne and work on the business. I leased the building down the road, but I didn't know many people in Richmond then. I got the building, gutted it and turned it into a cooking school.
At first, I wondered what I was doing and thought I should be working for someone and not for myself. The first two years I didn't make any money at all and spent all my savings. But after the third year, I started to make some money and feel more confident.
You can love what you are doing, but if you can't live off it, then that becomes a stress. That's very tricky.
It is very tricky. But then many customers started coming and they would tell other people. Then I learned about marketing the product. Nowadays I have a bit more money and can get specialists to do that kind of thing but then I didn't understand websites and SEOs, it is quite complex. Slowly, we built up our staff and now we have five staff which is good to have that support. I still work, but I have support.
It's not just Vietnamese food that you teach, is it?
No, we started with Vietnamese because it is close to me and because we are on Victoria Street, but nowadays we have Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Korean, mostly Asian, because they are more popular, but we also have Spanish, Italian and we have started Mexican and South American because that is where people want to travel, but can't.
The teaching side of things, did that come naturally to you? How to convey what you are doing?
Yes. Dylan, one of my staff, does a lot of teaching too. At first it was a bit difficult, but naturally you want to show them the techniques and help them to do it. It's just the same as in a restaurant except the customer cooks for themselves.
I love the energy of people. People are quite curious and they share ideas and people like people. Covid has made us funny about that; we are not supposed to like people, but that’s how we are. There’s a good atmosphere in the classes. I like that.
I know you did try to change careers, but here you are, what is it about cooking and hospitality that you enjoy and that has kept you in it?
I love the energy of people. People are quite curious and they share ideas and people like people. Covid has made us funny about that; we are not supposed to like people, but that's how we are. Since I was young, my mum had a food shop in Hanoi and we dealt with customers all the time. When I finished school I would go out there and try to sell the vegetables and the fruit, mostly the fruit because out in the heat, fruit doesn't last long so you have to push it as hard as you can to sell, otherwise it would spoil. Mum taught me when I was ten years old that I wasn't trying to sell only one case, I had to sell three. In the same way,I do charge people a lot of money but I give them a lot. They can drink; well, we don't encourage them to be drunk, but they can drink whatever they like so that they feel comfortable. That's included in the package. Some people might have one glass and others might like three. There's a good atmosphere in the classes. I like that.
Do you all eat together at the end or do they take it away?
It's a combination of both. Normally people cook in a couple and we set out the ingredients set for the couple. They cook it and we divide it into different courses. Normally we get them to prep everything first because it is easier then and usually as soon as they have their glass of wine, it is harder to tell them what to do. We would say that they should prep and then cook and then they can eat and whatever they don't eat, they can take home. It depends on the menu, but they might have two or three rounds and that makes it quite social.
What's an example of a menu?
If you go to a Thai class, obviously you make the curry paste, that is very important to understand and make. Then you move on to prep all the other things and then cook the entree, eat it and have a glass of wine. Then they go on and cook their main. While they cook their main, which will be a curry, and while that is cooking, we show them how to make the papaya salad and they can eat it then or wait until the curry is ready and then eat together. They have wine and beer and they can ask any questions they have.
How long is a class?
About two and a half to three hours.
How do bookings work?
We have set classes. We run a class on Thursday and two on Friday, then we have three on Saturdays and Sundays, so we have nine classes minimum. Then we have all the corporate on top of that. At the moment we don't have corporate because they are all on holiday. The corporate classes are usually mid-week. We also have school holiday classes for kids and for charities. On average we run 10 12 classes a week; 150 250 people a week.
That's a lot, isnt it? Are there not many other people around doing what you are doing?
There are. But there are two things when I started looking at the market. There are a few good cooking schools in Australia and we aimed to be up the top there. There are a few cooking schools doing what I call a hobby. That's what I did when I first started. I had very few classes that people could book and I didn't have staff so I couldn't get big numbers. For big numbers, you have to invest in a facility and that's not easy. What we have here is an education centre and to have one of those, you have to do a bunch of things for council requirements and planning and so on. A lot of people run classes from home, so they don't have numbers and because of that, they don't have staff and there can be issues with marketing etc. Cooking classes are no different from restaurants or bars, you require the technical aspects as well. There are also licensing requirements. You can do it from home but then it is risky, say they chop their hand or something falls on them, and you have all these liabilities to worry about. All these things limit people from getting into it.
I think it is a good alternative to opening a restaurant, especially with Covid issues because we can manage the staff and the guest numbers and it is easy for us to manage the experience.
And you're not having late nights, you're in control and you know what you are dealing with.
That's exactly right. I'm done with the thing with the restaurant where you come in and expect to have 50 covers and you end up doing 120. We know what we are entering into here. There is a lot of planning ahead though, but the food cost is less and the experience is better because we know what we are dealing with.
What time does the class start today?
6.30pm
And what are they going to cook?
They are doing dumplings. Dumplings are a very popular class. We do about 40 people a week for dumplings. The second most popular is Japanese and then Vietnamese then Thai. Mexican is getting there. Dylan teaches the Mexican. We haven't done French yet, but we are thinking of designing that. Australians really love to travel and they love cooking; all the cooking shows and so on, that is partly why I thought of the cooking classes.
Every time I have travelled, I have done a cooking class in that place, and it makes me feel more in touch with the food and the culture, rather than just being a tourist and eating the food.
People want to get behind the scene and do things rather than just consume it. During the pandemic, it's sad, but theres not much we can do about it, but in March 2020 we got shut down and I thought we might survive five months, paying our staff and so on until the government support kicks in. At first it was alright because we had nothing to worry about because the whole world was shut down, but we spent some time simplifying the menu. Dylan is very good, he is half Japanese, half Canadian, he and I trimmed down the menus and made it very simple for people to go to Coles and Woollies to get ingredients. The first time we did it, people weren't used to doing classes online but the second and third were better and people got used to it and we made as much money online as we do in person and so we survived.
Are they just watching or are they able to ask questions?
We did two classes, one type is Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese and we send them the ingredient list and we describe on a video how they put things together so they have an overview of what will happen in the class and in the class we turn the Zoom on and cook with them and coach them through. People liked it better than YouTube because they can ask questions. The second type was sending kits out. We created four kits: ramen, pasta, dumplings and going native, and sent them out to peoples' homes and then corporates would buy them all and then we would run a zoom showing them how to use the ingredients.
What is 'going native'?
Australian indigenous ingredients which we incorporated into our cooking classes. We are educators and we wanted to tell people how to use different ingredients. Then we did wine tasting and cocktails and gin making as part of the class. That's how we survived the pandemic. And if there are more lockdowns or if these restrictions go on, we can have things to do to keep the staff working.
Good for you. It has brought a whole new meaning to pivot, hasn't it?
I know but it is the same sort of thing except the chef doesnt meet the customer. But at first we had all these cameras and it was very complicated but now we make it simple by using the latest iPad, and the staff can just focus on teaching. It was a challenge to go through but I enjoyed it and I feel lucky to have these facilities. It's all good.
393 Victoria Street, Abbotsford