Ioannis Kasidokostas

Hi Yanni, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s nice to be here. It’s so light and bright. Is that why it’s called Aegli? Does that mean light? 

In mythology, it was a goddess name. Usually, it was Zeus or Ares. This lady was always very well dressed and very healthy and bright and dazzling. Her light was radiant. In today’s language, Greeks, when we want to refer to something very elegant, something bright, then we say, for example, for a building, there is aegli in this building. So it’s a reference, and even in school, when we were taught about Greek mythology, this word was just a reference to something very elegant and bright. The building that we have chosen here, it reflects that kind of quality, of elegance and brightness in quality. 

It absolutely does. It’s a beautiful building. It’s big. How many does it seat? 

Well, we can sit with the bar included about 100, but our diners prefer any seating if it’s available, as long as they get good service. Tonight, we have 80 booked. We could put in 90 or 95, but we don’t want our guests to feel rushed. We don’t do two sittings, because of the quality of service, the experience. And that’s for us as well. If we are in a rush, we don’t enjoy it either. Because if we see you enjoying yourself, we’re having a good time too. It’s entertaining for us as well. 

I saw on your Instagram account that hospitality isn’t a career, it’s a culture. Is that from the Greek philoxenia? 

Philoxenia is two words together. It means friendly to a stranger. How can you treat a total stranger that you 99.999% you have never met, and how do you make this this person feel welcome and not a stranger anymore? This is philoxenia. I reckon because Greece is a place of attraction for tourists because of the history and all these things. But now it’s in our DNA, since ancient times. Every door was open for a stranger. People would have someone over, they would feed the person, even a total stranger. Philoxenia was something that was seen in ancient times. It wasn’t tourism back then. I reckon it’s in our DNA. The last 10 years we have seen a boom of proper hospitality, no one is cutting corners. They lift the game. We want our guests to feel special because they are special to us. I always say for our guests, because they haven’t met us before we need to let them know how we think. All the guests could stay home, they could cook a great meal, anyone can cook a great meal. There are books, there are recipes around, we are all resourceful. You can find good ingredients. You can find a way of cooking a great meal, or they could go somewhere else to a different restaurant. But they still have chosen to come here. So we are the lucky ones, not the people at the table to dine with us. This is how we see it. And that’s why we could have another 10 guests last night or another 10 guests tonight, but what for? It won’t change our life. But it will change the way people see the restaurant. It will change our experience of looking after guests. 

I love that, that sounds like a place I want to come to, because I think if you look for light, then you see the light and I feel like with your team, you’re entering into this lovely experience of service, there must be a level of anticipation and excitement for each service. How do you keep that going after many years or even at the end of a week of shifts for you and your staff?

The team is equally important as our guests. Very important. Without the team and without our guests, nothing exists. Standing in the middle, I must make everyone happy. I must. How do we keep them happy? We need to always reward them. There should be always acknowledgement of what they do for us. Wage-wise and then our relationship. We are not strangers anymore. We spend more time together than what we spent with our family. So it has to be a nice environment. If someone tells me that the team is great, I tell them, they must know. So that’s a fuel, the feedback is a fuel. So if you have something nice, say it, if you have something, anything to say, say it, that’s fuel. Even something negative, say it to us. It’s a fuel for us to ignite our knowledge. How can we be better? At any restaurant, any time of the year, any year of our career, we are absolutely happy when we get feedback and that keeps us going. Even a negative comment, that’s a lesson. We should use this little negative comment as fuel to start something. The initiative of getting things done properly. Standards, yes, they are there, but it can be in a nice environment. We see our guests so far, two and a half months that we are open, they see what we do. And this is unique. And this is why we keep going, this is the only reason that we keep going, otherwise we’re all tired. 

That’s right. And I’ve heard, too, that you like to come out and meet your guests and you’re very present on the floor as much as you are in the kitchen. I actually had a friend who came for dinner here last night and she said she loved it and that the chef was really lovely. And I have a Greek colleague and I was actually asking her how I might pronounce your name. And she said she hadn’t heard of Aegli but that there is a really great Greek restaurant in Carnegie could Sowl, which is also yours. That’s a restaurant that really has got an excellent reputation for hospitality and for really great food. Why did you need to open Aegli? When did you get to the point where you thought, I need something new? 

Well, part of being a creative person is that we want to do something new. We can’t deny it. If someone think that we want to open up a new business just to open up a new business, that is not it. Creative people, we get bored. I didn’t get bored because it was enough to do that all, and we still do a lot at Sowl. Sowl has a great audience there with our guests expecting to receive the best of us. And we also receive the best of them as well, because they are constantly coming. And now it’s been seven years, despite overcoming COVID. We didn’t open for takeaway, because I didn’t think my guests deserved from us food in a takeaway container. Otherwise, what do we have? If we don’t have this, there is no existence of hospitality. Hospitality over a window, get the food for us to survive? Yes, we survive. Some of us hard, some of others harder. We were all in the same boat. But the logic behind why we opened Aegli, it was because I had to open another restaurant. But I had to open a Greek restaurant, because if I would start my first restaurant as this, people wouldn’t understand where I’m coming from. We had to earn their respect. We had to gain the trust. And how do we gain the trust? By working hard? So if they see you working hard and they see you are constant, you are persistent, then people understand what you do. It takes time. If it took seven years, that’s it, it might take 15, it doesn’t matter. Patience build the world. 

When you move into a new venue, how do you get the feel for the flow of the kitchen and the front of house? What do you do to make it feel like home? 

Synchronisation is everything. I think it’s the feedback and the interaction between people. It’s not necessarily back of house, front of house. What I’ve seen in many businesses, they separate them, where they shouldn’t. Because if I make a mistake, everyone is affected. It’s a chain. And a chain reaction is not far from reality. If someone makes a mistake, then everything falls. So what do we do? We need to understand that we are depending on the rest of the team. I’m the owner. but I must act as an employee, because I am an employee. I work here, I get paid here. So if I want to ask for something, I always ask with understanding. It must be this way. It can’t be another way. And yes, I do service. We do prep. We have an excellent team of very talented people creating the food here. The idea, yes, is mine, the plan is mine. The vision is mine. But without our guests here, without you here, without the team here, what can be created? It would be all an idea. It would be all just a letter to ourselves, what we wanted, even what we intended to do without anything happening, without any action, without any quality of sharing all this glory with everyone. 

Synchronisation is everything. I think it’s the feedback and the interaction between people. It’s not necessarily back of house, front of house. What I’ve seen in many businesses, they separate them, where they shouldn’t. Because if I make a mistake, everyone is affected. It’s a chain. And a chain reaction is not far from reality. If someone makes a mistake, then everything falls. So what do we do? We need to understand that we are depending on the rest of the team. I’m the owner. but I must act as an employee, because I am an employee.

Ioannis Kasidokostas, Aegli

Yes. And the food, I always like to hear about the food. On your website, it talks about modern Greek, but with a sense of tradition. How do you get that balance?

I grew up in Athens, and I left Athens in 2011. Up until 2011, I was eating this food. I grew up in a place where food was imported from the rural areas. Because Athens is just a city. In Athens, there are people who were born there, but there are also people who came from other places, outside of the big cities and they brought something with them: they brought traditional of things, they brought a trail of experience in how to cook bread, how to make desserts, how to cook meat, anything. So what we did back then, even in a one Michelin star restaurant, we got this very, very traditional recipes with food, like anywhere around the world. It’s very regional; in some places they do this way, in another place, they do it a bit different. Or they they name it differently. We sat down and we started looking in a more spherical way, which we don’t necessarily expect our diners to do that, we give them the product ready to try, and then we’ll have the conversation, and that’s why it helps when I am treating my guests. So, for example, there is a very, very traditional dish. Youvarlakia, we call it, and they are meatballs with rice cooked in stock. It’s a soup, and then avgolemono, egg whites, old school. Mums are doing it, and then it’s it’s a winter dish. So what we did, all we have is a meatball with rice and a soup. But how about we treat our diners with something unique? Let’s make a mince with fish, then add the rice, make a psarosoupa, fish soup and serve and cook them in the psarosoupa and serve it to our guests with avgolemono. There is on the current menu, which is 5% of what we will do, because baby steps in a restaurant introduction: arrangements, produce that guests understand, and they want to learn more, which is great. So far, they want more.

There is a story behind every dish. Why is this? Why is that? Why do we make kopanisti? How long does kopanisti take to make? 90 days from fresh cheese and why fig and olive tapenade? How about we wed the two very opposite fruits of the land that gives us generously and then we’re making something that gives you a nice dish to start with hot spelt bread. There is a dish coming on the menu. The story behind it was my grandfather was a fisherman who sold his fish at the market in the centre of Athens. There were live prawns. And he said, “Do you want to try?” I said, “Yes, I want to try.” He said, “Not cooked prawns.” I said, “Yes, I want to.” I didn’t want to say no to him because he would start having a laugh. And he said, okay, try. And then on his other hand, he was holding something like a nectarine, and he gave me some prawn and he said, which is sweeter? I said, ” The nectarine. He said, “Wrong.” He gave me the prawn, the raw prawn, the flesh, and he gave me one piece of the nectarine. He said, “Now eat because you need to understand.” So the dish that is coming here is raw prawn, marinated, and we will do a nectarine consommé. It’s a very rare thing. Fisherman were eating stone fruits, and nothing else on the boat, and whatever good, fresh fish they could have, they would cut it raw or even some pipis, whatever they would have. We should enjoy what we have. Food is one of the most entertaining things we have in our life. Then we have the wine makers, all this effort. Unreal. People are working day and night for us to enjoy a glass of wine. All this research. They do nothing short of what a chef can do. Very scientific, that’s so fascinating. Why shouldn’t we do that for Greek cuisine? Because Greek cuisine deserves better. 

Absolutely. I feel like Greek cuisine is having a moment globally. There are some very fine dining Greek restaurants and in New York and London. But certainly, I feel like very often at the moment, there’s a new Greek restaurant opening here, so there’s your restaurant, Aegli, and then there’s the Pontian Club and there’s other restaurants. Why is that? What’s happened? Because Greek food has been around for a long time. And as you say, perhaps there’s been a misconception about what Greek food is. 

Yes, the misconception is on us, on the restaurateurs. If we don’t explain, if we don’t treat you with something, if we don’t pour a lot of wine for you to try, what is Greek wine? Suggest a couple of things, that’s on us. The misconception is a result of us ignoring where the cuisine is coming from, where the roots are. Now, if we get these roots and we create a menu and we give it to you, and we earn the respect, then we can show you further. In the museum of Athens, there is a little Hibachi grill. That’s 1100 BC, 1300 BC. And little skewers bronze skewers and they were doing mince of fish or meat and they were cooking it over charcoal. So what is modern? The Minoans were preserving seafood and calamari or octopus in molasses. What is modern? What do we think that we do, which is revolutionary? The revolution is that we show what the ancient people did, how they ate, and how we adapted in this kind of modern cuisine that still tastes of Greece, still tastes of memories, because food is memories too. And we present to our guests. This is the reason that Aegli opened. We didn’t want to open a restaurant that is going to make money, of course, it’s a business, we have to ask for a return unfortunately, and this is money. But how about we do the numbers before we open the door and when we treat our guest, we forget about the numbers and we tell a story. Why is Greek cuisine this? Why has the greatness been misinterpreted? 

Do you think it’s because when people emigrate to a new country, they’re seeking those cosy memories of home and so things like Moussaka and Spanakopita and those kinds of things, that taverna kind of food is reminiscent of home, and so then the people who live in that country get the idea that’s what Greek food is, for example. 

Yes. Well, I love a good moussaka. Who doesn’t? But Greek cuisine is more than Moussaka. Moussaka for Greeks, way before an educated chef came after he studied French cuisine, it was a stack of mince, and eggplant and that was it. And then bechamel came and the other things that we wanted to put. I wouldn’t serve Moussaka here. Because you can make it at home. Why should you have something here that you can make at home or you can find elsewhere. That’s the creative part, not necessarily the part that we want to present you something new. I can make a good moussaka, but I’ll keep it for myself. Why should I treat my guests with something that they can easily make?

 

Where did it all start for you? Did you always know that you wanted to be a chef and be in hospitality? 

Not really. I have memories since very, very early. People laugh at that because it’s very strange. We went to a village far away from Greece. It was August night. Someone cooked a rabbit, stifado, like a stew with caramelised onions and finished with vinegar. And I liked it so much, I ate so much. And then when we returned home after this little short holiday, I asked Mom, how do we make this? And then we started talking about how do we make this, how do we make that? I was a little child. I couldn’t even imagine that I wanted to cook for some. All I wanted was to eat. Up until I went to school, I wasn’t friends with okra or eggplant. It was too fancy for me. I was very fussy. And then just before I finished high school, I found out that there’s a sister school in Athens. And then I said, okay, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going there. It’s happening. And then it all started. It was always a honest, very well cooked meal at home, we were never in a good financial position at home. My dad was working three jobs, like crazy. Still, things were expensive, a family of four. Mum and dad were providing just enough. Sometimes it wasn’t enough, but it was always a little meal, well cooked at home, and then the fish market, I’ve seen the good producers, how it should be. That helped me understand how it should be: what’s good stuff, what is not, because in the centre of this market of Athens, besides there is a meat market, and across the road, there is a vegetable market: the farmer’s market. And then I’ve seen all these cuts of fresh food at my disposal, I could choose anything. Then when I started working in restaurants, at work, I was lucky to work with some of the more celebrated chefs in Greece. And when I told them that I had connections in the markets, their eyes lit up, and they said, “Okay, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go buy good stuff.” I felt good. And I said, okay, this is important. The good products, all this love of going and seeing what is good in the market and grabbing it. Of course, today, because we live like kings and we are spoiled, they all come to our cool room, it’s all dropped off from our suppliers. But it’s good quality. Do we deserve to be fully spoiled? No, we shouldn’t. So we should be chasing for produce. We shouldn’t be chasing. Pricing is good to chase up, but is it consistent? The quality is consistent. Does it reflect the pricing? Yes, no. The thing you asked me before about how we keep going. There’s always something to keep us going. 

When did you come to Australia? 

2011.

Oh, Me too. I came from New Zealand. What made you come here? 

The financial crisis. Which started in 2006 for Athens. Because whatever it’s happening when a crisis, when the financial things change, then you get the first scent in the big cities where the big population is. 

And what were your thoughts on arriving in Melbourne? Was it easy to start working here? Did you have to adjust some ideas you had? 

Well, it’s not about adjustment. I knew why I was doing this. I was determined that I’m here to stay. That’s it. Because that was the option. Because I left at 32. 32, you’re not young. You can’t plan the plan B. That was the plan. I would stay. So, no matter what. Was it easy? What is easy in our life? You live in a city, you move to a different city, and it’s still hard. Because it’s a different place. I found it hard. I found it strange. I found it different. But I found a way of using all these negative things as my fuel for something positive. I let them inspire me in a positive way so I can keep going. And I say, okay, I can be better about this. I can be a better myself. The better me will come only with hard work. Part of it is patience, persistence, trying again and again and again for myself, for my family, for whatever I believe, I should be giving. 

And those connections with suppliers when you come from somewhere else. 

You don’t have them. 

So where do you start with that? 

Well, listening. Learning. A new book. How do you start? You can’t start from the end. You have to start from start. You have to read the first page, the second page, the third page. Sometimes you have to go back, reread it. Do you understand it? Did you get it? No, go back. Make mistakes? Learn from them. I’ve always made mistakes. I was young when I started in the business and I was working as a chef. So I must learn. It’s a good opportunity. 

Do you find all the produce here that you want for the dishes you’re making? 

Yes. A couple of things come from Greece. Some people say, Greek food cannot be done with different produce to Greece. It can. What is the perfect example? Perfect example is Aegli? It’s not about isolating our brain in an idea, picture or a story that we want to believe in. We all want to believe that. This is the best product, but it is not the best, there is another way. There is always a way. It depends what you are ready to do. Pork is lovely in Greece. Yes, but how about Australian pork? Very fresh. It tastes very, very good because it’s good pork. It’s not fatty. You can see the fat, you can separate it, you can brine it, you can throw it in molasses, you can throw it on the grill, close to the flame so it gets charred and smoky. You can’t just get a piece of meat, or a tomato and make it taste like a Greek tomato. The Greek tomato is sitting under the sun, full sun, three whole months. We don’t get three whole months of sun here, but how about we buy and serve tomatoes for one month per year, when they are only good? 

Yes, imagine that. That’s the way to do it, doesn’t it? To enjoy it while it’s there. 

Why should I whinge about the product when I don’t know when I enjoy the product? 

I know. I feel like we talk a lot about seasonality, but then we still want to eat tomatoes all year round. 

We are just spoiled. All of us. 

That’s right. I’m really aware that it’s Friday and it’s getting close to service. I’ve just got one more question. I feel very lucky to be talking to you on a Friday afternoon. You’ve had a lot of great experience, what would your advice be to a young person starting out in the industry? 

Working in hospitality, it’s not a job, okay? So don’t expect next Monday the pay cheque to get you going, it won’t. Have a vision. Start from nothing. The vision, you should see it coming. You should see it coming, because you can’t expect Monday’s pay cheque to reward you for your greatness of love, of what you do. For someone who chooses to do hospitality, not to work in hospitality, because it’s not a job, okay? Someone who chooses the lifestyle or hospitality, there is love in this person. There’s a lot of love in this person. So to get the love out of this person, we work with young people. So to get the love out of them is just make sure that you reward them and tell them that what they do is just the start. And it’s not Monday that will change their life. 

Aegli, 226 Coventry Street, South Melbourne