Jae Bang

Hi, Jae nice to see you. Thanks for talking to me today. I know chefs are always super busy and you have a really tight week as well. When I spoke to you in 2022, Freyja wasn't open on the weekend.

We open on Saturdays now. Our operation is six days. We used to close on Saturday. We did that for a year and we enjoyed our moments of course. But we chose to open on Saturdays for two reasons: firstly because we got requests and the second reason mainly was because of our staff. Previously we used to work five days a week, like most restaurants. The one thing that we have been extremely focused on, and that I have been mentioning since day one is work life balance.

Staff deserve to work, get paid properly, which nowadays is better, but previously our industry has been known for completely the opposite side of that. Our staff only works for four days now. Four shift and that's it. Everyone is off either three days in a row or two days and one day. It gives them, I think, a better feeling of life in general. And I find it very important for the long term. We are very passionate people in general. Like all chefs, you have to be a little bit crazy to do these things. First the hours very often are crazy. Or the intensity of the job; the demands of the physicality, mentality, all these things. Back in the day, I'm not sure how Australia was, but where I was trained in New York or European countries and you look at chefs, oh, they either drink a lot, they're an alcoholic or they're a drug addict. And we don't want that. The industry has to challenge that. If we as an employer don't provide the right environment and the atmosphere for our employees, then we're never going to change. That's the main reason why we started to do the four day working week thing.

I guess that must sit well with you personally. Is it it a Nordic principle as well?

Definitely. I would say the biggest influence that I've had in terms of the cultural side of it and what we have to create in terms of within our workspace environmentally and sustainability wise, is that it is very much a human and community focus. Those factors come from Scandinavian regions. Also during my time over there did make me to think and operate quite differently than how I used to back in the States, in a very positive manner. Previously, I would never have thought about it, to be honest with you. I would say, okay, we work, we get the job done. If the job is not done in the right way too bad. There's no other way to get around. It needs to be done. Otherwise, there's no other way. It doesn't matter how long it takes, what it takes, how hard, none of this matters. Eventually that's not good for my mental health.

The times have changed. We don't want to operate like back in a seventies and eighties French kitchen, where the only person who should speak is the chef and work life balance doesn't really matter. You work your arse off just to contribute. Of course, you want it, you're very hungry, you're young chefs. You just want to get better. You just want to learn more. But for how long? You're burned out.

I think it's also something to do with the generations. Where I was being trained and a lot of the older generation chefs who have been trained like that didn't mind because we thought it was very normal.

It was that 'toughen up' mentality, wasn't it?

Exactly. We used to brag about how long we had worked for the week. Have you worked a hundred hours a week? 110 hours a week? Maybe when you are a very young chef for five years, 10 years max, you can't do that for forever.

Today I was listening to someone who was giving an online presentation. His name is Vince Frost and he has written books about design for life. I found it a really interesting idea. He talks about being intentional in your life. I feel like that's what happens in this group as well, that it's about people coming to work and having a better time. So it's a good place to come to and there is a healthier relationship with work. And as you say, it's not like the seventies where there's a brigade and a chef that's doing all the shouting and people are scared to come to work and scared to make mistakes. It's about living intentionally.

I have learned a lot about that within our company as well. At one point I started to hate the words: work and life balance. Because when you think about it realistically, you don't simply just turn your switch on when you are physically at workspace and then turn yourself off when you leave your workspace. So what's the boundary between your work and life? Very often for us as well, work is part of your life. And if you want to really completely separate work and life, we are not programmed as robots, when I go home, of course I still do a lot of work related stuff, even though I'm not physically there. I'm not talking about checking on my emails and being on a phone call. But at the same time, what I do or what we do here, there is always some kind of connection outside our physical workspace. If you want to completely separate that, I'm not sure if that's even possible. But then if you turn around your thoughts a little bit to a different direction that work is part of your life, but then do you have to feel like you are at work?

We've been trying to really break these boundaries within our restaurant with different things. That contains a lot of bonding time with our team members. That might be for a leisure purpose or an educational purpose. So we are not asking them to be at work, but we are still doing something that is work related. I think this has helped our staff. I have been lucky enough that they stay here for a very long term. Ever since we opened, we still have a lot of core team members who are still with us. And they're very happy to be with us until the right time comes for them. I think it's very important, not only for me, but I see I have a responsibility to continuously maintain this for our team members to make them feel that way. Otherwise what I have been just saying doesn't make any sense if we stop doing that.

Well, it's even interesting to me that you are still here because there are lots of big name restaurants that open with big name chefs who open a restaurant and then they go on to open another restaurant. To be honest, I was surprised that you're still here because, you were headhunted, which is amazing, and I really love that you're still here. I think that's a real testament to the culture that the group wants to create. You've bought into that and you are part of that. Is that an intention you set every day when you come in here? That there are certain things you do to create that culture? Or is it quite natural now?

It's much more natural now. All our seniors and juniors understand it, and it's extremely important that I'm not the only one who's driving this. I can't be only driver. Everyone has to drive. We don't want passengers in the group, unfortunately. At one point they have to drive, they can't only sit at the back to learn how to drive. We would have to give them a key at some point. There are two very big benefits that we get out of it in term of this sort of system: one, we are internally growing our talents to become more involved with not only the small decisions, but eventually the big decisions as well, and two, it automatically creates the sort of culture that we have been trying to strive for since day one.

When you were first described, when you first arrived and you were opening Freyja, people described you as being an accidental chef. I'm intrigued by that because I feel like once you started, once you learnt how to be a chef, then you just went and worked in all these really top end amazing restaurants, which seems really well planned. So, tell me about the accidental part. How did it start for you?

First I didn't intend it to be a chef, as I said. I got a job as a pot washer to make side money and it ended up that that restaurant as a very good one. It was an amazing restaurant, which I didn't know about.

What else were you doing at the time?

I was in high school. I looked at the energy of it and I was shocked when I first thought, okay, I just have to wash some dishes at the restaurant to make some money. I did not expect that level of energy.

Good or bad?

Very good. I was shocked.

And that was in your hometown, Seoul?

Yes, Seoul. As I said, the level of positive energy and the dedication was stunning. I was just sucked into it. Sometime later I told the chef that I wanted to learn to cook. In a way he kind of laughed at me like, as though he was saying, young child, everyone wants to cook. You have no idea.

What kind of food was it?

It was an Italian restaurant. But a very, very good restaurant. His dishes are still among the best ones that I have had. Not just because of my memory, but the detail. He gave them so much attention. At one point he was showing me how to do all these shitty jobs, peeling onions, and stuff like that, but I was really enjoying it and then I moved on. I got really sucked into it. It became, without thinking or planning, permanent. I thought, okay, maybe this is very cool. I really liked it and maybe I wanted to continue. So, I continued.

It's interesting at that point that it's about the energy. It's not really about creativity when you're peeling onions and whatnot. So it must be something about being part of the team and part of that effort of putting up the food. But it's not creativity at that point that drew you in.

No, not for me at least. No, I was just given the job it doesn't matter if it was a cool job or a shitty job or the job that no chef wants to do. It was still new enough for me. I think I really enjoyed everything about it. I was very grateful at how the team received me; okay, this young kid wants to learn, lets see how dedicated he is. I think also partially it's a cultural thing back home, especially in the kitchen. They try to test you a lot. They try to really push you to the limit mentally and physically purposefully. If you don't handle it, you quit, you don't care. But then they were waiting for this moment. I was thinking, if you are trying to break me, try harder. I was young and eager, cocky. I learned a lot from them. Then there was a moment when the owner chef said, look, you're young, you're eager, you're healthy.You're not dumb. The way he was describing it, there's a lot of dumb people who work in the kitchen, but at least you're not on that side. He said if I really wanted to learn, I had to try to learn something more serious than what we do? I thought, what are you talking about? I thought what we were doing was pretty serious. I was sent to Osaka, Japan to his former colleague. It was one of the best restaurants then in Osaka. That's how I ended up working with some really, really talented chefs.

Was that Japanese or was it Italian?

It was a French influenced Japanese. They had three Michelin stars. They've had three stars for a while now. Ever since he opened, he was just a total maniac. So crazy. It was just insane. The restaurant was so aggressive. But so precise. It was just totally crazy.

What was the takeaway? When you say you learned a lot, was that precision knife skills, flavours as well?

Not only the skillset and the knowledge side of it, but I think it's discipline. If you order a bunch of herbs, do you really treat this herb properly? But then it goes to every single ingredient. And as well as ingredients, it goes to equipment, it goes to every single little thing that you handle, including your staff, customer, customer service, everything.Because, if I'm not mistaken, he came from a mechanic background. So his obsession with very small little things was just totally crazy. Ever since then, I've wanted to work for the best because it was just so cool. That's how rest of my career started.

You were in New York as well. At what point did you do the stage at El Bulli?

That was before New York. Well, before starting my career in New York. After Japan, I went to New York for school. I just want to learn with more depth. I joined the Culinary Institute of America. After eight months of school, I couldn't afford to continue. I had enough money to fly to Spain because back El Bulli was easily being considered as the best restaurant in the world.

But a stage, you're not paid,

Stage, not paid. But if I'm not mistaken, they were getting over 70 to 80,000 CVs for stages a year.

How do they select? How were you selected?

I didn't get selected. I showed up. I kept showing up and it took me two, three days. I was very lucky. They ignored me. And then what worked luckily was that I printed my CV, which had that I had worked at two different places and dropped out of school at that point, so not much to show, but then I printed enough of them, I'm talking, I really printed enough, and I scattered them around the restaurant. Before the diners arrived, the maintenance person of the restaurant saw them. He flipped on me. And when he flipped on me, because obviously he doesn't care about who I am, I'm just scattering around my CVs, it's just tons of garbage around the restaurant. But chef Ferran's wife noticed and I think she spoke to Chef Ferran saying, maybe he's a bit crazy, you might like him. So he asked me if I could start the day after.

What was the climate like in the kitchen?

Crazy. Well, cuisine wise, it was only them who were doing that type of cuisine. Very scientific related. Nothing tasted the way it looked. I think that's the best way that I could describe it. The ideas and how they process the idea to be able to serve to a customer and this entire process of it was just not like a restaurant operation. It was more like a laboratory operation. They have a laboratory in Barcelona and the restaurant was open only six months a year. The rest of the time the key players with the scientists, they have a laboratory where they revisit the menu for the next season, which for me is like just totally crazy.

Can you remember what you wanted to get out of doing a stage there?

No, I didn't have any idea.

You just thought, this is a great restaurant. I want to try it.

Yeah. I mean, sorry to say, but, as I said, I had just turned 20. Back then as a young chef, the only thing on my mind was that I wanted to work for the best. If you had asked me, what do you want to learn? Does it matter? I want to learn everything they do.

Can you learn everything they do? Can you learn all that lab stuff?

The good thing about the program at El Bulli for me was that you are actually responsible for a lot of important roles in the restaurant. I think that was the real benefit of it. If you go to certain places on a stage, all they make you to do is, okay, here's a bunch of herbs, go pick it. Or you clean here, you clean there. It is labour intensive non-educational purpose tasks. But for sure, El Bulli was completely the opposite.

How long were you there?

One season, so six months.

How amazing. What an adventure.

I think, at that point, emotionally for me, when I think about it now, still, I would say it was a peak time of my life in general. Because when you look at even all the stagieres who were doing the unpaid work for six months, these chefs were amazing. They were all such talented chefs that just by standing next to them a learning process in general; how they work, how they peel things, chopped things, whatever it is. Not necessarily even coming from the restaurant itself, just because the people there were extremely world class chefs. There are so many El Bulli alumnis running world class kitchens nowadays.

How amazing. So then York was obviously high on your list of destinations for excellent food as well?

Absolutely. There is something very special about New York. It's the cultural side in general of the city as well as the restaurant industry. New Yorkers are very particular, they're willing to pay if there's something special about it. The pace of the restaurant operation is just totally crazy. But, after El Bulli, I joined the military which is mandatory for Korean males. So I spent time there, two years, and then I went back to school. After the military I was financially a bit more comfortable. I went back to school and then once I graduated, I looked for a job. It's very normal in the culture over there to do one day stages. You do that to find the right job for you andalso the employer has to think that you're the right person for their restaurant as well. Its a very normal process. Of course, I went to plenty to see where would be the best place for me. I went to restaurant Daniel, and I still remember, as service started, I thought it was just crazy.

They were a three-star restaurant, one of the best restaurants in New York. They were serving over 250 people per dinner. 250. For me, that's insane. No other restaurant in Europe or in Asia does 250 covers at a three-star level. No one. So the amount of things that you do, it's so compacted. We joked about it. If you worked in the great restaurants in New York for a year, that's the equivalent to two plus years anywhere else. No, seriously, because of the volume. Nowhere does that. There's only two restaurants who do that volume. One is Daniel and the other only restaurant that I can think of is Le Bernardin. And that is located in New York as well. Just crazy. Can you believe that? 250 covers?

So, it's a walk in the park here then.

I wouldn't say that. We had an army there, a very well-oiled and maintained machine. The training process: when you're handing over the station, when you're going around different stations to stations, just the way everything operates was so well organized. They could maintain the quality.

What took you to Scandinavia?

After New York, well, after Daniel, I joined the Waldorf Astoria. I would never have imagined that I would join a hotel group. But by then my wife was pregnant. She's also from the industry, with a great career. Both of us were working nonsense hours of course. Which we didn't mind. She was working at 11 Madison Park back then. I was working at Daniel. Somehow she got pregnant. I don't know how.

Is she a chef or front of house?

Shes a chef as well. She's a pastry chef.

Dinners at your place must be amazing.

I don't cook much at home. Only on special occasions. It's mostly her, she owns the kitchen back home. But we had to think about something that would realistically meet our situation. She couldn't work. She had such a bad morning sickness, she couldn't stand any smells, so it was not possible for her to work in the kitchen anymore. So I joined hotel group and luckily they liked me. They gave me a big responsibility and I was taking advantage of learning the management side of it, which I'm very glad that I did. But the main purpose of me joining the hotel group at the Waldorf was just because we needed to make more money with better benefits coming from the company. Then the company went through a big renovation, the entire hotel. I moved to the same group in California. I was in charge of the restaurants there, which also was a very fun part of it. I was in contact with my former colleague from Daniel. He was from Norway. The restaurant that where I moved to in Norway in Stavanger, he was from the area and that's how somehow my name was slipped to Sven Eric, the owner chef of Re-Naa. I got in contact and I visited the restaurant and they were very ambitious. They had the fine dining restaurant, which they wanted to bring up to a complete extra level. It sounded a lot of fun.

Did they grow their own food?

No, but it was extremely local. Our vegetable producer was from Brimse Island. He grew all the product, including farmed and wild, a lot of wild ones. We sourced from that particular island. Twice a week he loaded everything on the boat and came to the coastline of Stavanger and he delivered it to the city. It's a very small city. An amazing town.

How did the collaboration with Hugo Souchet come about? He is also from a three-star Michelin restaurant; Les Pres dEugenie. Have you been there?

I have not.

I looked at a photo. It looks amazing. It looks like a castle.

It's a chateau. It's one of these legendary restaurants. I started off with the books of MichelGuerard,who is the owner chef of the restaurant. He is one of the godfathers of the French cuisine; Nouvelle Cuisine. I think they have had three stars for over 40 years.

How do you keep three stars for 40 years?

That's how they have been maintaining everything. Hugo fully took over the restaurant. He's fully in charge of the kitchen operation there, and he is also restaurant Daniel alumni. That's how we are connected.

At the same time?

Yes. We worked together.

How does this work? You've done collaborations or dinners with other chefs. What happens? Obviously he's in France and you are here. Do you just throw around some ideas or where do you start when you're trying to work together?

The idea of this particular collaboration came up a bit out of nowhere. Currently at Freyja we use Sturia Caviar. They're located in Bordeaux. I have been using them since back in Norway. I wanted to continue to use them because I love what they do, their philosophy behind it.And of course, the quality of the product is just top notch as well. Guy from Sturia joined us at Freyja to hold an event last year just for industry people about caviar. We talked and we found out, oh, by the way, Hugo also uses Sturia caviar. Hugo and I know each other, so Guy said, let's try to make something fun. It carried on and carried on and it became dinner. It'll be held next week over three nights.

What's the menu?

We don't know yet.

Oh, how exciting. But definitely Caviar is involved.

Big time.It will be six courses, maybe it could be plus one. The reason why the menu is not decided is because Hugo is arriving at the end of this week and he needs to see the local product. We need to visit farms and fishing companies, butchers, so that he understands our product, what we can offer in Victoria. Then we are going to create a menu according to what is available.

That's much better. I don't even know why I asked about the menu? I think that people who aren't chefs think that you make a menu then you go to get your ingredients rather than looking at the ingredients and then creating your menu.

We think it makes the most sense. Our marketing team has not been very happy when we mentioned that, they wondered how to what is going to be served? There are plenty of questions being asked by the customers. But, too bad. What am I supposed to do? How can he create the menu without seeing the product? It's more like a guessing game, isn't it? So it doesn't work like that.

No. Well, it's a trust in the three-star Michelin guy who's coming from France and you who has already proved yourself here time and time again. People would come for that I think.

I think their restaurant is not the kind of restaurant that is talked a lot about, as in it is not very hip or trendy or anything like that. They're a very typical classic French restaurant who has been extremely doing well at what they have been doing for the last four decades. They're not the most talked about restaurant, but I think people have to understand that in order to maintain that level of service and quality of products for that many years, its about dedication. It's enormous.

Will it be Freyja food or will it be classic French? Or will it be something adjacent?

The 4 Hands Dinner will have some twists. Hugo Souchet and I will create a menu together. There will be a mix, I would say.

Fabulous. What's the experience you want diners to have on that night?

We want diners to get full and drink a lot of champagne. What else should it be about? We have French caviar and French champagne, a French chef. So, a lot of champagne, a lot of caviar, good food, a lot butter, maybe.

Well, why wouldnt you come to that?

I would say that, exactly.

Freyja, 477 Collins Street, Melbourne