Jake Read

Hi, Jake. Nice to meet you. How long have you been with Neptune?

I haven't been here very long. I joined at the end of November last year, which was obviously a very interesting time in hospitality. Going into December, in a head chef role, it was a hectic few months, but a baptism of fire. It's almost good to start with that sort of level of intensity to see what it's like when it's super pumping.

And then did it quiet down here?

It did quieten down in January. I think the area we're in, a lot of people go away, have holidays or whatever, or they've spent a lot of money over the Christmas period. In the UK it's the same as here. The hospitality industry has changed so much since Covid. People aren't as willing to go out as they were. You have to really do things to pull them in. We have a few offers and deals and ways of trying to pull people in through social media, advertising and stuff like that.

I was having this discussion last night with another chef around the fact that at the same time as the government has changed the award rate for hospitality, which is great, and it's great that people are getting paid what they deserve. But at the same time, the cost of living is so expensive. And it has to be borne out somewhere. It has to be borne out in the menu. But then that must mean that that cuts down the number of people that can come out, or the amount of time they're going out.

Exactly. It's swings and roundabouts. It seems that a lot more pressure has been put on businesses, they're having to pay out more for staff. I've worked at places previous to Neptune where you have casual members of staff coming in and they might be there for one shift a week, and they're earning very good money in a very short space of time. Because it's just about getting bodies in. They need someone for the busy days or due to inconsistency throughout the weeks, you might not need someone on in the week. And then at the weekend you have to pay these people a lot of money. Food prices have gone up. Everything is more expensive.

It's pretty hard for smaller businesses, isn't it?

It's very difficult. We have to be so mindful of margins, buying certain things in at certain times, and trying to forecast the week. It can be difficult. It's one of the more difficult parts of the job. Making dishes, creating new things, presentation, all this stuff is the enjoyable side that everybody wants to do and everybody wants to look at. But the underbelly of that is trying to make sure that you're using everything up, trying to make sure that you're not holding onto loads of stock, that you are making the correct margins on the things that you are selling the most of. It's the less pretty side of the job, I think.

Absolutely. It must be such a hard thing to juggle. Had you been in a head chef role before?

This is my first. I've done many senior sous chef roles. In the UK, I was a senior sous chef for about three and a half years at a Michelin listed restaurant. From then I went to work for myself. So it wasn't necessarily a head chef role. I went into private catering after that. Post Covid really was a very difficult time in the UK. Im not sure about here, but I'm sure it was hit in a very similar way. We were very fortunate in the UK as everyone in hospitality on a full-time salary got 80% of their wage funded by the government. And then just all this free time that most people nearing 30 who had been working from the age of 16, that's nearly 15 years of blinkers on just in the kitchen five, six days a week constantly. And then all of a sudden, here's two months where you don't have to do any work and here's a very generous portion of your wage. I noticed it, especially in the restaurant I was in. We came back and a lot of chefs were like, this isn't for me anymore. I've seen another side to life that I didn't even know existed because I was so caught up in the industry. All of a sudden, they're seeing their friends, they're seeing their family, they're getting outdoors more. They're probably eating better. And they're like, I don't want to do this. We went down from a team of maybe eight or nine to four post Covid, which was extremely tough.

Wow. I hadn't thought of it like that, but I guess people rethought their options.

Exactly, it gave them plenty of time to reflect, I think.

And in terms of the whole food costs and things, is that the same in England?

Massively. We've struggled post Brexit because we used to get a lot of things in, things would come over from France, a few imports, especially your specialty game birds and stuff like that. The prices just skyrocketed. For me, that's not necessarily a terrible thing because I think there's certain elements of putting a dish together where you could just say, okay, let's just buy a Wagyu porterhouse and serve it with a sauce. That's going to be a great dish. Because you can use a quality piece of meat now because of the food costs, people have to dig a little deeper, probably get a little bit more technical with the stuff that they're doing and use cheaper cuts of meat or vegetables. And theres sustainability behind that: being able to use stuff that is cost effective, can be grown or is just easier to get hold of. It's more difficult. But I think it's going to push the industry in a better direction.

And I guess using everything, that zero waste aim.

We can't afford to waste stuff. Especially with such tight margins and I think everyone has a little bit of uncertainty around how busy you're going to be all the time. So you really have to dig deep to make sure you are making that money out of everything that you buy now.

Where I was going before asking about it being your first head chef role here, there is a lot more involved with that, isn't there? There's the costing, there's the creativity, there's the team building. There's teaching. All of those things you have to think about.

I think across the roles that I've done previously; I've probably dipped my toe into all of those things. And now it's a combination of bringing it all together, like I said, writing the menus is the fun part, and then you have to teach a team of staff how to replicate that the way that you want it to be. The onus is on you completely from that. You write that menu, as soon as that menu's on, it doesn't matter who cooked it, prepared it, it's your food then, and your team's food is representing what you are trying to show to the customers. So there is a lot more to it, there's a lot of admin stuff, which to be honest, I think most chefs will probably agree isn't a very fun part. Watching the margins, checking the invoices and stuff like that. Making sure things are coming in properly. But it's all necessary and it's good for the staff to see that as well. Even for me, making sure that the supplies that we get in are coming in of a high quality. We work with very good suppliers. A lot of our stuff that comes in is always is great, but things do slip through the cracks.

What do you do in that case?

I ring them up and tell them to give me my money back.

Oh, do you?

I think you have to be firm about that. Not in a passive aggressive sort of way, but you just have to make them aware. They don't want to be selling that stuff either. A lot of the suppliers we work with would rather we ring them up and tell them and say, look, this is not good. Then you build a relationship through just constant communication really. And also, not the guys that I work with, but there are probably suppliers who think, okay, we sent them that a few weeks ago. They didn't say anything, they'll take it again. So you have to really put a firm foot down and say, look, this is the quality that we expect to come in. Thats how you build that relationship with the suppliers.

Did the new seafood focused menu come with you?

No, just before me. They were basically more around seafood. We've gone slightly, not back to how it was before, but we have introduced a few more meat dishes, a few more vegetarian dishes as well. There is still a heavy seafood focus, we like big whole fish and stuff that you can share between the table, a couple of seafood dishes, lots of cured fish, but there's some other bits in there as well. It's probably seafood driven as opposed to a seafood restaurant. We're using lots of seaweeds and stuff like that for brines and stuff. We try and incorporate that theme throughout the menu.

And I imagine, our fish and seafood is quite different to the UK. How do you work through that, I guess you just have to try different things.

It's just a case of trying things. To be honest, there re probably similarities between the fish. You could say, oh, this is similar to what I would've used for this or this. One thing I have found about the fish over here, the fish for curing or ceviche is absolutely amazing. And the shellfish, again, amazing. But it has just been a case of just buying things in, seeing what works. I think in the UK we were very fortunate because it's so easy to import stuff. We we would have scallops coming down from Scotland and langoustines and then halibut coming from Scandinavia, because we can get the imports so easily. Whereas here you have what you have. But there's such a good range of stuff that you can use.

Well, I think we're still lucky here because I'm from Aotearoa, New Zealand. And I was just reading an article that scallops have been depleted in New Zealand. There are a lot of Maori tribes who look after fisheries and those kinds of things. And they've had to be really firm with people because they've fished them out and they've gone, and it was down to one little area, but when I read it in the magazine that I was reading, they were then saying, but we can import them from Australia and it didn't quite sit right with me. You've exhausted a resource, you have to let it grow again and maybe don't go and exhaust Australia's resources. We need to have that recognition that we are exhausting resources,

That's going back to sustainability. For me, seasonality is such a big thing. Using what's available and making the most of that. And not just because it's available, but because it's the best of its produce at the time. When things are in season, fruits, vegetables, it's important to work around what's so good at the time. You might pay double for something that's out of season, but oh, I want strawberries, but they're not in season. Why wouldn't you use something that's in its prime at that time? The same goes for the seafood as well, I think.

So is it share plates here?

Not necessarily. It is a very relaxed dining style. We have a few appetisers, some oysters, our bread that we bake fresh every day, some entrees. And then a small selection of bigger plates. We have the whole fish and then we have a really good porterhouse steak on the menu. We aim to put nice specials on a Friday, Saturday evening. We'll put something on the board that we might not normally have. We might buy in a tomahawk steak or a big cut or a beef short rib or something like that's a little bit different. We wouldn't want to sell that in the week because I don't think people realistically are coming out Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday to spend a hundred dollars on a steak. Whereas on the weekend they might be more inclined to.

And is it fun for you doing those?

Absolutely. It's stimulating. As most chefs will probably agree, you write these menus, you serve them for a month, and then because of the creative aspect of it, you're like, I've seen this now. You're still passionate about it and you're still trying to enhance things, make things a little bit better. But you do get itchy feet and you want to keep creating more. That's just natural. You want to keep evolving things. So the fact that we can do different specials on the weekend, we buy different stuff in and have little projects fermenting and going on in the background, as well as running our a la carte menu. It's great for the guys as well, because it gives them an opportunity to try stuff that they might not have cooked before or seen before. It keeps us going.

And your style as a leader, are you inviting input from them as well?

Always. Throughout my career I've worked for multiple different chefs. Some who really like to see people's input and then some who are, No, it's my food, it's my kitchen. This is what I'm doing and you're all going to follow suit. For me, that never personally worked. I felt a little bit put out by that attitude. I think you're also closing a window of opportunity there. I mean, someone might be a level below you or not as experienced or whatever, but they might have an idea that you wouldn't have thought of. We've only got a small kitchen of four chefs, but for me, four tastes, four eyes, four smiles is better than just one. It's important that everyone understands how we're developing the dishes and how we're moving forward.

And where did it start for you? Did you always know that you wanted to be a chef?

No, to be honest, actually, I kind of fell into it. I think I was 15 and I was just handing out resumes at local restaurants, trying to get a part-time job. I was just washing pots and pans in a restaurant. I worked there for about a year and a half. I really liked it. It was hard and it wasn't very nice work, but I enjoyed the buzz and the atmosphere, and it was jovial. You didn't have to be too formal about the situation. You could turn up and have a laugh. And everyone was pally.

Where was that? Where'd you grow up?

I grew up just outside of Birmingham in the UK in a little city called Lichfield, which has now got really good, the food scene's really starting to get pushed there now, which is so nice to see. I was just a dishwasher, I remember there were pizza chefs on larder going in and out every week. There would be a new chef al the time. They just couldn't get someone who would stick it out. And one of the chefs said to me, why don't you have a go? I said, I haven't got any qualifications or ever even thought about cooking food before. I might whip myself up little things at home, but very basic. I thought, there's no way. Then the owner of the business came and said to me, look, if you want to have a go, come and have a go. So that's where I first started to cook. It wasn't so much in the prep as much as it was turning up for service and the prep was done for me. I was just frying things, cooking things, plating things up. Even then I was enjoying myself, but I wasn't like, okay, this is it, this is my career. It wasn't until I went to the next base, which was a full-time role, because I had the experience of being on a kitchen on my resume, I was fully immersed in it. I was there five days a week. I started to create a few things myself, see what works, see what doesn't. That sort of gave me a real hunger. And I went from there to start working in some really nice boutique hotels.

That's when I saw some really, really serious chefs at the top of their game. I thought, wow, this is now the direction I want to take. Having seen it at such a good level, and it just went from there. I haven't looked back since then. I think I probably would've been about 18 when I first went into my first hotel. That's been it since then.

Where have you worked?

The first hotel I went to was called Swinfen Hall – you don't have rosettes over here, do you? That was a three rosette, big manor house. They do a lot of like weddings and stuff like that. They have a nice restaurant as well. A lot of tasting menus and a lot of gourmet dinners. From there I went to another hotel, very similar but double the size. This was an 85 bedroom beast. And they had a big marquee. They used to do functions for 200 people. It was the sort of kitchen you see where you've got 15, 16 chefs running around. It was like a rat run, it was crazy. All systems go, everyone pushed for time constantly every day. I learned a lot about just pressure somewhere like that. From then on I did a few little inner city bistros.

And then the last place I worked before I went self-employed was a restaurant called The Boat in Lichfield. I was there for three and a half years and got to the senior sous chef. I learned so much there. My head chef at the time had lots of experience. He'd worked at a lot of places around the world. He'd done stages at places like NOMA, Eleven Madison Park, so he had loads of tricks. We had some great projects there. Unfortunately, bang in the middle of my period there, we were hit with Covid. We had to shut the restaurant, but we didn't stop there. We came up with concepts and we did loads of stuff, long projects, like making misos, making koji, stuff that takes such a long time. We were monitoring stuff like that. We also started to build in the garden. We built a poly tunnel, a chicken coop, and dug it all up and started growing all our own stuff. For me, the sustainability thing, a lot of that came from that. Seeing things from the ground up and then using it is massive.

It must change your relationship with it.

It does. Massively. You have a real appreciation for the food that you're buying in. It's easy to get your vegetable delivery in the morning and just check it all off. But people are growing this stuff, it takes time and it takes effort from the seed that goes into the ground to the food that gets put on the plate at the end of the day.

Then the working for yourself, was that private dining or catering?

Private dining. For me, the industry was in a little bit of a mess and I thought I wanted a little bit of creative control over how I was cooking. I felt like I was ready to take that step. It also gave me an opportunity; it's not the same pressure as working in the kitchen, which I did miss. I missed the rush of service, because you are working on your own. You do the prep on your own, you turn up at someone's house and you cook meals. It was really nice to build a relationship with customers, which is something I hadn't had before. I'd just be in their kitchen cooking while they sat at the table having a conversation with me. And you meet all sorts of different people, and it's nice to see that appreciation firsthand. So it was good. It gave me the opportunity to save the money that I needed to come over here, which was pivotal really.

So you had been planning on coming here?

I had for a while. I'm not a hundred per cent sure what brought me, I'd always wanted to visit Australia, for me it's just a change of scenery, to see how a different food scene works. I know Melbourne's food scene is so good and I've followed a few restaurants and stuff like that. The idea was to save up this money, go on a trip. I went around a few parts of Southeast Asia first and then came to Australia and as soon as I came here and I was eating at a few places, I think I went for dinner at Old Palm Liquor not long after and Bar Liberty. And as soon as I got here, what I really enjoyed about the scene here is how relaxed it is. I've done the fine dine thing now, I did the fine dine thing in the UK with all the frills and the bits and pieces added, and I think sometimes the more you put in, you start to subtract away from what is actually there. What I really enjoy about the wine bar scene and these small plates is just it's so ingredient led. It is just quality ingredients just used in the right way. And that's the way that my own cooking style was starting to develop as well. So as soon as I came here and I ate at these places, I thought, yeah, I think this is, this is going to be the place for me here.

It's good to hear. Obviously it sounds as though you get inspired from the produce and also from other places that you go to, but do you look on Instagram? Have you got cookbooks? Well, you probably don't have cookbooks if you've come from the other side of the world.

My cookbooks are collecting dust back in the UK now, unfortunately. Which is sad. But social media is playing such a huge role in the industry at the moment. Across the whole thing. Obviously from a customer perspective, trying to pull people in, show people what you do, but also from other chefs. Most of the chefs I know, if you go through their Instagram feed, it's just food, dish after dish. And it's great to see how people are doing things. You can take inspiration from what other people are doing without copying. You wouldn't take that, but you might take a small idea and turn it into something. It's huge really. And again, like I said, just dealing with suppliers and asking what they have. One of my strengths I would say and something I really enjoy is to just have some random stuff in the fridge and say, we need a special for the weekend. What do we have? What special fish can we get and what vegetables can we use? What can we put together with a few things that we have available to us? It's fun.

It's like a mystery box.

Exactly right. It is fun. And then when you come with something great, you're like, wow, that ticks all the boxes. It's cost effective, it's stimulating, it makes you think about what you're doing as well.

Do you have notebooks? Do you write down ideas or do you write down these specials and look back at them?

Often. Sometimes we'll make things in the week as specials, then that can go into the archives. When I came here, I hadn't been here long, and I didn't change the menu straight away. It wasn't until January, once we got that busy period out the way that we changed the menu to write a whole new menu. For me, it can be quite daunting, especially when you're trying to put 16 new dishes on. By the time you get to dish number 14 or 15, youre thinking, oh my god, I'm running out of inspo here. Whereas what we do now is we come up with these specials and things that really work, you write the recipe down and then the new menu is just so organic because you then just have an arsenal of these dishes that you've created over a certain amount of time. You know what's worked, you know what's been received well by customers, you know what's cost you the right amount of money and you know what's been a good product at the end of the day. Then the menu's right.

I was just thinking as you were saying that, about those flash restaurants like El Bulli used to do it and places in the UK where they spend six months in the lab working out their next six months. You're doing it as you're still doing all the usual things.

Exactly. We can't compare ourselves to places like that. They have a team of development chefs, but the thing that's great about Neptune is we have the freedom to do that. We have midweek offers where we can manipulate it, do what we want to do and it's just really about that customer interaction. Are people enjoying the food? How many people are ordering it? Thats the main thing really. You put a special on there and only a few people order it. You think, okay, that shouldn't really go on the menu. It might be cool, we might like it, but we've sold three out of 10. That's not enough to then warrant a place on a menu. You see some things will fly, some things are really well received and then you start thinking, how can we make this for the next menu?

Well I guess with all that in mind, now that you've had a taste of what it's like over here as well, what would your advice be to a young person who maybe has just started their journey as a chef or who's thinking about being a chef?

Just eat as much food as you possibly can and just eat out and eat out. I did it when I was younger as well. And going back to what you were saying about what inspires you, you have to have these experiences and also work in a variety of places. No one likes what they would call a journeyman chef who will be places three months, three months, three months. But for me, half a year to a year, especially when you're young, you can afford to do that. You will just pick up so much from different environments, different cuisines, different kitchen layouts, everything, and all that information will subconsciously be stored to the point where you've been doing that for 10 years, you can go anywhere and do what you need to do.

Great advice. Thanks Jake.

Neptune, 212 High Street, Windsor