Talking to James Wilkinson made me hungry. He talks about food, dining and cooking with such relish. I was completely enchanted by his tales of lunches in Paris, learning to cook with his grandmother on a farm in Kaikoura, and the griddle scones his grandfather would make when his grandmother went to Bridge.
What are we talking about?
You.
My least favourite subject.
Well, we’ll talk about where you’ve come from, what you’re doing now and what you’re into in terms of food and so on. How long have you been a chef?
30 years.
Is that something you always wanted to be?
Since I was six.
Six? Wow.
I told my grandmother I was going to be a chef, a policeman or a fireman. But I discovered alcohol and cigarettes, so basically it was cheffing. She taught me how to cook. They had a farm in New Zealand, in Kaikoura.
That’s a rich part of the world, in terms of food; seafood and all that.
Yeah, we used to get crayfish delivered to the door.
It’s beautiful down that side.
It’s so awesome.
Did you then do your apprenticeship in New Zealand?
Yes. I worked at a place called Clifford House in the old days, which was a banqueting, reception, wedding type of thing, in Orakei Bay in Auckland. Back in those days you could really only have a wedding or function at The Four Seasons or The Sheraton…so Clifford House was designed to rival them. It was pretty high end. There was a whole crew of seven chefs. Everything was house made. Takashi Nakamura was the Executive chef. He used to be the chef to the ex-Japanese ambassador. Then he ran the fine dining restaurant at The Sheraton for a number of years.
From there I went and worked at The Roxburgh Bistro for a while in Wellington with Mark Limacher. Then Shed 5 in Wellington, a seafood restaurant. Then back up to Auckland to work at a few other places. Then I went to the UK. Like everyone.
The UK was an epiphany. It was all about cooking.
Well yes. Thirty years ago in New Zealand, even though you were working in good places, I’m not sure New Zealanders were totally ready for next level food.
Hell no. Not at all.
We hadn’t even discovered our own identity as producers of good food.
Zero. The only think anyone knew about in New Zealand was lamb. I went to the UK and worked for guys who said, I don’t ever want to see a piece of New Zealand lamb on a plate. Which was fair enough. I didn’t really understand the relationship back then but working at Leith’s in Soho, it was truly seasonal. We only got salmon when Scottish salmon was in season. Dry-aged beef which is something we do here, was the norm. We would get a full set of rib, bone it out, roll it and it would become a scotch fillet. Then they’d use the bones. That’s how it was. Alex bought proper brown-legged chicken from France because the chicken industry was dire in the UK at that stage and all our fish was from Cornwall or up the coast further, all our oysters were from Ireland. Scampi was flown in every Tuesday and Thursday, live. Massive, proper scampi, off the chart…which we turned into prawn cocktails. It was really good and really interesting.
And in terms of technique, were there things you needed to relearn?
Totally. Most of it. Sauce work, especially. It comes down to the simple economics of the situation; the way it is here now. You can’t employ someone just to do sauce, unless in a five-star restaurant. You have to teach everyone so that they all have the capability. Those base skills aren’t taught at these colleges or made-up cooking schools that people go to to get visas these days. None of them know how to make a mayonnaise, a béchamel, a light chicken stock or a dark chicken stock or even just a fish stock.
How do you manage that? Other chefs say that when you have to watch the hours the young ones are doing, it’s hard to fit in the time to actually teach them things like filleting fish or butchery. How do you feel about that?
I think it’s a shame. A lot of them don’t actually want to learn. They expect everything on a plate. Which I think is the after effect of MasterChef and all that. I’m not saying MasterChef is bad. It’s not my choice of television but it’s a very made-up representation of the market. None of them really go on to run real restaurants, maybe three.
I think it’s a sign of the times and it happens in other industries. Kids can learn a lot off the internet so they believe they can go straight into particular roles without really doing the hard yards. It is generational as well.
I find it more beneficial to teach guys in that next age group of 25-35. Then if the ones who are on larder or those sorts of sections start to show promise, we can move them up which is how it was in the old days. If you didn’t show any effort, you’d lose your job automatically. And you wouldn’t learn anything. You’d end up sitting in the same restaurant doing the same job for three years. What’s the point? I feel very sorry for a lot of these kids, especially the ones who go to these visa schools. They’re not really being taught enough. There’s no regulation.
But do you think if they have a real passion, they can pick it up themselves and if they seek out good places to work to learn that way?
I’ve met a couple. I’m not saying everyone is like that. How many CVs do Attica get a week? Probably 150. You put an ad in for here; 42 hours, uniforms, two days off in a row, closed for Christmas and you get three people. That’s how bad it is. But they don’t want to let more people in the country. Good luck. I don’t hold out much hope for the industry.
What does that mean?
It will become cooking by numbers. The fast food chains will become the food of convenience. Hopefully Uber dies in the arse, but it won’t. Fast food will become family restaurants then you’ll get chains with centralised production kitchens…which is what it was like in London 20 years ago. Like the Fish brand that opened up. I went for a job there and said, yeah, I’m really into seafood…and she said, yeah, it’s not really like that. You do this, this and this fresh every day and everything else comes from the production kitchen. But they didn’t have premium space so everything turns up, wrapped up, you put it into your beautiful kitchen drawers, you’d cook hardcore for four hours, have a break, come back, cook for four hours, clean the kitchen and go home. That was it.
It’s soulless, isn’t it?
Totally. I think there’ll be room for suburban restaurants,
Even in Melbourne, which takes itself pretty seriously as a dining centre?
I think those people who can afford to live in those areas will eat in those local diners. They don’t necessarily want to go all the way in to the city and spend $150 on six courses.
How’s it going here for now?
It’s building up. Opening a large venue is more interesting than opening a small one. It’s getting busier.
When did you take over from Morgan?
I was working with Morgan. That’s why I came here to work really, was to work with Morgan and his wife, Trish, which was awesome. So I’m trying to carry on with what we originally sat down and came up with, which was a bit of produce…it’s a produce-driven menu. I have a good relationship with a butcher in Tasmania, which isn’t exactly local, but it’s a good product. We get our dry-aged beef from them because they don’t have PrimeSafe so it’s easier to get older dry-aged beef. Today we got 75 dry-aged T-bones. We use a lot of that and then a couple of other local Victorian butchers to get some Victorian beef; O’Connor’s, all grass-fed. I only buy a little bit of grain-fed wagyu, I’ll pick up a little bit of Sher wagyu shortly to put on the menu so there’s a little bit of local representation.
Is it New York style, here? It is heralded as that.
It’s heralded as that. The fit out is obviously very that way. We’re doing one kilo ribeye. It’s steak and sides; you’re buying a prime piece of meat; club steaks, 500g porterhouse dry aged on the bone, rotisserie, so it is still a little bit Americana. We use pork ribs, chicharrons…
Is it new for you to cook in this Americana style?
Well, to be honest, it’s not really Americana now, I’d probably say it’s continental into modern Australian or modern contemporary. We use a couple of smaller farms, so we are buying actual seasonal produce. Personally, as I get along in my cooking, as much as I love a good steak, vegetables and textures are where I’m at. It’s what I’m cooking at home. For example, the asparagus. We get it in, clean up the ends, cut them all down to the right size, and keep all those little bits and pickle them, then we shave it raw, chargrill it and serve it with green harissa, green tahini, buckwheat and then from Sommerset Heritage we use all her leaves; she does a great array of leaves. Golden frill mustard leaves, mizuna, red amaranth, that sort of thing. It’s more like that. The burrata has pickled rhubarb, salsa verde and a charred thyme cracker. It’s trying to be that three to four ingredients, tying it in.
Do these ideas come from your repertoire from a wealth of years of working with ingredients or are you a book person?
I’m definitely a book guy. As you get older, it’s a lot harder to learn things, unless you are reading books really. I’m trying to teach everyone else, so I’m not really learning from them. You learn from eating, going out and books. A lot of the vegetable-based stuff on the menu is mine. They come from an accumulation of things I’ve cooked and what I enjoy eating. I think that’s probably a natural progression really, as you get older, you eat less meat. I do. I probably eat meat once a week.
I know sometimes you can’t always cook what you want to cook as a chef, so I guess you have to be open-minced. Do you have to be open to trends or is it more about how you feel?
It’s more how I feel. I’m not as open to trends. If you went to fusion, I could just re-cook everything I did in New Zealand in the early nineties. But I’m not much into trends. What’s the trend at the moment? Well this year it has been pastry; croissants, like Lune, which are an amazing product. I think those guys have been great for the industry because people know that you don’t have to go and buy shit croissants from Coles. You have to pay $7 for a Lune croissant, but it will be the best thing you eat.
Absolutely. They are actually better than some of the croissants I had in France.
Well, I was just there. Philippe Conticini…wow. It was just a satellite shop because it was close to the hotel but the pastries were off the hook. Crazy. We went to another one, Du Pain et des Idées, which is quite a famous bread/bakery and I think the woman was quite shocked. I was just there with my son and I just pointed to all these different pastries and bought the lot because a) I wanted the photo and b) I wanted to try them all. They were amazing. But it’s the butter.
That’s right and I also think their flour is different. They eat bread all the time and they’re not getting gluten intolerances and all that.
Their flour isn’t bleached. But now you don’t have to buy that bread here. Northcote and a lot of these guys are milling their own flour and I think that takes out 50% of the gluten intolerances. It’s interesting.
Simple food done well. That’s what it’s all about for me.
When you are traveling or even going to restaurants here, are you able to step outside of being a chef and enjoy it?
A $5 restaurant is a $5 restaurant, and a $50 restaurant is a $50 restaurant, so it had better be good. I don’t get online and do all that stuff, but I would be more inclined to pay the bill then say, sorry, that wasn’t great. That hasn’t happened for a while.
And when you were in France, did you research where you went to?
Yeah. The last trip was a little bit more wine bar oriented, because of Morgan and because of the vin nature I’m into. I wanted to have a look at the wine bar situation. It had been 10 years since I’d been there. There’s a lot of crossover businesses there now, like Yardbird and Freddy’s. Freddy’s has a restaurant on one side which is modern French and then they have the wine bar next door with a little kitchen and they cook everything over Japanese Binchotan coal. It’s a small menu. You can’t get a glass of Pastis in there, but they had some cracking vino and some great snacks.
We went to Aux Deux Amis, which was brilliant. You walk in and it’s 1970s Formica, lots of cool kids everywhere, a slicer on the bar, the lights were on full, and everything was served on metal or plastic bowls but it was all 2 – 11 euros, a dish. We got egg mayo because I love it and it literally came out as two half boiled eggs and you had to peel them yourself. My kids thought it was the best thing. They were great eggs and a simple mayo. Then two minutes later I was getting a bowl of absolutely amazing ceviche, mackerel, slightly torched, cucumbers, a little bit of lemon and then cockles à la mariniere. My daughter has never eaten shellfish in her life and she thought they were awesome. They were salty and so brilliantly cooked. Then there was a duck dish with mashed potato on top and it was something like 10 euros.
Chartier is a bit like that, cheap and cheerful, but it’s in a big old-fashioned dining hall with the waiters wearing their shirts and aprons and they write up the bill on the newsprint tablecloths.
Then we went to Relais Comptoir which is new school doing old school reinventions. Foie gras and marmalade. It was awesome.
What a week!
I had my birthday there, so it was a double bonus. It was stupidly cool.
Does that fire you up and inspire you?
It’s different over there. The population is different. Not everyone goes out at 7.30pm unlike Melbourne. Bars are still serving food at 11 o’clock on a Friday night. People are a lot more relaxed.
It’s a different cultural approach, a different understanding.
But it’s great here. There are a lot of great businesses here now. There’s Grow Assembly. It’s a collective of a whole lot of different hospitality people. They see to be different styles. They’ll have a coffee company there one day, someone doing some food, then they’ll have four or five guest speakers. Its gaining quite a bit of traction. There was one last week. I really wanted to go. They have a producer, a farmer, a chef, a sommelier or that sort of scenario. You can get some more product knowledge.
I think that’s one advantage of social media. You can see these sorts of things. But I think that’s about it. Well, I mean, there’s no customer loyalty, not like the old days. They came to your restaurant every week because they wanted to go to your restaurant.
Hmmmm. It’s a bit shiny, shiny now, isn’t it? People want to check out the latest and greatest.
Totally. Broadsheet, Concrete Playground. Whatever the other ones are. It’s the nature of the beast.
It’s a different approach to hospitality. I guess, in places like France, you do go to your local, you do have your regular places and you build a relationship so it’s not just about the food, it’s about the whole deal.
The last day in Paris we have lunch at a little place in the 10thor the 11thcalled Les Arlots before we left. You go there and it’s a set deal; 32 euros for a two course, 39 euros for three courses. A guy sat us down, there was a little blackboard menu. I was just deciphering it from French into English, it had been a while, I haven’t used much kitchen French for a while. I couldn’t figure out what this one thing was. It said Cervelle de canut and I was sure it was beef brains. I didn’t want to tell my daughter that. She’s 11… Then the guy walked past and asked if we needed any help with the menu. He started going through it and said, satsuma, and I said mandarin, and he said, oh my god you’re a chef. I said, ah yeah, I am. He was the chef, so he sat down and we started talking, then the wine guy came over. There’s no wine list, so he asked what I liked and I told him and he plonked seven bottles on the table. They were all pretty reasonable priced, so I told him we’d try one and then follow it up with another one.
Then the other guy was coming through and interacting with the kids. The one I couldn’t decipher was an old school French dish made out of fresh cow mild curd. They make it in the morning and they used to say it looks like brains because it sets like that. It just came with some grilled bread, some diced marinated peppers. I had a wild bream with freshly grated hazelnuts, mandarin tartare, which was just banging. For a main, I had a whole squid chopped up and cooked in its own juices with confit fennel and a delicious pilaf on the side. Violet had roast chicken which was actually rooster. She thought it was great. We had dessert and cheese and then he came out and spoke to us for an hour, gave me a tour of the kitchen.
That, to me, is what it’s all about; creating memories.
Total memories. Simple food done well. That’s what it’s all about for me. Making banana bread with my grandmother, making muffins. Making these scones where she used to roll the dough up and put butter and golden syrup and brown sugar, so when you cooked them, they caramelised on the bottom. Or my grandfather, when my grandmother used to play bridge once every two weeks on a Tuesday night, he used to make griddle scones.
My mum used to make griddle scones! They’re the best.
I would go and buy a griddle just to do that with my kids.
I was just thinking about making them the other day.
It was the one and only thing my grandfather cooked the entire time I’ve known him.
That’s the best.
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