In a very six degrees of separation moment, as I wait to talk to John Rivera at Lûmé, his sous chef, Michael comes out to say hello. Michael is Jodie Odrowaz’s (last conversation) boyfriend and when I talk to John about that, he tells me Valentin (conversation before Jodie) is coming in for dinner that night. My mind is blown and I love it. It feels right that all worlds should collide here. John is passionate about bringing people together and creating a sense of community amongst chefs, especially the younger generation. He wants to make a difference and I can feel that intention through the way he speaks about cooking, collaborating and learning more.
Congratulations. I feel as though you’ve had a steep trajectory from when you started to now being here.
Thank you. Hopefully it isn’t a steep trajectory on the way down as well.
Just keep soaring. So you’re 25, John. When did you become a chef?
I started in 2012, it wasn’t really cheffing. I wanted to drop out of school when I was 16 and pursue it. My parents told me I should finish high school because you never know what is going to happen in life. After high school I studied pastry actually, I was a pastry chef. In the mean time I was working as a waiter. When I graduated, I was torn because I really wanted to be a chef and I was studying for that and my managers were telling me to stay on the floor. They told me I would be a ‘front of house bad boy’ for them. But in 2012 I started off as a pastry cook.
Was that here in Melbourne?
Yes, Rockpool Bar and Grill. So that makes it my seventh year this year. It has flown.
I think it would be good for all chefs…although perhaps it is hard for all waitstaff to be in the kitchen to get that other perspective…but it would be good to understand both worlds. I remember when I worked on the floor years ago, chefs could be quite tough on front of house. I’m sure that’s all changed now, but it’s good you had that experience of being on the front line dealing with the public.
There’s an art to both front and back of house. There’s a reason why they both exist. What we do at Lûmé is that every chef goes out to a table at least once every night. I’m still trying to get front of house to do some prep jobs for me. We want that crossover, we want that understanding. It’s a very small team. We have a team of 16 people at once on a busy night, so we really value understanding and cooperation here, so if they can help us out and we can help them out…I think the two biggest things me being a waiter at the start of my career gave me, was an understanding of beverages and wine and how they play a part in making a menu and how they go with the food, but also the charisma, the etiquette, being able to talk to guests and be comfortable with them, being able to read them when they walk in and as they go through the night. You can only understand that through time and experience. Every chef should have that because it will make them more comfortable and confident when the time comes for them to have an interview for an executive chef role or they are talking to investors about their dream, or like Jodie when she was at the panel for Josephine Pignolet. Knowing front of house and the stuff that goes with waitering isn’t just for the table, it goes towards life because it helps build relationships and build your career.
I agree. I think hospitality should be a holistic thing. It is about being hospitable. If you can bring that to your life and career, it will go a long way. What drew you to hospitality initially?
I just really loved food growing up. I loved eating. Not even cooking. I just loved eating and looking at food. Growing up I would always watch cooking shows and the Food Network instead of looking at cartoons. That was my foot in the door. Then from those cooking shows, you get interested and you want to try. Going through high school, I wasn’t a bad student, I was a good student, but I couldn’t see myself learning through books and sitting through university for another four years. I’m definitely someone who learned more hands on and practical. So, I liked food and thought I’d give it a go. Luckily, I did because I loved it. I loved every second of it.
It’s good that you were able to recognise that and pursue it. When you started, where did you do your apprenticeship?
I actually didn’t do an apprenticeship. I did a full-time course, a one-and-a-half-year course in patisserie at William Angliss and then moved into Rockpool bar and Grill as a pastry cook. Then I had an urge to do fine dining. That was at the time when the original Rockpool in Sydney, the flagship moved from George Street to Bridge Street with Phil Wood who is now at Pt Leo Estate’s Laura. I asked to transfer to Sydney. I went to the original flagship and did fine dining and I was in the pastry section. I remember one of the chefs I had worked with asking me whether I was looking to do pastry my whole life. I didn’t really know but thought I’d do pastry for now. He told me not to put all my eggs in one basket and that I should do everything and then once I’d done everything I could decide about pastry. I remembered that when I was in Sydney and asked Phil if I could maybe try out the savoury section and the hot section and he let me. So, four months into doing pastry at Rockpool in Sydney, he moved me onto larder and I eventually finished off in the fish section. I kinda haven’t done any pastry since then until here.
So technically everything I have learned about cooking savoury has been on the job through experience, which for me is the best way to learn. I learned my own style. As harsh as it is to say, I didn’t learn with the safety net that is TAFE or college or William Angliss because in the restaurant when you are being taught and you have that one piece of meat and you need to get four portions out of it, then you have to do that. At TAFE when they ask you to get four portions out of it and you only get three and a half, they let you away with it and say try again next time. I’ve always liked that pushed in the deep end style of learning. I thrive on that. But because I didn’t go through TAFE or an apprenticeship on the savoury side and have the classical, traditional pathway to it, my food now is a little more unorthodox, but for me it’s more interesting being that way.
I guess you really have an examination or a performance every night so in some ways, you have to bring the goods then and you have certainly proved yourself. You won San Pellegrino Young Chef of the Year last year. What was that like? Had you considered going for that?
I had said to myself that I wasn’t a competition cook. It wasn’t until Shaun threw the pamphlet in front of me and told me he wanted me to do it, that I should do it. he told me it wasn’t about winning or about being the best, it was more about gauging myself and seeing where my ideas are, finding my identity as a cook and having some fun in the process. So I said I’d do it, if he believed in me, I’d do it.
And I did it. I really tapped into what I wanted to do moving forward which is move into an iteration of the Filipino food of my heritage. I was very surprised that I won the Pacific region which meant I got to go to Milan. Leading up to it was intense. It was almost like a full-time job; I was constantly thinking about this one dish.
Did you have to make that dish under scrutiny? How did it work?
We were tasked to make a signature dish that had a story and message. You submit that recipe and your application to the committee then they pick 10 young chefs from each region and there are 21 regions, so 210 chefs world-wide. The cull went from 2400 applicants to 210. Then those 210 who were selected had to cook their signature dish for a panel of local juror-chefs. Our panel was Andrew McConnell, Paul Carmichael, Christine Mansfield, Scott Pickett and Jacques Reymond. So already, I was trembling at the knees. These are some of the people I look up to. They have distinguished palates and distinguished careers.
There were 10 of us. I was happy I had made it to that point, it was a great achievement already. I made a lot of friends there and learned a lot. I competed with a lot of my friends from Melbourne and around Australia. You cook your dish for them and they judge it according to five criteria…it escapes me now what those five criteria are. They have to come to a unanimous decision about who will represent the region. From ten, there will be one, from 210, there will be 21. Then from that point until the grand final in Milan, you had time to refine the dish; not necessarily change it but refine it. You had to practise the different components and flavours and really sharpen the dish, sharpen the presentation; really think about how you’re going to present it, get your plates made, get your classes, get all your props. Then I went to Milan with my mentor, Scott Pickett.
At what point did he come in as your mentor?
He came in right after I won the region. He told me ESP was mine and I could go there whenever I liked. Luckily I was at Amaru and we were both closed on a Monday so I was always at ESP on a Monday. So for the next six or seven months I was constantly at ESP or at Amaru working on it. I broke down each component and each week I would work on it. Eventually I put it all together and made it work. It becomes part of your life, it was all I was thinking of. Of course I was still working at the restaurant, doing my duties and doing what I needed to do in the restaurant but when I was off, it was all about my dish. What fuelled me was that I was going to present my dish, so it was me on a plate, to the likes of Brett Graham, Dominique Crenn, Paul Pairet and Margarita Forés. Margarita Forés is one of the biggest and most distinguished names in Filipino cuisine. The base recipe that I used for inspiration actually came from a book that she co-wrote. So to see her name pop up, I was once again trembling at the knees. That’s what drove me; not to win, but to put something up that was completely unique, that they hadn’t tasted before, that was completely unique and was mine and for me to be proud of that.
What was the dish?
It was Sinigang. Sinigang is a traditional hot and sour soup, think Tom Yum. In the Philippines we use a lot of sour and sweet and salty and spicy. The traditional souring agent of that is tamarind, which surprisingly we have a native version of in Queensland. I drew a parallel on that. I was able to draw inspiration from my upbringing. I’m an immigrant. I was born in the Philippines and I grew up for most of my adolescence in New Zealand. Then when I was starting high school we moved to Australia and I started cooking in Australia so I do consider myself to be an Australian cook. For me the pillar of modern Australian cooking is immigration and us being a complete melting point of cultures. What is modern Australian food? You can’t really define it and that’s what makes it great. We can draw inspiration from all these different things.
I used hapuka…I grew up eating hapuka in New Zealand…as the fish for it. I used native Tasmanian mountain pepper, prawns from the Clarence River in New South Wales to flavour the broth, that was my bit of Australia. Then I used the ideas and techniques from the Philippines of souring things and of cooking things over the barbecue, over fire, which we did a lot where I’m from. I just wanted to put myself on the plate, I guess.
How did it go in Milan?
It went really well. I was very surprised. We placed fifth out of the 21. I was happy being there. It was a dream. You get picked up in a Mercedes, put in a four-star hotel. Not just that, but I was so happy to be in the company of these chefs, to talk to them, gain some wisdom. I traded ideas with other young chefs and made lots of connections, friendships. Some of us still talk to this day on a weekly basis and that was a year ago. We came fifth and Scotty and I were over the moon. That’s’ probably the highest anyone from this region has ever placed in the three editions they have had. That’s really promising for young chefs coming up. Jake Kellie from Burnt Ends in Singapore placed third, so for us to get placed in the top five together, two Australians, it’s very very good.
From the get go I said to myself, I don’t want to be famous, I don’t want to be on tv, I just want to be respected within the industry for my cooking and for the person that I am. I want to make a positive change in the industry. All this is extra for me.
So you were working at Lûmé but you wanted to broaden your horizons by going to Amaru, was that how that shift happened?
I came to Lûmé about three months after they opened. I started off as a junior cook here and as time went on over the almost two years I was here the first time, I went through every section and saw everything. Shaun trusted me with a lot. At one point I was running the kitchen at 23 years old. He was a great mentor and teacher. He taught me the management and business side as well as the cooking side, all in one go. But there came a point as a 23 year old cook that I felt I had reached my ceiling in this place. I had absorbed this style and I needed to try something else. Shaun understood that. he had been in the same position. He was very happy when he found out I was going to Amaru because Clinton is an amazing cook. I often say to my cooks now, if I didn’t spend that year at Amaru, I wouldn’t be as confident as I am now. We cook with a lot of intuition, a lot of feel, really move with the seasons. It gave me the understanding that this week the tomatoes are really really good but next week that could change completely, and we have to roll with the punches.
I spent a year at Amaru and then just after Milan, Shaun contacted me to ask me to come back. I knew he wanted to go to LA and Eileen was moving on to different things, so he pretty much asked me to move home and come back. At that point, I thought, run my own kitchen…fine, that’s great, I can do that…let’s run the kitchen with his menu. I came back here and he had the meeting with him and he said, cool, great, when do you want to take over? When do you want it to be your food? I was all, wait, hold on…He told me it would be my food and my restaurant. He wanted to be the owner and General Manager but he didn’t want to be in the kitchen any more. It wasn’t his food any more, he wanted it to be mine.
I was taken aback and I was really nervous at that point. I knew I had big shoes to fill. What Shaun had built at Lûmé over those two and a half to three years was phenomenal. The way he thinks, the experience here is one of a kind. So we talked about doing it for the new year. It gave me a bit of time to plan my menu too.
Where do you start with that? Suddenly you had a blank canvas. Did you think you would keep in the spirit of what Shaun was doing or would you divert? How did that work?
That was the thing we talked about. He said, don’t do anything I would do. He gave me the permission to search for my own style and do food I believed in, that I thought would work and that I wanted to do and he was completely behind that.
He told me to turn it into à la carte if that was what I wanted to do and would be successful. I sat down and thought about it. I knew I wanted to do fine dining, I wanted to still offer a great experience. But I didn’t want to do the 14 courses we were doing. I’d been in here a few times to eat and I don’t have the attention span for that over the night. I get a little bit too drunk as well because I’m a lightweight. For me, seven courses made sense. You could come in here, stay as long as you like or power down to three courses and be out of here, which is what you can do on a Wednesday or Thursday night. I also really wanted to start to develop a modern interpretation of food inspired by the Philippines, my upbringing. Shaun was very supportive of that as well. It’s almost an unknown cuisine from the south-east of Asia but it’s gaining popularity know amongst my generation, especially in the US. So that’s what we came up with and that was the brief I gave myself. I’ve been back since September last year and from there it’s hours of research, recipe testing, menu testing.
It’s been a big ride. The hardest part about coming back was that I was still managing Shaun’s menu so I still had to have the mind frame to think the way he might think instead of thinking about how I wanted my food to be. But we got through it. We’re starting to really find out feet in what we want to do in terms of service and in terms of how we cook. I’m really excited now instead of nervous.
That’s awesome. In terms of the people side of things, how was it coming back but now being the boss?
Since I had left, a lot of the people I had worked with had gone, so coming back was like a new start. the hardest part coming back was inheriting a team in the kitchen that wasn’t necessarily mine. Eileen and I are great friends and we work well together but we have two very distinct working styles in the way we cook and the way we run a kitchen.
Can you explain your working style a bit more?
I’m a bit more intense. I mean, I’m not Gordon Ramsay throwing things around, but I always tell my guys , when you’re here in the kitchen, I want 100% focus and intensity and that’s the same thing you’ll get from me. Because it means the food is better and it’s more efficient. We do things faster, we do great food and we get out of here quicker. It’s not that I don’t like nurturing people in the kitchen, I do, but I always tell the guys there’s no holding back here, you tell me how you feel, and I’ll tell you how I feel. There’s no BS in the middle. We’re all adults, we tell each other, we get it done and we move forward as a team. That’s the intensity I got from Clinton. I really appreciated how he ran his kitchen. It was clearly black and white, there was no grey area. We are one team, we solve the problems, we move forward. When I first took over, only one person from the old team is left, that’s Michael the sous chef.
How do you handle the public side? I guess you have had some practice with the Young Chef of the Year, but having to talk to the media and being the face of the kitchen…you speak very well, but how is that for you? Suddenly it’s not just about cooking, it’s about a lot more.
Yeah. Shaun joked around with me when I first took over. He said, cooking will be the easy part. You’ll cherish the two hours a day you have playing around in the kitchen. But that’s part and parcel of the job. I had to understand I’m no longer the cook on the pans, I’m now the leader, the mentor, the teacher. The way he said it was you can do those jobs, but of you do them then the others won’t learn. Stepping back was hard for me. It was in my bones to push it out and cook and feel that rush. Now I have to manage them and let them do it.
I’ve had a lot of practice talking to media now, ever since San Pellegrino. Shaun and veronica prepared me well for it. I like to talk. I think you can tell form this conversation, it comes naturally, but I think San Pellegrino and being exposed to all that media really helped out.
Do you think about food 24/7?
I think about food way too much. I’ll be with my fiancée in the car and she will ask why I’m so quiet and it’s because I’m thinking about a recipe. It’s natural now. The thing is now I do so much admin and a lot of being on the phone to suppliers and stuff that I really miss cooking. So I’ll be eating something and it will remind me of something or I think oh this flavour would be great with that. It’s very rarely that I tune off my mind from thinking about food.
There’s still obviously a need to be connected to the food. How do you fulfil that? Do you do a little bit of cooking here? Do you cook at home?
I actually don’t cook at home at all. I take my leave on my days off. I’ll always make time to cook. If I have to do paperwork, I’ll also make sure I do a certain amount of cooking. Every Tuesday when we come back from the weekend, I’ll have jobs that need to be done so I feel like one of the cooks then. I find time.
Is this where you saw yourself when you started? Is this what you wanted?
I thought about having my own pastry shop and just working the mornings and having nights off. So naïve. I never really thought about the building or the framework when I was starting off. From the get go I said to myself, I don’t want to be famous, I don’t want to be on tv, I just want to be respected within the industry for my cooking and for the person that I am. I want to make a positive change in the industry. All this is extra for me. I’m still working every day to make their work-life balance better, their hours better, better connection with other restaurants in the city. Michael and I and Richard from Amaru are trying to get a lot of the young senior cooks together at least once every month to sit down and chat and unwind and understand that we are all going through the same problems, we can help each other and not think that we’re conversation. That’s still the goal, that’s still the agenda, whether it’s here at Lûmé or if I was doing something else, that will always be my number one priority.
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226 Coventry Street, South Melbourne