Juan Berbeo

Juan Berbeo: The style of cooking that we do is kind of unique. I'll quickly show you a video of what we do.

Conversation with a chef: What do you call that? A vertical rack?

It's a vertical spinner. It is called trompo, which is a spinner. Last weekend we were at La Vida Latin festival, between the National Gallery and the Shrine of Remembrance. We did really well.

Do you do lots of those festivals?

Plenty. Are you from New Zealand? I'm going to New Zealand on Tuesday, to Auckland. I'm going there because I'm researching, well, I'm organisingMeatstock. Meatstock is a meat and barbecue festival. It's done in New Zealand and in Australia. We are doing Hamilton in New Zealand, Bendigo, Toowoomba in Queensland, Sydney show rounds and there is also one in Brazil. I'm not doing the Brazil one, but it's a really cool festival. It's massive. There's over a hundred thousand people over the weekend. And people pay to get in.

And then pay for the food?

Then they pay for the food. It's funny, they pay $50, $60 to get in and then on top of that, they buy meat.

Is it all barbecue?

Yes, it is barbecue. American barbecue and we do our style, everything, you name it.

When you go to Hamilton, are you cooking there? Do you take all your equipment?

I'm going to cook. I'm going to ship the equipment to Auckland. I'm actually going next week because I need to ship my stuff, but I don't know where to ship it to. So I need to make contacts.

Do you know anyone there already?

I've got some contacts, but the best thing is to go yourself and show your face and say, look, this is what we're doing.

Is it your first time to New Zealand?

Yes. I'm going to go Tuesday and I'll come back on Friday. Just a quick business trip. I think New Zealand is going to be really good. I'm taking probably 400 kilos of meat.

Wow.

I sold 350 kilos here over the weekend.

That's amazing. Do you work with your brother?

My brother is a partner, but he's kind of like a silent partner. Hes more construction and he's the one that helped build the place. But he has another job. He works in construction.

So when you go over to Meatstock, do you go by yourself?

I'll go with my partner And maybe a good friend of mine will come. And then we just get people to help. The festival is the 24th, 25th of Feb. We will get in there the 19thto prep everything, to organize everything, to find everything we need. Then we will just get a few people just to help us put things together at the time of service.

It always amazes me that chefs can just step into a different country or a different restaurant or whatever and just go for it.

Yeah. But I'm actually shipping the meat from here. I use Sher Wagyu from Ballarat. I buy directly from them. I know the owners, so we just call them and say, look, I need this. We've been planning this for six months.

You have been cooking for quite a long time.

Well, I was born in the pots, as we say. We are third generation of cooking. My grandad, or my family were more butchers. They had a butchers shop in town, but my grandad and my grandmother had the only restaurant that there was between the capital, Bogota and my town, Fusagasuga. They had a restaurant in the middle of both cities, and they could serve 1000 people a day. They had pots with soup and the pots would hold 200 litres of soup. And there would be five of them. And they also made a plate that is called Fritanga, which is basically offal, lamb heart and they would deep fry it with the belly, and you just eat it with some potatoes on the side and sauce, and black pudding, chorizo. I think my dad told me that they used to sacrifice about 10 cows and about 30 pigs a week. They had to go to a big big place in Bogota to buy pork belly in bulk and all this offal to keep up with the demand. Even my dad has a story that at the end of the day, they just got boxes of money and they had a room full of boxes with money. My dad had to go and help my grandmother to count all the money, and they would take two, three hours to count the money. Sometimes my grandmother back in the day burned the money because she was smoking and counting and the ash fell on the money and it caught fire.

Wow. What a story. Obviously the food was really good, but that's huge volumes of people. How did they do that?

They just made a name for themselves. They had a big restaurant and they cooked everything with wood and charcoal. So they had a big stove-like thing that had holes in the middle, but it was made with cement and clay and they made holes underneath and would put in the wood and the charcoal, and then they would sit the pots on top of those structures to cook.It was like a big stove but made out of bricks and cement and clay. They used the fat of the pork to make lard. They used to make the lard to cook everything. It's not like they could just go to the supermarket and buy oil.

How did they make that decision to get into hospitality and restaurants?

They had the butcher training. And they had knowledge from family cooking. They started cooking and they just decided to open the restaurant.

That's amazing.

But it was funny because it was the only one between the two cities. So all the buses, tourism buses and everyone had to stop there to eat. It was full of cars. And it was so busy.

So they were onto it. That was clever.

They were really clever. And my grandad also used to sing. He played the guitar and everything. He was a bit of a bohemian guy, there was a lot of drinking, a lot of going out, he was a Casanova, even though he had my grandmother.

Goodness, we could make a film about this.

It was such a big story. They divorced after a while. My grandmother moved to my town, to Fusa, and they split the money. She bought a property in another area, and my grandad bought a property in another area. My grandmother kept the restaurant and just worked all her life with the restaurant. That's how she got money. She bought two, three houses. And she helped all the family. And my grandad on the other side, he had the property. He had some animals and some fruit on the property and he used to do barbecues. People would hire him and he would go and do the barbecue and sing and drink. Then he found another wife. But before my grandmother, he had another wife and he had two kids with that wife. I don't know much about the story, but then when he got with my grandmother, they had seven kids, and with the last wife, he had one. So I have 10 uncles and aunties. He died. His last wife is still alive. And my grandma is still alive. She's 95 right now. She tells the stories about what they used to do.

My father learned all that from my grandmother and my grandad. And he kept doing it. He had restaurants as well. I remember that I was in restaurants helping out when I was little, and that's how I learned all these techniques. For me, it was kind of normal. It was compulsory for me to help. I had to get up and help him when I was on holidays. I had to do it also after school. I used to study Monday through Friday. And then on Friday when I finished school, if I wanted to go out, I would go home and say, dad, can I go out? He would say, yes, but you have to finish this first. Finishing this first was me killing two lambs and processing them and doing the whole thing or make black pudding. And then on Saturday, I had to get up at five in the morning to go with mum to the market and buy all the vegetables and carry everything and do the driving.

Wow. That's a pretty good education, but it's a lot, isn't it? Then you decided you wanted to be a vet, is that right?

Yes, because for me, cooking was normal. I didn't say to myself, I need to go to school to cook because I could cook. When I was 12 years old, my dad had too many events at the same time on the weekend and he couldn't do anyone. Somebody came to the restaurant and said, Hey, I need someone to come and cook, 50 kilos of meat for my family because we are doing this thing. We need someone to do the barbecue and do the style that you guys do. And my dad said, I can't do it, I'm busy, but if you want, I can send you my son. My dad called me out, and I was 12 years old, and asked if I wanted to do the job and I would say, yeah, dad, if you want me to, I can do it. The man would ask if I can actually do it, Dad would say, yes, don't worry and I went to wherever they had the event. I cooked everything, earned some money when I was 12. Lots of money. And then came home happy. Because of those things, because I was little and I used to do this all the time, for me, it was normal. I didn't say, oh, I want to become a chef, because it was already there. I never thought of that. And I thought that it's a lot of commitment. When you have a business, it's hard to maintain it, to deal with the employees. So I said, I'm going to start animal and veterinary sciences. I did one year in Colombia, and then I decided to come to Australia. My best friend was here, and he helped me to come here. I did English for eight months and then I got into university. I did two years and I had to do one more year, but I couldn't finish it because it was too expensive. And I was paying for everything. Working full-time, studying full-time, international fees at the time were quite a lot. So I thought, maybe I need to stop this. I moved to cooking because I already knew how to cook. I was already cooking in a catering business. I became a professional chef here in Australia.

You have worked in some pretty great restaurants too.

I did. I started working at Epicure, which was Spotless back in the day at the MCG. Then from there, they moved me to the National Bank when it opened for the first time in Docklands, there were 5,000 employees. I worked at the cafe and we used to do the functions. We used to do sandwiches and scones. I spoke to the chef and said, I have a little bit of knowledge in the kitchen, can you give me an opportunity. So I started helping him and that's when I started working for the first time in the kitchen. From there I moved to Peter Rowland. We did the Pompeii exhibition when it was here. We were cooking Italian food with an Italian chef, Nina. She taught me a lot of Italian cooking. From there I moved to Rockpool. I worked there for a few months. I didn't like it so much because for you to move from one side to another in Rockpool, you had to stay for more than a year. I moved from there to Albert Park Hotel. Then to Cafe Orange on Chapel Street. It used to be massive. We used to serve 500 breakfasts a day on the weekend. It was crazy. The turnover of the place was incredible.

When was that?

I would say 12 to 13 years ago. After that, I went to a Greek bakery. I learned a little bit about Greek pastries. While I was there, I got in contact with MoVida and worked at MoVida original for two years, when they had two hats. You had to book three months in advance. I think when I went to MoVida was when I actually learned how to cook in a proper kitchen under pressure doing lots of people. I started in all the sections, but the person that did the pan section had to cook for the whole restaurant. It was massive. It was very busy. You had to memorise everything because you didn't have dockets in front of you. You just had the chef calling the dockets to you. Thats where I learned to cook in a proper kitchen. I did that for two years. Then, they had a Mexican restaurant called Pacos Tacos, I was there for a little while, then I moved to Piqueos. It was a Latin American restaurant In Carlton North in Rathdowne Street. Then I don't know how, but someone contacted me from the Merivale Group, and I went to the Merivale Group in Sydney. I moved to Sydney for a few months and I worked at El Loco, the Mexican place.

Do you think the food scene is different in Sydney?

I think the food here in Melbourne is more kind of down to earth and it's more affordable. In Sydney, you have to pay a lot of money to get food. But here you spend less money and you still get a decent meal. I think it's very pretentious, Sydney sometimes. Melbourne, you can go to really cheap places and you get an amazing meal. That's what I like about Melbourne. And it's got so much variety and the quality is much better.

When I was at MoVida, I had an accident. I broke my wrist and I had a really big recovery. I had some issues with my visa. So when I was in Sydney, I applied for a visa, but the visa was denied because, because I hadnt sent some documents when I was in recovery. Immigration don't see those things. They told me, no, the only thing that you can do right now is to leave the country. Because if you don't leave, then you'll be penalized for three years if you overstay. I went back to Colombia and I worked for 15 months to help my mum and dad in the restaurant. I used to make Lechona, which is stuffed pig, a traditional dish in Colombia.

What's it stuffed with?

Rice, pork, yellow split peas, some parsley. You slow cook it in the oven for 12 hours. We sell it at our restaurant.

You must like it here because you wanted to come back.

I looked for jobs and the pay was really bad. I was working six days, 60 hours a week. The only way for me to come back because I didn't have much money, was to have a sponsor. I had finished my Certificate III. The guys at Piqueos in Carlton North, had become my friends and I saw that they were looking for chefs. I said, why don't you help me out and help me get the sponsorship and I will come and help you. So then after 15 months I was able to return with their help.

Over that time, were you always thinking that you might like to have your own business?

Yes, because we did some festivals. We did a Spanish festival and we were really busy. We did really well. People were saying, when are you going to open your own? We said, well, when the right time comes. We were not residents or anything, so it was really hard to have a business on a student visa. We waited a long time, but it was always there, it was always the plan to have something.

I had some issues with the Visa because the restaurant withdrew my application and they sold the restaurant. My only way to stay was to find another sponsor. I found three sponsors, but I chose to go with Pastuso. I worked at Pastuso for two years. I was a head chef for two years. And then after that, they helped me to get the residency and I stayed for another two years.

Were you there when Alejandro was there?

Alejandro was the had chef at the time, and then I took his position.

He's very passionate, isn't he?

He's really good and he helped me a lot with my visa as well. So I'm very thankful.

That's a fun place. There's a lot going on there with the ceviche, the cold kitchen and the grill.

It's really busy. I'm really proud that I worked there for four years and I learned a lot from that place. They supply hospitality courses, so I learned a lot of things there about running a restaurant, running a business.

Yes. It's not just about food, is it? As you say, there is staff management and the money side of things.

The costing is the most important thing.

It must be so stressful, because as a chef, you just want to prepare all this really beautiful food. But then you've got the costs.

You can prepare anything, but if its not going to be worth it, it's not going to make you money. Being a chef is not just about cooking and making amazing food. It's about running a place, doing the costings, and having a good team behind you to run it. It was really good. We were really successful at Pastuso at the time. And then when I got my residency, I thought, okay, now I can find something for myself. So I found the Berbeo Bros site and I rented it with my brother. We did six months of works to fix it before we opened.

How big is it?

We have 24 seats inside and another 15 seats outside.

But is the main thing catering or festivals, or the restaurant?

We have three businesses. We have the restaurant. I call it an eatery more than a restaurant. We try to do quick food, but well prepared. We have the catering with the festivals, and we also do wholesale. We make frozen products and we distribute them around Australia. All our products are already in all the states.

What are they?

We have empanadas, cheese balls, called bunuelos. We have arepa, which is like a flatbread, but it's got 50% cheese inside it. We also do cheese. Lechona, the stuffed pig that I was talking about, we pack that in containers, chorizo and black pudding. We distribute that as well.

Do you barbecue there as well?

So what you were showing me before on the spinner, ora la llanera, how long does that take to cook that meat?

I'd say four hours.

Is it marinated?

We marinate the meat with spring onion and capsicum thyme, bay leaf, garlic and we blend it with beer and we rub it with that. Before the marinade, we put salt: salt, cumin, pepper, a little bit of saffron, mix it together and then we put on the meat. It gives a little bit of a red colour. And then we put on the marinade, which is greenish.

That sounds delicious. What sides do you have with it?

It normally comes with potatoes and guacamole, but we had to convert it to bread because people in Australia just want sliced bread. People don't understand potatoes, we usually do boiled potatoes. But we use bread now. You get pork, beef, bread and you get a little tomato salsa. And if they want, they can add guacamole or they can add a chorizo. And we also do bread rolls stuffed with the pork or beef with pickled red onion and two sauces, one mayo, and one like a salsa verde, parsley, garlic, jalapeno lemon juice and oil.

That sounds so good. Do you pretty much always sell out?

Yes. We always try to do 150, 200 kilos. If we have leftovers, I cut it and freeze it, then we reheat it at little popups in farmer's markets.

There must be a lot of interaction with people, especially at those festivals. You're right there cooking in front of them. Is that an aspect that you enjoy? Do you like an open kitchen?

Yes, it's awesome. We get thousands of pictures taken every time that we do something like that. It's quite a unique style that we do on the spinner. It has actually got to the point that people are so interested in the spinners that we are going to start building them and we are going to sell them to people in a smaller version for their little barbecues at home. Pretty much every Australian has a Weber. We are planning to assemble those on top of the Webers so people can cook at home.

That's a great idea. Do you use wood or charcoal?

We use wood and charcoal. We use wood for smoking and we use the charcoal for heat.

Do you have a, a particular wood you like to use?

We use red gum.

Seems to be the favourite amongst chefs.

And it's quite easy to access. We use red gum and charcoal. It's awesome to see people enjoying what we do and it's something different. People stand there for a few minutes just looking at the mechanism and how we do it. I have to repeat myself a thousand times. But it's awesome to see that people love it. Its something interesting. Its not like you are doing something that people have seen so many times that they're like, oh yeah, just give me one.

Well it sounds as though there are lots of challenges and opportunities and you're not going to get bored any time soon because you're coming up with these different branches of the business and ideas and youre going to all these different events.

The plan in the future is to run this business, and then probably the next big move will be to start producing these spinners in mass production and then probably opening a restaurant in the city with this set up so that when people come in they can see the setup. It'll be like a steakhouse. That's on the cards, but slowly.

And how can people find you? Does it say on your website what festivals or farmer's markets you're going to?

We use Instagram more. We share stories and post reels showing to people what we do. That's how people follow us. Now with the podcast, and we've been like on the radio as well and SBS, and The Age with Dani Valent and Sofia Levin. Theres another guy called Paul, from the City Lane. They know what we do and they share stuff as well.

I read that your family is food royalty in Colombia, but you're obviously pretty famous here as well.

It's good. People know us for what we do and it's a bit different. And because I worked at all these other restaurants, people get to know you and they say, oh I met you at MoVida or Pastuso. We have a lot of followers. There's a couple of Australian guys that started coming to a little festival that was at Prahran Market. We did it a couple of years and that's where we met. They are photographers and they bring cameras and they take photos and it's pretty cool to have people interested in what we do. We have a following because of that. That's a great experience.

So you going to Auckland this week, then will you go to the other Meatstocks in the other cities?

We do Hamilton on 24thand 25th of February. The next Meatstock is in Toowoomba in Queensland, an hour and a half away from Brisbane on the 8th and 10th of March. Then in Bendigo on the16th and 17th of March. Then Sydney 19th, 20th and 21st of April. Hopefully I'll go to Brazil just to in June or July, just to see what it's like.

In between those events we have catering, we get hired to do events in their houses in the big backyards. We can bring the set up and we can do it there.We have the spinner and we can bring it to their place. There are always events and things coming up. Then that's already April, May, then we will be getting towards December. December is massive for us because we do traditional cooking for those dates for Christmas and New Years. We get really busy. We do the Lechona, the stuffed pig. We make it for two, four and ten people. We Cryovac, we freeze it and we took it to Canberra, Sydney, Gold Coast and Brisbane. We did it last year and we are going to do it this year hopefully to all the main cities in Australia

Wow. Empire building.

We are getting the name out there. It's not easy, but I think you have to dream big to achieve. You're not going to be big in one day, you need to work for it. So that's why we work a lot and we are trying to get there.

Berbeo Bros

602 City Road, South Melbourne