Kay-Lene Tan

Conversation with a chef: Hi Kay-Lene. It is so lovely to meet you. How long have you been with Omnia and Yugen?

Kay-Lene Tan: I started 24th September. So it is pretty new. Two months? It's been good.

Were you just ready for a change?

Let's just say the opportunity came about. I wasn't really looking because the last year has been trying to get Decca up and running with Adam D'Sylva, but obviously that has taken a bit of a back seat at the moment because I'm not quite sure when it will be done, and this opportunity came about. I never say no.

Executive pastry chef, that means that you're overseeing how many venues?

At the moment, it's Yugen and Omnia and our function space, Bromley. And hopefully in the next six months, Yugen Tea Bar will be up and running again. That will be three venues and one function space.

Is that the most you've done, the biggest scale?

I think Ritz Carlton was probably the biggest scale, but obviously it's very different because Ritz Carlton is a well-known hotel brand, owned by a bigger group, the Marriott Group. It's a very different dynamic. Whereas here, it's a little bit like what Tonka and Coda were like when I was running across two venues.

Do you have more carte blanche to do what you would like to do in this kind of scenario?

I think in this kind of scenario, especially coming into two venues that are already so well established, it's about working together with the chefs to still be able to express the kind of chef that I am, but also working with the style that they have already created. They've already created menus that are favoured by many people, by the customers. So its about trying to find that happy middle between their style and my style. The whole team has been really welcoming and it's been actually a really, really great experience so far.

Where do you start then? I guess you start with flavours, but are you thinking of how it looks as well? Where do you start when you're creating a menu and working in with those other people?

I think it's starting with what kind of cuisine the restaurant offers. That is top of the list. Working with the two very different venues, Omnia is a modern Australian European type bistro and Yugen is very much Southeast Asian, which is something I'm slightly more familiar with. I guess I could say it's very similar to what Tonka and Coda was like as well. Tonka is modern Indian and you've got Coda that was Southeast Asian. So here theres a play on that as well, with two very different style of desserts, but it's been fun because I've never actually been able to work in somewhat of a European type bistro setting. So, getting to do more classic French techniques and desserts has been definitely a breath of fresh air, and also, it's challenge for me as well.

I like creating desserts that tell a story about my background as well and desserts that people enjoy that invoke nostalgia, so that at the end of the day we know when you eat it, it brings you somewhere. You eat something and you say, oh my gosh, this reminds me of this thing. That for me is the greatest joy when creating desserts.

I think more, or most importantly, it's creating desserts that I myself would like to eat as well if I were to go and dine in a restaurant. Aesthetics and stuff like that are definitely important because you eat with your eyes first, but at the same time, I think the flavour has to match the aesthetic. I think especially with Omnia, it's creating more simple desserts. But, the thing about simple desserts is that they have to be perfect. You can't hide behind any sort of frou frou or any sort of confetti that's flying out everywhere. It has to be perfect. That definitely is also a challenge for me.

I was reminded the other day when I was speaking to the chef at Maison Batard that with desserts, when you have really excellent food or a series of dishes in the main courses, in entree and mains, the dessert's the end of the meal. So you still want to have your flavour and flair and all of that, but you have to be aware of people's hunger and balancing that out with not being too rich and not too sugary and all of those kinds of things. That's a real challenge. I hadn't really thought about that because I always think, when really excellent pastry chefs are making desserts, they're so beautiful and so full of lots of elements. But as you say, getting that balance and the simpler, the more challenging in a way.

I think for me, dessert is the lasting impression at the end of the meal. Sometimes you could have a pretty mediocre meal, but you have a really amazing dessert and that stays with you for a long time because obviously it's the last bite that you have before you walk out of the restaurant. That's why I always think that dessert is really important. It's always the last ten minutes of anything that's really important, whether or not it's a dining experience or a soccer game or anything. The last ten minutes will tell you whether or not the experience is going to be a winner.

Seeing what the menu is about, balancing that, offering something that's familiar, but at the same time being able to bring some joy to your customer, I think is also really important. Chocolate desserts go really well, but at the same time, not everybody loves chocolate. You always have to make sure that when you're creating a menu, it has to speak to a large variety of flavour palates.

What are some examples on the different menus here?

Recently, we've had some beautiful roughie pineapples come in, and they're amazing, super, super sweet. I created a dessert that balances a bit of salty and sweet, which is a roasted rough leaf pineapple cake. It's on a brown butter cake with a vegemite ice cream, so you've got a little bit of that savoury in there to balance out the sweetness of the pineapple. And the pineapple is so beautiful on its own that it doesn't really need much doing to it. It's just roasted in the oven, baked on top of a cake, and it's absolutely delicious. The thing about that dessert is that we use the entirety of the roughie pineapple. Whatever is left over, the cutoffs we make into a sauce that goes on a plate with a bit of rum. So there's also a bit of alcoholic balance there as well.

The other dessert that I've put on recently in Omnia is just a simple Valrhona chocolate tart. Who doesn't love a warm chocolate tart with creme fresh ice cream? It's refreshing and it's something that people are familiar with. I think warm desserts always sit really well at the end of a meal, especially in Melbourne when it's cold 360 days a year.

Right now, I'm working on the menu for Yugen, which is going to be a little bit more reflective of the desserts that I've grown up knowing and loving. I'm really excited about that because having a Singaporean background, obviously Yugen flavours are something that hits a little bit closer to home and it's an area that I'm definitely more comfortable in creating.

So, what are those things that you're drawn to from your childhood?

Well, I guess the best representation would be in something that happened lately. With our function space, we do offer desserts as well. We offer a menu that's a little bit more reflective of Omnia and a menu that's a bit more reflective of Yugen and both menus that we offer for our events have a dessert station. Recently I was asked to create a dessert station for the Yugen menu, with more Southeast Asian leaning. I think all the desserts on that dessert buffet are very reflective of me. We have a kaya, which is a coconut jam choux puff. We have mango tarts with beautiful fresh mango, roasted banana cake, salted caramel buttercream. We've got black sesame macarons and a mandarin and ginger chocolate bonbon. Singaporean flavours are what really speak to me. I love pandan and coconut and calamansi and I could go on and on.

I was interested to see when you decided to make the switch from documentary making to chefing that you learned under Joel Robuchon. How did you decide that it was pastry rather than savoury?

When I first started, I didn't know the answer to this question, but I think I've always been drawn to the discipline that it takes to be a pastry chef, that attention to detail, that precision, it really speaks to me. Once, one of my chefs in school told me that savoury food is like music because you can always change it here and there, go with the flow, a bit like jazz, you just add when it doesn't feel right, you add a beator a bit more of something, whereas pastry is more like chemistry. You need to follow the recipe, otherwise it could be an absolute disaster. I think that precision and attention to detail speaks to me a lot. I really love the fact that if you follow a recipe to the T, you will always pretty much get the same result. I guess the technical difficulty of it is very challenging, and I always like doing things that are challenging to me. I seem to not like to take the easy way to do anything for some reason, but I guess that's what makes life interesting.

I was listening to, well, watching another podcast you were on, and you talked about the thrill of service and working through thigs and problem solving. That really fascinated me because of course you would have had to do that in MasterChef as well. Are you constantly looking for the thrill?

The adrenaline rush is always something that's part and parcel of working as a restaurant chef, which is something I'm really drawn to, but I don't know if I would say I chase the rush. There are some days that it's nice to have a stable running day, but obviously when you have that adrenaline rush when you're going through service, time goes by a lot quicker. I've never thought I would be I would say that I'm the sort of person that can very quickly think on my feet, especially in high pressure situations. But I feel that having the opportunity to run the pass in Tonka and be the head chef and take care of 15 chefs in the kitchen has definitely helped me hone the whole thinking on my feet aspect, especially when you have all these young chefs who are looking to you for direction in the most pressurising situations. I think you have to be able to be confident in making those decisions, not just for yourself, but your entire team as well.

Did that come easily to you, that aspect of leadership that you had to have as a head chef and executive chef?

No. Definitely not. Sometimes when I look back on my journey and I reminisce about how I've got to where I am, a part of me is still in disbelief that I am able to be in the position that I am. I feel very fortunate and very blessed to have met a lot of great chefs along my journey that have been real champions to push me to where I am today in my career. That's one thing that I always believe in is in order to know where you're going, you have to remember where you came from. I owe a lot to the chefs that I've worked with who have basically carved me into the type of mentor that I am today. I've met some crazy chefs. Trust me. I've had taco tins thrown at me. I've had espuma bottles thrown at me. I've been cursed at, but what you take away from that is what not to be, what kind of chef you don't want to be. I think even in the worst situations, you always learn something from it, whether it's something that you would like to do better in the future or something you would absolutely not want to do in the future. I think those are important lessons. I guess it's a matter of whether you see the glass half empty or half full.

I read in a Broadsheet article, I think from 2018, that you were lamenting the lack of profile for women chefs. Do you think things have improved?

Definitely things have changed. Especially the last 10 years in Melbourne, you can definitely see the evolution a lot of female chefs being brought into the limelight now, and I think that's a really great thing, but I also don't think it's purposefully done that women are left out. I think that the for the longest time, there's just been a very big lack of female chefs in leadership positions. But, obviously in the last 10 years, a lot of that has changed. I can see a lot of really amazing female chefs around Australia, and I think that's really great.

Can you still be surprised by flavour when you eat something that someone else has made or you discover a product?

I'm always surprised. I love being surprised. I think the one thing that surprised me the most was when I went back to Singapore in March. I had the pleasure of dining at Air CCCC in Dempsey. It's Will Goldfarb's restaurant, and he served my friends and I a dessert, which was I think it was a vanilla mousse with caviar. It's obviously a combination I've never had in my life. But I guess now thinking about the sweet and the savoury aspect of both components, they really played well on each other, and it was incredibly delicious. It was just one of those flavours that I was like, oh, why didn't I think of that? It's always amazing and inspirational to be able to eat food and try flavours that still surprise me today. It's humbling as well because the food in industry is constantly evolving, constantly changing. There are always things to learn. I think that's a great thing about being in food.

Omnia Bistro & Yugen Dining, 625 Chapel Street, South Yarra