Oko recently opened in Fitzroy in the heritage listed building that was Hell of the North for a few years. Headed by mother and son team, Luciana and Sebastian Pasinetti, with head chef Kim Maree Moore, Oko is a celebration of all the best things you might imagine about Mediterranean dining, and the team draw on their experience, heritage and the passion they have for food and hospitality. The other great thing about Oko is the importance Sebastian, Luciana and Kim place on staff wellbeing and mental health. I sat down with Luci and Kim, and we talked about how they collaborate on the menu and the cooking, I found out more about how wellbeing underpins everything at Oko and I really appreciated how generous and honest Luci and Kim were with everything they told me. I can't wait to go back to Oko for the Mediterranean fried chicken and the Porchetta, but also because I just really loved these women and the way they spoke about food, each other and how much they appreciate Sebastian's approach to hospitality. Oko is a special place and I am so glad I just live down the road from it.
Hi, I'm Luci and welcome to Ono.
Hi, Luci. I have been here when it was Hell of the North, but it is nice to see some Mediterranean touches.
It is nice. But from the time we purchased it, we didn't do a grand makeover because it was a beautiful feel and ambiance and beautiful all over so we basically just added the greenery changed the banquettes and gave it a minimal touch up.
And it is such an iconic frontage; such a beautiful door.
Just the whole place in general. It wasn't one of these places that we felt we needed to gut and transform. You need to come and meet the chef.
I have actually met Kim before. I did a Conversation with a chef with her in 2017.
She won't be a sec. This is our private dining room.
It's beautiful and so great to have that bluestone. Where were you before here?
This is our very first restaurant. It is great that I get to experience this with my son.
Yes, and he has been in hospitality for a number of years, hasn't he?
Yes he has and I have done a lot of hospitality as well. I have just come out of managing a canteen at a school of 2500 kids and I did a lot of it in the UK in my early twenties and then we always had a love of entertaining at home. And from the time I took my son in to do work experience at the local restaurant, that was when he embraced everything and thats how we got to where we are today.
And are you from Melbourne originally?
Yes, and I had time in London and Sebastian has had time in London in his early twenties as well; history repeats itself. He was born in the UK as well.
And you have Italian heritage?
Yes, my parents are Italian and Sebastian's father is from West Africa, Ghana. That's where the name Oko comes from. It comes from where his father was born and raised. When twins are born in that region they are given Oko as their name if they are boys, and Sebastian has a twin sister called Tinika and her middle name is Akwete so if they went out into parts of Ghana and said they were Oko or Akwete they would know which region they were from.
That's so interesting. I did look it up and saw something about it being a name for a twin but I had also wondered whether it was something to do with the wellbeing aspect of the restaurant, the OK, part. That was maybe going too far.
Well our big focus is on the mental health side of things and making sure that our staff member are all ok and that we are here to help in any way we can. That stems back to what I previously said and Sebastian was given the opportunity to have his own larder section when he was doing work experience and he worked alongside some chefs. When he entered those premises, he had a love of cooking and of entertaining and within six months of being there, he thought no, that it was all so wrong and so he changed to Front of House and that was when he went on his journey through lots of Melbourne restaurants, including Chin Chin for a number of years and he went and opened Chin Chin in Sydney, but from that first moment he thought that when he opened his own place, he would never treat his staff like that.
It's a big question I am asking these days because I think most people I talk to agree that wellbeing is so important, and sustainability of staff. For me, and I talk about this a lot, but I read a book called, Like Water for Chocolate, and it is about a woman who, whenever she cooks something, her emotions go into the food and then the people who eat it also have those emotions, so for me, a happy kitchen and a happy staff seem like the obvious place to start.
Hi Kim, how are you, I met you when you were at Botherambo back in 2017. I was looking at your Instagram and I saw that beautiful photo of pork and I remembered that you had said how much you love pork, so clearly that love is still alive.
Kim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had to get that one in there always.
Well it works well for Mediterranean food as well.
Kim: It does.
I am interested in finding out more about how you collaborate on the menu and in the kitchen. Sebastian said in his messages that you Luci have a lot of input into that, how does it work?
Luci: Obviously I have an Italian background and a love of food and spice, so we basically came to Kim and explained what we were about and how we loved our Mediterranean food and remarkable Kim went away and presented us with a beautiful menu.
Kim: It's collaborative. Luci having the Italian background is a really great resource for me to talk to about more traditional flavours and if we twisted it too much this way, is that going too far? We collaborate a lot, Luci and I. It's really good.
Is it a seasonal menu?
Luci: Yes, absolutely.
Kim: We have just flipped into our spring menu, hence the porchetta and all these fabulous tomatoes I am getting at the moment; heirloom tomatoes. Oh my god.
I saw a photo of those too on Instagram. What are you doing with those?
Kim: We are serving them with a burrata, obvious choice.
And I saw a photo of something with anchovies as well.
Kim: Yes, anchovy toast. We try and make everything here in house, so we make our own focaccia, it would be a sacrilege not to. We were making it as a side but then we thought, we have this beautiful bread, why are we not showcasing this a bit better. Then Luci and I talked about doing an anchovy toast and mixing all the Mediterranean flavours into it.
Luci: It went from our roasted peppers with the foccacia to the anchovies and we thought ok, we need to bring all that together and bang, here we are.
Kim: We get a bit excited.
Luci: We do get excited in the kitchen at times.
It is really next level when you have owners who are just as passionate as you are. I can talk about food all day long and annoy the living daylights out of people. ~ Kim Moore
That's great and I could tell from your Instagram, Kim, that you are still so passionate about food and cooking and it is so great to know that even after some years cooking, I love the idea that chefs are still excited to come to work and then what a great experience to work with an owner chef who is also so excited.
Luci: Absolutely.
Kim: It's the dream. You don't often get that as a chef, which is fine. In other restaurants you write the menu and plod along and off you go. But it is really next level when you have owners who are just as passionate as you are. I can talk about food all day long and annoy the living daylights out of people.
Luci: You never annoy people talking about food.
I lived in the South of France for a year a long time ago and people would often talk for hours about food, but anyone who is passionate about it loves to talk about it. I loved all the produce there, all the tomatoes and vegetables and olive oil instead of butter and cream.
Kim: The produce over there is fantastic, but we get just as beautiful things here these days.
Luci: We are very lucky.
Yes a lot of the Victorian producers are incredible; all that amazing stuff from Gippsland as well.
Kim: The really great thing about Victoria is that there are a lot of small batch farmers who have come into the mainstream and are more accessible to us now. Before we had to go separately to each one to get, say, beautiful heirloom tomatoes. Now it is more accessible and we can get all these beautiful things from our usual providores, like fruit and vege people; they collate it for us, which is a lot easier.
Then you know what is good and ready in that season. So, what are some other things that are on this spring menu? I remember you saying that you were inspired by what was in the market rather than what was in cook books and I remember that lovely comment about talking to the ladies in the shops down Victoria Street.
Kim: Absolutely. I still go there. Since Covid I have started cooking more at home, which is amazing. It gave me back that love of cooking at home so I still go and talk to the ladies down there. And I like going to the farmers' markets at the weekends. It keeps you more in touch with what is out there and what people are producing. Some of the produce people are making and selling at farmers markets is phenomenal. And it is their start-up and then someone like me will come along and say it is fabulous and take it to the restaurant then off they go. I like that circle of life this industry has.
I was talking to some chefs turned heirloom vegetable growers, Jo Corrigan and Matt Donnelly and I think thats an interesting circle as well because they know what chefs want and now they are growing all these beautiful vegetables and having a different relationship with that food than what they had as chefs.
Kim: It has come a long way now. There is so much produce you couldn't get before. You used to look at it in a book and wish you could get it. I used to go and see the guy at South Melbourne markets, and he had a little potato stand there. He is the most passionate foodie guy I have ever spoken to and he used to go and get little trinkets, I guess you could call them, but little bits of things from all over the country. So if you wanted enoki mushrooms, he would find this person, he would go to the hills of New South Wales where the mushrooms grow off trees and he would bring them and we would taste the and compared to the standard enoki mushrooms you would buy, oh my god. I remember him getting us to try Australian grown wasabi and it was mind-blowing. So when you first taste it, it tastes like normal wasabi but as it sits there and the seconds tick by, it doesn't lose flavour, it changes flavour so when you try it again, it is a different taste completely. He used to do that and he would have every potato you can imagine; blue ones, pink ones, purple ones. The blue ones he had were, oh my god, you could roast them, make gnocchi, albeit a weird coloured gnocchi, but when you are cooking at home, it is fine. But the taste was amazing. I don't know if he is still there, I havent been to South Melbourne for a while.
Do you have family favourites or touches of family favourites that have made it onto the menu as well?
Luci: Our roasted eggplant which was on the previous menu. That was our chargrilled roasted eggplants stuffed with goats cheese and then made a nice sugo sauce to accompany that. That was probably one of our favourites. We are taking over a cafe in Fitzroy as well and that is going to have our home-made polenta on there as well.
Kim: Oh yeah, that is to die for; delicious. Truffle polenta.
Luci: That is a delight to have and that has been in my household for a number of years.
So the idea is to have a few things and share them?
Luci: Absolutely. We didn't want to be one of those venues where you order entree, main course, we found, even having functions at home, I would have an array of food on my table and everyone would congregate around the table because it was a conversation point. There would be bits of this and bits of that and thats what we wanted to deliver at Oko.
Well, it's feasting, isnt it?
Kim: We all like to eat like that now. It doesn't matter what cuisine it is. We used to do it with Asian cuisines, like Vietnamese where you order everything and everyone eats it all. But now it is every cuisine.
Luci: It also changes things; if you have your entree, main, dessert, then it is done, whereas feasting like this means you might share a few plates and the have a break but the burst of flavours in your mouth entices you to order some more and then the accompanying wines are a delight as well.
I think that satisfaction you get of seeing people loving your food is so great and you get that at home, but it must be great seeing that every night here on a bigger scale.
Luci: It is. We often go around the tables and ask how people liked Oko's food and the amount of comments we get are incredible and a lot of them say they have a party going on in their mouths with all the flavours and spices and sauces.
That's interesting, the whole spice thing and I always forget with Italian food there are spices but of course there was the Spice Road winding all through there, wasnt there? What kind of spices are you using?
Kim: Because it is Mediterranean, we have shawarma spice with our mushrooms and that is served with a hummus underneath. That's a really great thing to share with some focaccia.
What is spicy bomba butter?
Kim: Well me being a chilli lover, that was something I made up years ago. I roast off a lot of different chillis and then reduce the down and mix them in with the butter. It is hot but it quickly dissipates. It is a made up product.
Nice. And I saw the fried chicken on Instagram and it looks amazing.
Luci: It is amazing. It is one of our bestsellers.
It looks like next level fried chicken.
Kim: We use chicken thigh, which is the obvious choice being juicy and delicious, we marinate that in adobo sauce, then buttermilk brine then we have an adobo flour we put on which is gluten free and then it gets the bomba butter on top of that and chilli lime salt so there are all these different angles the flavours are hitting you from.
Luci: Definitely a party of flavours in my mouth.
I can see where that comes from.
Kim: And ras el hanout I have on my porchetta. We truss it and hang it for three days then cook it and yesterday Luci was watching the crackle come up. I think that was the best crackle ever.
Luci: That was the best experience I have had in the kitchen.
Kim: You literally stand there and watch the crackle happen. I'm using pork belly for that dish. I know I am very repetitive with pork belly but cooked properly it is such a beautiful thing. Im rolling pork belly for that one and not using a loin cut for the porchetta. I am slow cooking it for a while and then fierce heat for the crackle. It has produced a really juicy product because you have all the little layers of fat in between that have perfectly rendered down into the meat. I can't stop eating it.
And you're in the kitchen as well, Luci?
Luci: I am. I spend probably about three to four days with Kim in the kitchen alongside Olivia our sous chef. She is another great pair of hands in the kitchen.
Kim: She's our Sicilian connection.
Luci: We bounce off the three of us. We brainstorm.
That's great. I feel as though there are always going to be ongoing conversations and the possibilities are endless. That's exciting.
Kim: Luci is from Calabria so we have the Calabrian connection, then you've got Olivia who is Roman Sicilian so the conversations we have, even with the writing of the menus, all comes together. As a chef I like the collaborative thing. If you can tell me something that blows my mind, I will do it. If it is for the betterment of the dish, I will do it. Like at the moment, I've got Piselli on the menu on the sides. I get smoked pork hocks in and cook them down furtherthen pull them part and use the braising liquid to cook the piselli in. Have you had piselli before?
No I haven't.
Luci: Cooked that way they are divine.
What is is about pea and ham or pea and pork that is so good?
Kim: It is just so comforting. It is heart warming and that combination is familiar to people.
I find tht the synergy of the kitchen has changed so much. There is no aggressive behaviour any more. That was what drew me to this job, it was the job ad which had Sebastian’s mental health policies in it. I thought that was perfect and I wanted to be involved with it. ~ Kim Moore
I like this Can't decide? option. I wouldn't be able to decide here. Just bring it to me.
Luci: When people choose that option, it is a great introduction to our menu. We go away and pick the dishes for them and they dont know what they will get delivered to the table. 100% of the time it works perfectly.
Kim: And it's ok if you get a dish not to your liking, Sebastian will come in and swap it for another dish. Sebastian is very good at that sort of thing, at reading customers and what they would like. He spends a lot of time with every table and he has had so many years in this industry, working at Chin Chin and overseas.
Luci: He does it down to the fine detail.
Kim: I love it. Even when I get the Feed Me dockets, I think, that makes sense for me.
I think too, from what I have read and even from his messages to me, he obviously really cares about the diners, but he cares about his staff as well.
Luci: 100%.
Kim: He is very passionate.
Luci: That stems right back to when he was in his teens and working part time. I would walk into these venues and say that I was Sebastians mum and they would say, this boy is remarkable. His fine detail and he would accommodate people and make sure that they were happy and comfortable. He would go to great lengths.
That's what hospitality is, surely. Unfortunately that isn't always the case. But that is my understanding of hospitality and I love it when I meet people who are so passionate and keen to create that space.
Kim: He creates a really great buzz in here and I'm in the kitchen but I can look out and hear the restaurant and each table feels as though they have had a personal touch and what I call old school hospitality. He brings it right back into fashion with a bang.
Luci: You can just read our reviews. Everybody says that the service is down to a fine detail. At times I come out here and Sebastian is sitting down with the guests conversing and it is great.
Isn't that the ideal too? I love the idea that owners and staff are coming to work and knowing that they are going to have a good time and not just clock on and clock off. I like the idea that you are going to work and knowing that you will have a chance to meet new people and talk and share food. Since you opened, Luci, and you had the idea for the new venture with Sebastian, how is it different to what you imagined or has it exceeded expectations?
Luci: It has exceeded expectations by far. We thought we were going to be turning over tables left, right and centre but from the minute our guests come in here, they are in a comfortable and beautiful space and they sit, they wine and dine and we don't make them feel they need to leave so we can turn the table over. It was quite interesting.
Kim: I find that a restaurant will always tell you how it wants to be. I reckon in the last two years I have opened three restaurants and in the last 10 years, maybe eight restaurants in Melbourne. I say that to owners, and they look at me, but it actually just happens. People come in and it organically grows.
Luci: It certainly does. We did have a vision for where we wanted it to go, but we weren't certain and from the moment we opened the door, it certainly tells its own story. The space is comfortable, the food is great, the music is great and people dont want to leave.
I think that's what people want these days. They want to feel cared for. You don't want to be rushed out, you want to take time with the food and the company.
Kim: Especially after the last two years we have had in Melbourne in particular, we all need that bit extra, even if it is going out to dinner and our waiter is so accommodating and nice. We are all a little damaged from that. And that is what so great about working here with Sebastian and his mental health policies, He has always been at the forefront of that, making sure everybody is ok. As hospitality workers, people would ask if you're ok and you say, yeah, yeah, but your life could be crumbling. But Sebastian does a mental check. He has a red light, amber light, green light system so we can go up to him and if we are not feeling that hot because some days you have nothing and you can tell him you're on amber and you can sit and talk it out with him or he just knows how you are feeling on that day and we work around that.
Luci: It is nice to be in a work place where you can go up to your supervisor and say you've had a bad morning and they tell you to take 10 minutes to get refreshed.
Even being able to voice those things is so good. I read a couple of other things too about having two consecutive days off and a limit on hours and knock off drinks. It sounds like a small thing but I think it is really important. I get it, after a big night in the kitchen or on the floor, it's nice to have a drink, but being cognisant of that is good, I think. All these things are things we are aware of but saying them out loud and having them as a collective understanding, I was really blown away by that.
Kim: Especially for this industry and with what we have been through in the last couple of years. Before that, I think the industry was almost folding in on itself. Something had to give and all of a sudden Covid came and it made a lot of people re-evaluate. It's not there yet but there are conversations happening. I hear them in podcasts now. Everybody is able to speak, but before you had to be steely faced and get on with it. From a chef perspective, you just used to go into autopilot. You know your job, but being vacant like that, you are going to crumble one day.
It's hospitality. You are feeding people and nurturing people in a way but if that comes from a place of vacancy or not feeling so good yourself, how do you keep doing that and what does that mean for people to receive food from people who are struggling themselves, that doesn't make sense.
Kim: If you put together all the components of hospitality, dining, kitchen, front of house, no one ever connects the dots of the whole story.
And who is looking after you?
Kim: Mostly no one, in general. But Sebastian is a crusader.
Luci: He certainly is, I'm very proud.
Kim: For me, I grew up in a male, toxic work environment and thats how it was in my time. I have been a chef for 27 years. I have seen all the generations and all of the incarnations that hospitality flicked into. Back in the day the style was kitchens like Gordon Ramsay and you got screamed at all day long or you did the screaming yourself, because thats what you were taught and you mimicked that. It wasn't until maybe 15 or 20 years ago I thought, that's enough. I can't be like this. I was lying in bed at night thinking about how I had cracked it at my chefs all night long for the stupidest things. I knew I had to change myself and be the change. It has taken a while to undo myself, unravel the way I was brought up in the kitchen. But I make damn sure and I still do to this day that nobody that works in a kitchen with me will go through what I went through. I shield them to an extent and I still havent figured out whether that is a good thing or a bad thing because when they go and work somewhere else, will they hit a wall? But I have always made sure my staff were ok first. I have an open door policy; it doesnt matter what it is, tell me, or tell Sebastian. I find tht the synergy of the kitchen has changed so much. There is no aggressive behaviour any more. That was what drew me to this job, it was the job ad which had Sebastian's mental health policies in it. I thought that was perfect and I wanted to be involved with it.
Luci: It is the ideal work space.
Kim: Exactly. No one needs to be screamed at.
Luci: It is a credit to you, Kim, the way the kitchen is running. Well done.
135 Greeves Street, Fitzroy