Mark Ebbels

I’ve decided I want to live out here. It’s so beautiful.

It has its perks, for sure.

And you’re originally from here?

Yes. I grew up just over there. There’s a little fire tower on top of the hill looking down towards Toolangi. Over that way. I went to high school in Healesville and started my apprenticeship in the Yarra Valley and then went overseas and came back and here we are.

Was it always your plan to come back?

To be honest, I didn’t really have a plan when I left, I just wanted to experience other countries.

How old were you when you went overseas?

I went over in 2010, so I would have been 22.

When you set off, did you have somewhere to go to already?

I didn’t actually. I had tickets to England. I wanted to go to France but then I realised that I didn’t speak French and didn’t have the time to learn so I thought I would probably take on more in a kitchen where I understood the language. I travelled in America first for three months and while I was there I tried to sort out where in England I would go and I sent out a few emails to the three stars. There were only two at the time; The Waterside Inn and the Fat Duck which are right next to each other anyway. The Fat Duck replied saying they had a stage available which was great, so I took it obviously.

How long was that stage?

It was for a month but three weeks into the stage, Jocky, the Head of Creativity and Development, came into the prep house where me and six other stagiaires were working and he just kinda yelled out, hey who wants a job? I thought he meant then and there to go and pick something or do something with him or help him. I said I’d give him a hand and then he told me to meet him after work in the lab and then I realised what kind of work he meant. I don’t know why nobody else put their hand up.

They didn’t want to go and pick things…

I did another stage in the lab there. It’s normally a three month block there but after two months they offered me a job. I was there for another year and 10 months until my visa ran out and I got kicked out of the country.

When you say the lab, that’s in the development area? It’s obviously very experimental at The Fat Duck, where does the experimenting start? You follow what other people want to experiment with?

In my position I was following guidance from Heston. My first project was a beetroot risotto and he wanted to replace a cauliflower risotto that was on the vegetarian menu at The Fat Duck and he wanted to base it loosely around a beetroot risotto that they’d done for one of The Feast shows. Very loosely in the end. That was the brief. Then I put a few ideas in. Everyone works together in the kitchen and talks about each other’s projects and you have more than one going at a time but I worked on that risotto for three months, every day making beetroot risotto. You have a tasting with Heston at the end of the week. So on the Friday he would come in and we would all have our dishes for him and also doing some for the pub. The other chef, Ivan who I ended up working with in Singapore, he was doing dishes for the restaurant as well.

When you adjust something like a risotto that you’re making every day, what are you looking for? Are you getting more sweetness or more of a savoury touch? Is it texture of the rice?

Funny you should say that because for me the texture of the rice was a big thing because I kept undercooking it which was hilarious in the end and became a running joke. When I say undercooking, he wanted it in a very specific way, it wasn’t necessarily that I was making crunchy rice or anything.

There are different schools of thought on risotto too.

There are and he likes it…evidently…a little more cooked. But it turned out that it was the white soy that we were putting in to season it that turns up the starch in the rice when you heat it up and it made it a little bit crunchier. Things like the sweetness and savouriness but also he’s also looking at the whole package of the dish and suggesting things.

So in the end it kinda went full circle after three months of trying different garnishes. We went with little solero shots…do you know what they are? They’re an English thing; little frozen balls which you shake out of the packet and eat. We made frozen balls of liquid nitrogen, sour cream and horseradish to go on top of the risotto. But originally I started making a foam out of beetroot juice to garnish the risotto, which was really tasty but it didn’t work with the dish so Heston decided that he wanted to put it on somewhere else in the menu. Now it’s on an amuse-bouche and they’ve been serving it for the past six years. It’s a little horseradish and beetroot amuse-bouche. Things like that are derived from every project. It’s not necessarily a linear thing.

If you’re doing that one dish and practising and experimenting with it for three months…

It’s pretty dry.

I was going to ask that. Is there still joy? Do you have to wake up and remind yourself that you’re working for Heston, so it’s ok?

You are doing a lot of other things as well. I was lucky, it’s changed now, but the way it was, every section did certain things for the restaurant. So I was also making stuff for the menu on a weekly basis and I was also in a position where I was doing research and development for the Hind's Head in Bray as well. I had the opportunity to make a lot of dishes and they were generally simpler too and easier to execute. I ended up with most of my dishes being approved because I was doing the simpler ones. I had a lot of different, interesting dishes. Ivan on the other hand had a scallop dish that was supposed to be based on leather and it felt like months. I don’t know if it actually was.

When you get bogged down in the dishes in the restaurant which are very specific, it can be a very tedious process. It sounds glamourous but there’s a lot going on. With the beetroot macarons for example, I think there were only three or four ingredients but you’d make 10 to 15 different recipes at once with maybe one gram more, one gram less and record how much of each thing you put in there and then make them all with the same variables and taste the best one and then change the variables in that one until you get the best.

The reason why the restaurant is so successful and was so successful is because there is so much work like that put into it. The guesswork is gone, and the consistency is spot on. It’s unbelievable how consistent the restaurant is.

Do you have to sign something to say you’re not going to steal those ideas for yourself?

Yes. There’s a disclaimer about intellectual property that’s developed there having to stay there.

It must be hard sometimes when you spend so much time doing that thing and then you might naturally have an idea come through that was inspired by the process at Heston’s.

You do all the time. I’ve never seen that followed up on or anyone get in trouble for it. It’s a very grey area. If I was to put a beetroot risotto on the menu here, no one’s going to ring alarm bells. And I wouldn’t make it exactly the same anyway because it wouldn’t make sense in this scenario. I think the rule is for some of the things that the restaurant develops that are original and new. There are ideas getting thrown around that are original and if someone were to take them and sell them, they could make a profit from them.

There was a project we were all working on for a company that wanted us to figure out moisture barriers so that the food would stay crispy in one part and soft in another. If we had taken that and sold it to a competitor, then there would be issues.

I was speaking to Alejandro at Pastuso and he spent time at The Fat Duck as well and he was saying that he learned to use the whole ingredient or to look at it in a different way. So for example a carrot could just be boiled or roasted but at The Fat Duck they were making crackers out of carrots and a dip and all sorts of things that he had never considered. I was reading that you aim for zero waste and no plastic in the kitchen and really using the garden here, so that using the whole vegetable idea was probably something you already had aspirations to do but did The Fat Duck help you with that philosophy?

In a more holistic sense, I guess, in that it changed your perspective on how to cook. What Alejandro was saying, I guess, is that the way Heston would look at an ingredient and use it to get a certain thing out of it is very different to the way a lot of other people would. He had a beetroot jelly and an orange jelly.

Obviously beetroot was a thing there.

It’s actually been off the menu for a long time, but as an example, he would look at those things and make a jelly out of their juice or whatever and you’d eat the lollies and they don’t tell you which one is which, but the beetroot is actually the orange one and the orange one is actually the red one. That’s maybe not a great example in hindsight, but it’s about looking at things in a different way.

How easy has it been for you to come here and implement things like plastic free?

It’s really hard. We’re not there by any stretch. It will take a long time. Some of the systems that we’ve started doing are really good but we have a long way to go. I’m pretty impressed with the silicon lids but there are still a lot of take-aways to go through and sous-vide bags to go through.

You would have inherited what was already planted in the garden. How big is it?

It’s a little over a quarter of an acre. There are actually two gardens. There’s one that’s about a quarter of an acre and then another one over the other side of the estate that has our berries, globe artichokes and six or seven varieties of citrus tree; different kinds of lemon and lime.

Gino the gardener is out here two or three times a week and he plants what we need. Previously he didn’t have a lot of direction so he went with his gut feeling – he obviously knows what will grow – but in terms of what we might need and how much. At the moment the garden is coming to an end over the next couple of weeks. He planted a whole lot of stuff two weeks ago but nothing has come up yet. It’s a hard time of year, resetting for spring.

So then would you have to use other suppliers?

Yes. We do still use a veg supplier. If we’re making, for example, a duck stock, we’ll buy in the whole carrots and onions but I do feel bad most days placing a veg order because our veg supplier is coming out here for a couple of celeriac and some carrots. It’s been an interesting evolution. But the garden is coming along.

I’ve spoken to a couple of other chefs about that close connection to produce. Again, Alejandro really loves Gippsland and takes his team out to see where the produce comes from and it changes their relationship with the food once they see the effort. They’re less likely to waste things or to make mistakes and throw things out. Do you and you and your team feel like that as well?

Yes it definitely makes a big difference if you have to go out and pick it in the morning. The broccoli dish, for example, if you overcook it or something, you have to go back out and pick more, so it does make a big difference.

Annie Smithers talked about nurturing her vegetables through from a seed to the plate and so I guess you’re looking at the weather differently too and hoping for rain and sun. There’s a whole other dimension than when you're just using the supplier.

Yes. It gives you more connection which is in a large part what the restaurant is about. It’s connecting the chefs to the food and to the people and the people to the food. So that if that connection from the chefs to the ingredients isn’t there, you’re really missing an integral part.

And the land maybe.

Yes definitely.

Are you using any indigenous ingredients?

We’re using a decent amount from Outback Chef. She’s got a really good sourcing program from indigenous tribes around the country. We use her wattle seed for the bread, Davidson plum, anise myrtle, macadamias obviously, sandalwood nuts, pepper berries.

It’s good, isn’t it, that rediscovery or reconnection we’re getting now.

It makes a big difference, I think. Even in terms of her business because it is supporting people who hold that information but who need that support, not necessarily to start a business but to allow them to make a living out of what they probably generally do in their community. They’re amazing ingredients as well, so they sell themselves.

I read that you follow a more plant-based diet. What does that look like here? Can we see it reflected in the menu?

The menu probably reads like any other menu. There are a couple more vegetable dishes in the entrees but it reads with one veg main dish and four meat dishes. But all of those meat dishes and all the desserts and all the entrees don’t have dairy or egg or butter in them and the accompaniments that go with the duck dish, for example, are plant-based except for the duck and the sauce, which we make from the bones of the duck. So we’re not buying in extra stuff except for the meat and we’re sourcing the highest quality meat we can.

It is a struggle sometimes. Maybe struggle isn’t the right word because I’ve been doing it for a while now, but I live a plant based lifestyle at home and then have to come to work and try at least a little bit of the meat and a little bit of the sauce to make sure the balance and the seasoning are correct. That’s a little bit of a gripe I’ve learned to live with but there’s not really a lot I can do about it.

No it’d be difficult unless you’re in…

…a vegan restaurant, which is hard to find. There are not a lot of places doing food at this level that would be happy to have an entirely vegan restaurant, unless you open your own restaurant and that’s a whole other can of worms.

That’s right. Is this your first role as head chef?

Yes. In Singapore I was chef de cuisine which is very similar to be honest. But it’s the first time not having someone to bounce ideas off. Ivan and I worked together for a bit over a year in England and we lived together as well and then we worked together in Singapore for four years, so we had a really good relationship and we had a similar style of cooking. We still do have a similar style of cooking and we know each other so well. If we wanted to make a dish and he wasn’t there or I wasn’t there, there was a lot of continuity. Whereas if I’m not here, I sometime wonder what might be going on.

I guess that’s part of this role; you have to train your team to have the same style as you.

Yes, so that throws a spanner in the work when so many things are plant-based because they’re not used to doing it. I’m really lucky to have a very open-minded team of people. I was nervous coming in and thinking they’d all want to leave because they’d want to cook with butter and cream and do traditional French things. But they have been very open to the idea and seem to be really enjoying it.

What advice would you give to young people entering the industry?

To keep an open mind. A lot of people go into it with the expectation of finishing school and being a head chef. But without the experience and the perspective of travel and working in different restaurants, it would be very rare that someone would be able to excel and do that. That was a really big gripe in Singapore. A lot of the young people that come out of the cooking schools there think they’re the bees knees and want to jump straight into a managerial role and they don’t want to do any of the hard yards. I don't think it's specific to hospitality, though. You need experience.

Listen to the chat here.

TarraWara Estate

311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Yarra Glen

PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIM GREY