Martin and his wife, Melissa, are living the dream. They own and run Red Gum BBQ in Red Hill, a burgeoning foodie destination on the Mornington Peninsula. Martin wasn't always the pit master he is today. He worked for local government, but a visit to a barbecue joint just out of Miami sealed his fate. From the first bite, he was hooked. He is now completely obsessed, constantly seeking more information, tips, and tricks. He told me that he had switched from dreaming about meat to dreaming about wood, although, as Melissa reminded him, he did dream about making the perfect sausage the other day
Martin, you've been open since 2017?
We started the business in 2013, I don't come from a hospitality background. I was in Local Government. I was on paternity leave with my son and got bored and had a real think about what was going on in my life and what I enjoy doing and what I wanted to do. And essentially it was barbecue.
He was born in 2011, 2012 I was on pat. leave and spent pretty much the whole year planning the mobile barbecue set-up scenario. At that point, barbecue wasn't a big thing in Australia. It was unique at the time.
You discovered barbecue through Melissa, your wife, in Nashville?
Grandma lived in Nashville and we had plenty of barbecue in Nashville. My wife is from Miami, in Florida, originally and there was a barbecue joint just out of Miami. Miami wasn't how it is now. So there's still these country-looking places and there was a barbecue joint there I fell in love with, back in 2005 and I've been chasing barbecue ever since.
And you went over at some point to specifically learn about barbecues, didn't you?
In 2016, just before we signed the lease on this joint, I was over in Georgia at Southern Soul barbecue and did a week or so over there, learning everything I could in terms of a restaurant scenario; how to cook for hundreds of people in a day, how to cook hot and cold, how to store it, everything. The cool thing about it was that they didn't really teach me anything I didn't already know about cooking barbecue. It was more about the mass production side of it and I got a lot out of it there. It was neat. They were really lovely people.
They are massive barbecues. I've been to couple of places around Melbourne, but they are a lot smaller than that.
They're epic.
They are. Did they come from the States?
No, I had them built here. These are old LPG tanks. 10ml thick steel, they weigh about two and a half tonne and are five metres long and are all exactly the same. I've got a guy over in Essendon, Airport West way, who built them for me. Silver Creek Smokers, a guy called Paul. He built my first barbecue, which I took out on the road and did all the mobile stuff, the markets and private catering. And now he's built these. These are super cool and no one's got them. They all have date stamps from when they were originally built, so theres one from 1982 and another one from 1970. They all have history. They're magic and I love them.
Do you have one per meat?
Yes. The front one is beef, the middle one is pork and the back one is chicken or whatever else we need to cook; veges and other bits and bobs. They just tick over all day.
How long is the brisket on?
Eight to twelve hours. We get in nice and early, light them up and they just run all day long.
Do you use Australian hardwood?
Red gum.
Haha. Of course.
Barbecue in America is traditional. It's traditional in the sense that everything is local. If you cook in Georgia you use beech wood, post oak. If you're cooking in Texas, youre cooking mesquite, there's plenty of hickory in Texas as well. Everywhere you go has its own signature as well in the wood that it uses. So to work in with that vibe, we use local wood. Number one, it's cheaper and readily available in your local area rather than importing it from somewhere else. That's how these barbecue flavours came about because it was regional. Red gum is regional to us. If you went up to Queensland, you'd be using ironbark. It just makes sense. I'm trying to recreate what they've done in the States but using what we have available here. It builds that connection to place, doesn't it? It really creates a sense of identity within that bigger realm of barbecue.
Everything here is really local. Your meat is local, the beer and wine lists are super local. The furthest away brewery is Yarra Glen.
The wine is all Mornington Peninsula. The beer is Victorian. We believe in local. We have B Corp certification so we believe in sustainability and doing good by the planet and all that jazz.
Does it take a lot to be able to build up to doing that?
Yes. It takes six months and it's rigorous. We were committed to it from day one. In terms of meat, it has always been free-range and grass-fed. Grass-fed, because number one, otherwise cows hang around in one place for the grain, day in, day out. Grain production is probably slowly killing the planet because it makes the ground pretty much arid. So if we can keep it grass-fed, keep it as local as possible, keep it free range, we're doing our bit. We're in a world that historically doesn't really care all that much about that side of things. We are the first B Corp restaurant in Australia. And we were the first B Corp business on the peninsula. The restaurant world doesn't really have that sort of accreditation. So we've used B Corp to hang our hat on to say this is what we do, we believe in it, we're not just talking about it, we've had it approved by a third party organisation. It was hard to get.
So that means the suppliers you're using, down to the straws you're using
The straws disintegrate on you but they are what they are. Yes, everything. We try to minimise our impact on the environment. But B Corp is also about how you treat your staff. We give our staff programs where they can go off and volunteer and everyone is paid by the book either on the award or above the award. We believe everyone should be paid a fair wage. It's hard work.
It is hard work. Especially walking around this massive place on a concrete floor.
You get monster calves though. We've got some good-looking calves kicking around this joint.
Now you're fully fledged and part of the hospitality brethren, what was the most surprising thing for you setting up, or did everything go according to plan?
Nothing really went to plan. Back on day one we got advice around starting small. Melissa had done a bit of hospitality in the States but she hadn't done it for a while by the time we had this idea. We spoke to one another for years about the things that would translate well from America and I always loved barbecue and thought it would do really well here. But starting off we didn't have much experience.
We started small. We had about $10 000. Most of it went on branding and the rest went on a barbecue and trailer and off we went. Through that process I pretty much made no money, but I got a good education for nothing. There was a point in time where it was such incredibly hard work, especially when it's mobile and smallit's easier now when I've got staff and a building and everything here. When I was mobile, I didn't have any of that. All the dishes were done by hand. I'd cook, pack up my trailer, leave, get to the event, unpack everything, get set up, serve for hours, repack it, bring it home, wash it up.
In that model you've got to think about how to create all that food because it takes at least 12 hours and then you've got other things in between. That's why having the bricks and mortar site has been so amazing. Everything is here.
When did Red Gum open?
January, 2017. So nearly two years ago.
What was this building before?
A truck mechanic's.
It's so great. It's such a big space. It would be so cosy in here in the winter too.
We love it. Barbecue is big. This wouldn't work on a main street location unless you had a whopper of a building and really nice neighbours who wouldnt complain about your smoke. The fact that a huge portion of my restaurant is devoted to those things (pointing at the barbecues), you need it massive. We had to compartmentalize the building for fire regs and we had a choice to hide the kitchen or hide the smokers, but everyone wants to see them.
Part of the joy of this joint is the spectacle of it all. You come in and see the smokers, you see people cooking barbecue, shoving wood in. You often see the guy with the forklift truck come round the corner with apple crates full of wood because we get our wood from two doors down. It's the best location. I've won the lottery with this joint.
The peninsula has really blown up, in terms of a destination for holidays or even a day trip.
Yes. It's only an hour from the city.
That's right. It used to take me an hour to get from St Kilda to Fitzroy on Punt Road. But in an hour I could be down here.
Exactly. Would you have ever believed, when you were a young whippersnapper in England, that you would be doing what you're doing?
No.
Has barbecue taken off in England?
It's getting there, slowly. Not like it is here. Barbecue is massive and it's getting bigger and bigger every year. You know when the Aussie dollar was strong against the US, lots of people starting going to America on holidays and I think that's when the influence really started to pick up, I think. It was around when the burger scene was exploding too.
But the answer to would I have imagined this, no. I went on the traditional journey for most young people in England. I went to school and after school, I wondered what I wold do and went to University and got myself a degree, still not really knowing what I wanted to do, then I got a job, as you do. It took me until I was 27 to figure out what I wanted to do. Most people might not figure it out even then and spend their life not knowing. I was fortunate. I had support around me. My wife was very encouraging of this. The impact in the early days on my family was immense. I was going away to markets, cooking for hours. But now the joy of it is that we work together, and we get to see each other. When she worked as a teacher, she worked incredibly hard and was absent from the family doing teachery things like marking papers and lesson-planning. Now we work together on the same thing. The children come up here and spend time with us, but in a normal job, you cant bring your children in.
It's the perfect local, family job.
I love it. It's been good to us. It has given us the freedom to do what we want to do. That freedom has taken a long time to achieve. If we build another one, I'm sure that will happen again.
Is that the plan?
You never know. I'm really keen to do it. It's been two years and this one ticks over beautifully now. The first year was teething. No one has really done barbecue on this scale before. Even the inner city joints aren't like this.
No this is massive. Driving in and seeing all the fairy lights and then taking in the expanse of it, its cool. When are your busy times?
Weekends. It's a weekend-based business.
And winter versus summer?
January is chockers. December is busy, then January is too busy really. But were busy all year round because of Peninsula Link. People kept telling me I'd struggle through winter, but we haven't necessarily. You have to tighten your belt a little bit but people are still coming down. I think we've just beaten the Yarra Valley as a destination, not my business, but the peninsula, as the number one day trip and overnight region in the state. It has blown up. It's really good.
This is my bag. I love it. Its a sickness. Im obsessive compulsive about it. Im not obsessive compulsive about anything else. But trying to cook the perfect barbecue is the mission.
Just to get back to the meat, because I know from talking to other barbecue pit masters or chefs, they talk about different approaches according to different regions in America, so some do wet marinades and some do more dry rubs.
Yes, regional stuff. Mine is southern, but essentially thats a bunch of different states. I love East Coast-style barbecue, which is South Carolina, North Carolina. I like a goldsauce, a vinegary tart sauce and those regions use sauces. They have majority pork and beef and Im really into my pork and beef. Texas has really blown up in regards to barbecue and not to have brisket and beef ribs on a menu would be mental. I went to Georgia to cook barbecue. All the places I've eaten barbecue are on the East Coast. That's still my bag.
But barbecue, in itself, the cooking process is still very similar. I'm the biggest consumer of barbecue information I know. I constantly read up on things. If a new cook book about barbecue comes out, I've bought it and read it within a day. I can tell you all the science behind it. I can tell you why things cook the way they cook. I run classes on it. My knowledge is off the hook. I did a university degree but I know more about barbecue than I do about what I learned in my degree.
It's amazing, isn't it, when you find the thing you love, then you want to know more and more.
It's my passion. Barbecue is a challenge; the whole thing is a challenge from running a viable business, to cooking meat. Every brisket is different. You can cook it in different ways. You can cook it unwrapped, you can wrap it, you can do all these different things to get the end cooked product.
Do you know when the meat arrives whether it might need to be treated differently from the last batch?
You do. From the look, the size, or marbling content in it.
You oversee things and do you also have other people looking after the pits?
Yes. Everyone on the barbecue is trained. There are four of us who can barbecue now. Three main guys and me who do it day in and day out. They know what to do.
I used to dream a lot about meat but now I dream more about wood. I feel like I know meat pretty well now, but different wood can give you different flavour. Its about burn time, even the moisture content of the wood will give you a different flavour. I've got a probe that tells me about the moisture content of the wood. If it's got more water in it, it will take longer to burn and the initial stages of combustion will just produce smoke and it will smoke longer and eventually take light and provide fuel. We use red gum for both fuel and flavour. Red gum goes on and burns down to the coals, then we put a new log on for flavour. Eventually that will stop smoking and ignite and then burn down to coals. Fuel and flavour, fuel and flavour, all day. But then what if you want more smoke. How do you work that out? Or your temperature in your barbecue is dropping. How do you figure that out? These are all the things you have to learn.
That's constant checking then?
Every 20 to 30 minutes, we look at the fires. Barbecue is as much fire management as it is anything else. Even the specifications of the meat. I'm pedantic about it. It's hard when it's grass fed because it's less consistent. Grain-fed, you can stuff a cow full of grain and you get consistent brisket. I prefer grass-fed. Plus there are benefits for the cow and the planet.
We've just been on a road-trip up through Victoria to Jindabyne and going through farmland, you see the devastation farming can wreak. It was never a landscape intended for hoofed animals. Could you barbecue roo?
It'd be dry.
I guess there's not much fat in the meat.
It's extremely lean. You'd have to smoke it. Low and slow is all about rough cuts; shoulders, brisket is the chest, ribs which are really about fat and collagen.
The rib was so good. It fell off the bone.
You can get bad rib and good rib. That rib would have a marble score of at least 4+, so it has a lot of marbling through it.
What's the crustiness on it?
Just salt and pepper.
Really? It was so delicious.
I'm a traditionalist in terms of barbecue and we have tried to create a regional style within Australia, instead of replicating a regional style from America. But I will stick to certain things, like beef has cracked pepper and salt. No more, no less, thats it. That's the only thing you put on it. I don't put oil on it.
Don't you?
No, no. Just water. Oil is a barrier between smoke hanging on to the meat and penetrating the meat. So I use water, because water is soluble. A layer of water, give it a rub then a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Pat it, get it into the pit. Cold meat as well. Cold meat absorbs more smoke than room temperature meat. You put your meat in there straight out of the fridge. It's little things like this that you learn over the years. Even allowing your rub to sit on there for 15 to 20 minutes, allowing moisture to draw up through it. So you leave it with the rub for about 15 minutes in the fridge before you put it in the pit. By drawing the moisture up, it creates a tacky surface and the smoke then rolls over the top and clings onto it.
The pulled pork has a bark on it that is a sugar baste spicy rub, so paprika, cumin, salt. This is my bag. I love it. It's a sickness. Im obsessive compulsive about it. I'm not obsessive compulsive about anything else. But trying to cook the perfect barbecue is the mission. I'm even doing comparisons to other barbecue restaurants the way I go about things. What are they doing? What are their reasons? How does that compare to me? What can I learn from them to make mine better? I'm always thinking about how I can improve things.
That's the fun, the challenge.
It is the challenge. The challenge was to build the joint first and then create a product people wanted to come and eat. That was the real challenge, because I'm not a trained chef. I like food a lot. I grew up cooking with my mother, as most foodies did. Eventually it got to the point where I loved cooking barbecue more than anything else I did.
How great that you can do this day in, day out.
It's a joy. I've got a barbecue joint in Red Hill. It's mental. It's a foodie destination. How did that happen?
I guess all paths lead to where we are. But not without a lot of hard work.
That's what I say. I'm here because I put in the hard yards and made sacrifices.
It's through the networking and through discovering what you love and through your devouring of books and talking to people.
It's having a supportive family behind you. Melissa and I don't have any family in the country, it's just me and her. We have to figure out what to do with the children during the day sometimes.
Do you want to show me the barbecues?
Listen here
87 Arthurs Seat Road, Red Hill