I’d been trying to talk to Matti Fallon for a while and it just didn’t happen. Timing is everything and when I sat down with Matti, it all becomes clear, as you’ll read further down in the chat. When I was trying to catch up with him in January, he was working on his Broadsheet Kitchen suburban Chinese takeaway from the nineties offer AND becoming a father. He was so lovely about wanting to be part of Conversation with a chef at the time, but very understandably had a whole lot of life coming at him. Talking to him now was perfect because there was a whole new story to hear.
Matti, good to see you, you must be super busy. You’ve got a new baby as well as a residency here and a pie shop.
It’s chaotic. But it always comes all at once.
It’s interesting because a few chefs I’ve spoken to have opened new restaurants and had babies at the same time.
Yes. I’ve had other friends who have done that. There must be something in the air.
I feel like a lot of the chefs I speak to, like you, are driven and passionate and creative and just always need an extra challenge.
It could come down to that. It has definitely given me another sense of ambition and drive. I wake up in the morning and the baby’s there and it’s not so hard to get out of bed. Well, it’s hard to get out of bed because I want to have a cuddle, but…
You want to create a world for your baby that’s a good place.
Exactly, so no more coasting along and doing my own thing, there are responsibilities.
I don’t know that anyone could say you’ve been coasting along. You’ve tried a few different things, but certainly to be described as the master of meat pies when you only just opened Prince’s Pies halfway through last year is pretty good.
I’m not sure that my competition agrees.
Pies were quite the thing last year, weren’t they?
Matt Wilkinson did The Pie Shop then Raymond (Capaldi) did Wonder Pies. There was no animosity. We were all going in the same direction but we were doing different stuff.
They say a bit of competition is good.
It gives you a gauge, I think.
And it means that the public are more aware that there are good pies out there and more people are eating them.
Totally.
I really liked that it was a moment in New Zealand, at the Queenstown Ferg Bakery that reignited your passion for cooking.
It’s all due to my wife. She’s a kiwi. My family are all kiwis as well. We went and I ate that pie and I thought we have a massive gap in the market here. The quality of pie, kiwi style, is just the best.
Absolutely.
No bias there.
None at all. I think when I saw you at the Broadsheet Christmas drinks I talked about the iconic kiwi Police Ten 7 pie video. Kiwis…we do love our pies.
That’s it. Over there, it’s taken for granted. You can go anywhere and get a good pie, but here you have to go to the city or out to Brunswick or out to country towns to get a decent pie.
That’s so true. I feel as though you have chosen quite iconic food to make your comeback. But right before you left cooking for a while, you were doing Nordic food.
That was the right time, right place for me to jump on. My business partner at the time was Swedish and he had a Nordic themed bar and the whole back of the place was empty. He came to me when I was working at Huxtable. He knew them all there and they were good friends and he asked me if I wanted to take over his place, provided that I did Nordic food. It was just when NOMA was taking off. I was young and thought I could replicate that sort of thing. Stylistically I liked it and I was really into foraging as well. I’ve always grown vegetables and herbs. My parents have a property on Mornington Peninsula and that all fit really well at the time. It was one of those things; I didn’t really know much about and thought I’d give it a go. But it was to my detriment because I didn’t really know enough about business. I was young and unfortunately had to pull the pin on it.
I think a big part of coming back to doing food was about doing food I really cared about, with some sort of passion behind it. Like the pies. Every day after school I’d go and get a pie with my grandad. It’s one of those things we always had around in our lives and loved. That was a no-brainer. Then moving forward, coming to Broadsheet Kitchen, I had this idea about 10 years ago, but never had the platform to do it. There was a tv show on Channel 10 that a friend of mine was working on. It was like a My Kitchen Rules or MasterChef type of thing but for people in industry, professional chefs. It didn’t end up going to air. We did a pitch and got through to the next round but it just went nowhere. We were going to do this back then and it has stayed with me the whole time. Now I’m lucky enough to do it here with Stuart as a mentor.
So how did it work for you getting in here? It’s such an interesting concept, enabling young chefs with an idea to have a go but also for the staff here, it must be a challenge too, cooking different food and helping other chefs create their vision.
It’s a constant turnover and the next chef in will be different again. The process was a bit different for me. I was going to do it, but I got busy with the pie shop and the person they had lined up fell through. Ellen (Fraser, Melbourne Editor of Broadsheet) knew I had this concept and said why don’t you throw your hat in the ring. I thought alright and went and had a chat to Broadsheet and they they’d love to do it. I came and had a meeting with Stuart, Scott, Kim and Emily and we discussed the end to end concept, because you can’t just come in and say I want to cook this sort of food. That’s not what the incubator is about, it’s about understanding the restaurant and doing all that sort of thing. Then I came in and did a cook in the middle of summer. I think it was four days after the baby was born. I was running on pure adrenalin at the time. I was in the test kitchen upstairs with Scott, Stu and Kim, General Manager of the whole group. They loved it. Luckily Scott is a huge suburban Chinese takeaway fan. He absolutely loves it. Whenever he’s in here, he always says, Fried rice, quick!
So that was the process. Then they said, cool, can you be here in three weeks? I said that I’d like to be, but I wanted to talk to my wife. She said it was crazy not to, it’s a great opportunity. Now we’re here.
There’s a lifestyle based around hospitality and there is a community in it as well, which is really cool. I think people are more aware of themselves these days and people support one another. If there’s integrity and a sense of love in there, it will come through the food, definitely.
I read an article about your concept before you came in and the things you envisaged then, are they things you’d already been cooking yourself?
Totally. We’ve changed a lot of the things to suit Saint Crispin and the contemporary dining environment and crowd here. Moving forward I’m going to open a place off the back of this. My General Manager who runs the pie shop, he and I have been friends and worked together for a long time and we were going to do this no matter what, so this was perfect timing. He has taken over the shop now.
Coming in here, I already had a lot of the ideas for the food and some of it I cook at home. Then I came in here and Stu helped me refine it all to a much higher level. Given his pedigree, he has really stepped it up to a level I would never have imagined.
That’s so great.
Over the time we could have got it there if we had opened our own place, but it was instantly there. I was in the kitchen upstairs working with Stu and doing all the testing and we are still working on it now. That’s what it’s all about. It’s the same in any restaurant. You try a dish and if it doesn’t work, you change it.
It does mean though that when you’re opening your own place, you’ll be coming in at a totally different level.
We are at a totally different benchmark now. It has taken a lot of the guesswork out of it. Having the mentoring from Scott and Stu and the group and having Broadsheet behind me…then after this I have a year’s membership at Worksmith, so I’ll go and set up office there and use their test kitchen so we can keep moving with good momentum and hopefully get some good investors in and get it going.
Good for you. I was reading about the process you were going to do for the prawn crackers, using shaved sausage, did you end up going with that?
We were doing the shaved sausage, but now we are just buying the prawn crackers in. It was too much. It was one of those things. We started off doing it. You have to make a mousse, roll it into a sausage, slowly poach it then set it in a glass chiller, shave it on the slicer and then fry it as well. For the amount of volume, there was just no way we could do it. We do the lemon chicken skins as well and that’s an hour and a half prep every day.
You have to choose your battles, don’t you?
Sometimes you just have to suck it up. We make the togaroshi ourselves and Stu is working on a prawn oil, like a little mousse to go on it now. We wanted to have prawn crackers, they are one of those things that are always on offer in suburban Chinese places, but they are not the be all and end all of the experience, it’s just a little snack to get you started.
When did it all start for you? Did you always know you were going to be a chef?
No, I hated it. I grew up on the Peninsula and when I was young, I started working at the Portsea Hotel as a dishwasher. I absolutely hated it. I hated the kitchen. I was still in high school and just worked there at weekends. But then they put me on larder and then I moved around the sections and I realised it was what I wanted to do. Then about seven or eight years ago I started doing a bunch of pop-ups and catering, then took it more seriously from there. That all eventuated into more of a knowledge of kitchens. I worked Front of House as well. But then it was all about the kitchen.
You’ve obviously worked with good people along the way?
I did a lot of DIY stuff but I did work for good people, like the Huxtable guys especially. They were really great. Working in a kitchen of that calibre compared to working on small sections in other places doing tacos and stuff like that. Huxtable was the first big step into the higher end. That’s why the Broadsheet Kitchen was so attractive as well, having people to learn from. Stuart is such a high calibre chef and it has been really good. I’ve picked up some bad habits over the years and that was nutted out pretty quickly here, which was great. It was about working smarter and I’ll take that away with me for the rest of my life.
Obviously it’s about creativity and you like a challenge, but now, at this point, what for you is the thing that you appreciate about hospitality?
There’s a lifestyle based around hospitality and there is a community in it as well, which is really cool. I don’t know if it’s like this for everyone, but you go to other restaurants and bars and everyone seems to know each other. There’s a good support network and people who can relate to you. Within a restaurant it’s like a family. I like that. It’s a cool environment. Once you’re out of it…I took time off after Du Nord and worked in construction and even then I had my hospitality mates coming over after work. Everyone stays in touch.
I like to think it’s like that. There’s a lot of talk about chefs finding it had and needing support and I’d like to think there is a community. Perhaps in the past it was more competitive.
It was a lot harder when I was younger. I think people are more aware of themselves these days and people support one another.
I hope so. I think it comes through the food too. If there’s goodness in the kitchen, I feel like we eat that.
If there’s integrity and a sense of love in there, it will come through, definitely.
I have to say, those lamb ribs of yours…
That’s all Stu. They’re amazing.
It’s the best lamb I’ve ever eaten and I tried to make a stand after reading Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu that I wasn’t going to eat lamb because Australia’s landscape wasn’t intended to have hooved animals and they have wrecked the joint and then everywhere I’ve been recently, the lamb is the recommended dish and I have eaten it and loved it and then been also disappointed with myself.
The lamb is a stand-out dish here.
Do you have a favourite?
I’d probably say the lamb, but the kingfish is great as well. A lot of what we are doing now…there are staples of the suburban Chinese concept and then we’re being more creative as well. The beef brisket is amazing. It’s our take on beef and black bean.
Nice. I’ll have to come back.
We’re here for another seven weeks so there’s time.
You can listen to the chat here. There's a brief gap when Matti jumps up to sign an invoice from a supplier and I'm useless at editing, so enjoy the realness…
300 Smith Street, Collingwood
Until 2 June, 201