Michael Cole

Congratulations, Michael on Chef of the Year.

Thank you.

Obviously I want to talk about that, but let’s go back to the beginning to ask whether you always wanted to be a chef.

Yes. A lot of people told me not to become a chef in my teenage years. My mum was a very good cook and we would always make pasta. She was an avid gardener, so I had the fashionable paddock to plate ideal that is on trend at the moment naturally as part of growing up. She was a vegetarian cooking teacher back in the eighties. They were a bit hippy and we were brought up vegetarian. So I guess it was seeded in my head, the whole food thing, but a lot of people advised me not to do it. I did Home Economics at High School and then got a job in a café then a job in a restaurant, then they put me in the Bed and Breakfast and I ended up being a bit like the town prize; they all passed me around. I ended working at every single joint in the place I grew up, in Mansfield. 

I worked at a few places there and then I got addicted to snow-boarding and did that in my spare time at high school. I started thinking that if I got a job in a kitchen then I could snowboard and work. But then all my family told me not to become a chef and I started working as a builder. I was interested in woodwork and I liked creating things with my hands. So I was doing this building apprenticeship and I was a year into it and we’d go on smoko break and everyone would be talking about football and I’d be reading up recipes. I thought to myself. what am I doing? Become a chef.

When I had been working as a dishwasher five years earlier, the executive chef had told me I should do my apprenticeship as a chef, so when I stopped building, I was back washing dishes and he told me that if I had started my apprenticeship when he told me to, I’d be a qualified chef. But anyway, one night, the head chef was looking at the clock at about 7.30pm and was keen to go home, so I told him to go home and that I would pack down his section. It was just a little pub kind of place. He went home and then we had a table 0f 20 people rock up. I told the waitress I could do it, so they were ordering steaks and fish and then all of a sudden the place got really bust and I had all these tables to do and then the Executive chef turned up and wondered where the head chef was. He just looked at me doing it all, shook his head and told me I was an idiot and I should just do my apprenticeship. 

As a first year apprentice, it was a bit weird because for the first seven months, I ran that hotel. We were doing 2000 covers a week. It was a bit backwards, because I didn’t really know what I should have known, but then I got exposed to a variety of venues because we had a bed and breakfast, a fine dining restaurant, and outside catering for weddings. I did 150 people in the middle of nowhere in the bush with no power or hot water, just gas. So I was really exposed to odd scenarios where I really had to think. Then he’d send me to do a private event in someone’s house. So it was really diverse and set me up to think on my feet.

But obviously being unsupervised and so young and somewhat self-taught, I picked up a lot of bad habits and I flew through the hierarchy, so there were pros and cons. Once I’d completed my apprenticeship, I knew I had to refine my skills and there was a guy in Melbourne, an old fella from Austria and they passed me down to him to refine everything. He knew all the classic techniques.

Were you able to take that on? It must have been hard going from having so much control to having to relearn.

No. It came from a discussion I had with them. I was at the age where I’d become a bit of a brat where I’d had too much freedom. I have a lot of respect for the person I did my apprenticeship with and he advised me to go and do this next stage.

Was it easy to relearn?

Kinda. I had to adjust my attitudes. I’d just moved from the country to Melbourne and it was a big shock. I didn’t have anywhere to stay. I lived on his couch in the restaurant for a few months. Eric was very patient and he was mentoring so it was what I lacked and I really needed that other side. He had many connections in hospitality in Melbourne and he was into judging competitions, so I got exposed to a lot of private wine dinners and so on. Then I heard about the cooking competitions and told him I wanted to do one and he laughed at me but said we could work on it together. You have to be very particular for competitions. It’s about everything; it’s not just about what’s on the plate. It’s about how you work and how you look, how clean you are, how calmly you work. During my apprenticeship, I was a bit out of my depth, I was a caffeine fuelled teenager flying through it, so I had to relearn all that.

I entered the competition and got a gold. 

How old were you then?

20, or 21. Once you get the taste for winning, you get a bit addicted to it. I liked the pressure and I liked the adrenaline and I liked the freedom of creativity. I was with him for a couple of years and ended up running the kitchen and I knew that once you’re running things, you’re not really learning anything, you’re just learning from yourself. I knew I needed to step down and I stepped down to commis, which is the entry to the kitchen after your apprenticeship. I went right back to basics at a six star resort on Hamilton Island. So I went back to learning from the back of the ladder. 

The kitchen was big. I’d gone from small homely kitchens to this big kitchen. I stayed up there for about eight months. The chef loved me because I was a hard worker and wanted to learn. He was French and he thought that Australians didn’t appreciate working up the ladder, they seemed to all want to start in as head chefs. He admired me for having the courage to step down and learn more. Once I’d proved myself, he gave me a lot of extra knowledge. Once I’d done a 10 hour shift, everyone would knock off but I’d stay on and do the next shift just to learn. After about 8 months, my now wife – we were there together – she had an injury ad had to leave the island. She had to leave the island and we had a long distance relationship but it was too hard and I told them I had to move on.

I spent some time in France, in Nice. I’d felt like a bit of a sell out because I had cooked French food but had never been to France, but I was totally unprepared. I thought I’d just go to France, walk down the street, go into a restaurant and get a job, like I’d do in Melbourne. I was really naive. It was right at the GFC and they were laying off French-speaking chefs so I thought they’d never hire me. I walked around the streets of Paris and got nowhere and it knocked me down badly. We were there for three months looking and this was before Facebook where you can look things up online. Meanwhile I’d been offered a job back at Mt Buller so I thought I’d take that and just go around France. We went down south to Nice and I saw the place we were staying in had a menu, so I asked them if they were looking for a chef. The lady said actually they were, and did I like snowboarding and I said, actually I do. She told me that the owner was going snowboarding the next day and I could met with him in the snow, so I had my interview on the chairlift. I got the job, but I had just committed to Mt Buller. So I had a time limit. It was an old nunnery with lead lighting and an open kitchen. I had wanted to work in a Michelin starred restaurant, and it was far from that but it was a really great experience anyway. We used to go to the market two or three times a week and whatever we could buy from the market would be on the menu. The boss would give me a thousand euros cash to go and buy whatever I wanted. The boss was great. He saw I was a hard worker so on my days off, he’d give me his V8 Audi to go up to the Alps. 

I came back and worked in the snow back at Pension Grimus, the Austrian restaurant place as sous chef. The head chef got an injury peak season, so I stepped up and did the head chef role. I was super happy and they loved what I did. They invited me back the following season. I really liked that lifestyle where you could go on a break and snowboard, then come back, have some food and do a service. There was a lot of physical activity and I really enjoyed that. I used to be a bit of an adrenalin junkie. I loved that whole rush.

I did seven seasons at Mt Buller doing that. Then in the summers I went and worked in Japan. Lots of people from Mt Buller went to Japan. When I arrived in Niseko, there were so many people I already knew. 

After that I moved back to Melbourne but I was a bit lost because I hadn’t really established connections in Melbourne and Melbourne can be a fickle city. It’s a bit of a who’s who. I got a job in a hatted place in the city and it was all going well, but then Eric, the old guy I’d worked for all those years ago, got really sick. He had looked after me for so long, I felt like I needed to help him. In my breaks, I was going round to his restaurant and making sauces and helping out. It got to the point that I was going after work to help and then on my day off. It was too much. I quit my job and went and ran his kitchen for a few months. He suggested I buy the restaurant, Le Gourmet, but then I got cold feet because another party got involved. 

My wife and I split at that stage and I sold my apartment in the city and went over to Japan. I was there for about six months and I was in an avalanche. I was off piste, back country skiing. I was fit as, but I’d got too comfortable. The snow has to bond otherwise it can slide. Japan is renowned for getting a lot of snow, there are often slides. It had snowed two days earlier and it should have bonded but it didn’t. I was being careless because I was so cocky and confident. I was on a hundred-foot cliff where you jump into a chute and you have to land on a vertical ramp between two trees. It was a bit dodgy. I thought perhaps I shouldn’t do it that day and started to back out of it, but when I turned around, the whole face I was standing on cracked and I went off this hundred-foot cliff completely out of control. I hit both trees, one with my face and one with my pelvis. I was in trouble. I had to crawl about 20 metres and it took me 45 minutes. Then once they found me two hours later, they dragged me out through a river and all that and took me to hospital where they told me I was all broken and that I had to go to a big hospital. By that time it was six hours after it happened. I had face surgery and other surgery, I had no insurance, it was costing me a fortune. 

I came back to Australia and I started talking to my wife, Alex again and we rekindled the flame. I basically had a year of rehabilitation. I really needed work though and Mt Buller called me and offered me a job. I told them that the Doctor had recommended 10 hours work a week and of course we used to do 15 hours a day in the kitchen. They said I could do whatever I needed to do. So I went back up and did a season. Then I decided I’d been head chef for a while and that I needed to go and learn again.

I went back to basics and went over to Brae. I was over there for a bit but I couldn’t do my rehab and it had only been seven months prior. We did massive hours at Brae and I was going backwards in my recovery. I was there for a month and decided for my health that I had to leave. 

The job I was then looking for was so unique because I couldn’t do the hours I used to do and I also wanted to work somewhere beautiful because I had had that life shake up. I was looking over the other side around Colac, but didn’t find anything, so came over to Mornington. I didn’t know the area and didn’t know that Flinders even existed. Then I was looking on Facebook and one of my friends who had been a restaurant manager at Mt Buller was nearby. I went and caught up with him and he told me that the group he worked for had a hatted restaurant and I went in there as sous chef. I just thought I’d be there for a short time to finish my rehab, learn how to surf and then go back to Japan. It was a really great lifestyle balance and it’s hard to find that in hospitality. 

Then the restaurant was going to go through some changes, and it shut down with the idea that they would implement the changes then reopen with a new team. In the meantime, they asked me whether I’d be interested in opening a café for them. I’d never done cafes since I was 15 in my first job. I wasn’t too sure at the start. I had lunch with the owner and she was so passionate. I could see her energy and enthusiasm and I wanted to work with someone passionate like that. They were having trouble getting a chef because it was supposed to be a healthy café. I said I’d write the menu at least so they could get it open. I wrote the menu on my way home and they had spent six months prior to that trying to get a menu. But my wife is a personal trainer and I saw what she ate for breakfast and my mum was a vegetarian cook, so I knew what I had to include.

The idea was that I would open this and then go and open the new restaurant. Six months went by, then a year and I needed something to keep me going, so I entered for Most Outstanding Chef of the Year. I won that and that gave me the confidence to enter more competitions. I saw that entries were soon closing for Bocuse d’Or. Eric, the guy I worked for before, had told me about the Bocuse d’Or and he told me that it was the biggest challenge a chef can ever do. I’d put it on a pedestal. When I was 25 in France, I watched it and thought I wanted to do it. So I thought I’d go for it. 

I found out that Chef of the Year was in the same arena as Bocuse d’Or. Bocuse d’Or was my priority. I needed a commis chef or apprentice and I didn’t have one, so I contacted the local shire and asked them for the best apprentice on the peninsula and they need to be no older than 21 by 2019. This was 2017. I had five people do some trials. Laura came along and did a trial. I got her to do 20 of the same thing and time it. I had to see that she improved in time and quality over the 20 times. She smashed it. She loves Martial Arts and so on and is very disciplined. We trained here after work. The café closes at 4 o’clock so we used this kitchen to train. It was a long shot to get this thing. I thought if I do Chef of the year and see what the kitchen is like, it’ll help with Bocuse d’Or. I asked them if I could enter both and they said go for it. Chef of the Year is a three-day knockout challenge and I kept getting through. It was great but I knew I’d be really tired at the end of it. I did Sunday and Monday and then on Tuesday morning I started Bocuse d’Or at 5.30am. I was up since 2.30am and worked through until 11.30am. At midday they announced I’d won the Bocuse d’Or but I was in the grand final of Chef of the Year at 2.30pm that day so I had to go straight into it. I was wrecked. I looked so skinny and pale in the photos. When I went into the Chef of the Year final, everyone was saying how calm I was, but I was just so tired. I won that.

When I won that there was a scout for Global Chef of the Year and they asked me to go for that representing Australia. To do that you need to qualify in Australasia. We flew to Guam and competed against New Zealand and Fiji and so on. I won that and then all of a sudden, I was in Bocuse d’Or and Global Chef of the Year. 

I had to qualify in China and get in the top five for the Bocuse d’Or. I won a podium, but we were in fourth place. I was gutted. We had gone to China almost two weeks before to train at the Pullman Hotel in a private kitchen and I sent 300 kilos of equipment over there and bought thousands of dollars of food because the previous competitor had spent two days just weighing up his food. I thought I’d do it here to save time but it all got taken at Customs. Then when we arrived at the hotel, I asked about the equipment but it had also been held in Customs. It got to eight days before the competition and we had to go and replace it all at the local Aldi and Costco. But all my equipment had been custom made for what I wanted. I had five different colours that matched the first hour, second hour and so on. I’m very particular about what I have and need to know how it works, but it was all gone and we bought a Bocuse D’Or kit from Costco. The night before we competed, we got our stuff from Customs. So we used mine in the end. But it was crazy.

I did Global in Kuala Lumpur and we got our arses kicked. I thought we’d do pretty well, but we got destroyed. It knocked me down. It was good because it made me realise that I really needed to focus. You get one shot at Bocuse so we really trained hard.

I went to France to the Cordon Bleu in Lyon this January and trained flat out. Once we arrived, we realised we had no time and we were behind schedule. I really felt the pressure. One run through would take five hours to weigh up. I wanted to do ten trials. I didn’t know how we’d do 50 hours. We only had 10 days. We weighed up 10 in one go and it took us 16 hours. But we saved huge amounts of time. So I did Bocuse and we came 14th out of 24.

I came back to Australia and it was like a rock out of the sky. I came straight back to earth really quickly. It was hard to come back to work, and I felt like I was back to square one. Then Chef of the Year popped up. I thought why shouldn’t I? I was really uneasy about it because I know a lot of the judges now and I didn’t want people to think there was favouritism, but that was just me. But they were harsher on me because they know me and have higher expectations. I asked them for their permission and they told me they wanted people like me, as long as I was willing to lose, as in, they didn’t want me to be upset if I lost. 

And then you won!

It was a long story, wasn’t it?

Well, I do feel as though I have just watched the documentary of your life, but it was great. Thank you for sharing it with me.

Georgie Bass Cafe & Cookery, 30 Cook Road, Flinders