Michael Wilson

Hi Michael. Now, I haven't been to Singapore apart from passing through the airport, but I have seen photos of the Gardens by the Bay, the Flower Dome. It just looks amazing. It's very Instagrammable isn't it?

It's very much like a little secret wonderland.

How amazing to work there.

It's got good air conditioning all the time. The domes are Mediterranean temperature; cool and dry. So we don't really have to worry about the heat.

I read somewhere that diners can get some kind of breezy limousine ride to the restaurant.

The main entrance of Gardens by the Bay is a pickup point. We'll pick them up in a golf buggy.

How amazing. How do you get to be working in (and co-owning) a really magical place like that? I know you started in Melbourne under Guy Grossi and Andrew McConnell. When you were starting out, what was your vision? Because you had a really steep trajectory. Was that what you always wanted? I am getting ahead of myself in my excitement. Let's start at the beginning: did you always know you wanted to be a chef?

I started working in the kitchen when I was 14, washing dishes to get some pocket money and then at 16 I left school and started an apprenticeship. Back in the day you looked at like those fancy places at Crown Casino and thought, oh, I want to have a restaurant like this one day. The thing about the trajectory and success and stuff is it changes the further you climb up the ladder or the further you feel you've gone up, your perception of success changes dramatically. I don't perceive at the moment that I am successful or anything like that. I'm just another guy trying to make his way in the world. It really does change. You even look back at two years ago and think, oh, what were we doing?

But you seem to get stars quite quickly, Michelin stars. How do you do that?

I can't tell you. I think there is a formula of balance of service versus food. The most important thing overall is the concept. Is the concept strong? Is the concept understandable?Is it value for money? I'm not saying is it cheap? I'm saying is it worth it? These things have to be there as well. Not just quality of food. I feel like I've kind of figured that out a little bit. Now it's trying to figure out how to get a bit further.

How much further can you go? What does that mean, further?

We all like to rag on Michelin, but we all want Michelin stars at the same time, right? It is one of the greatest recognitions you can get for what you do. The impact it has on your business is, is so profound that it's like the best marketing tool. I've seen restaurants that are dead quiet and then they get a star and then they're full for six months.

But then there must be a pressure to maintain that.

Absolutely. But the thing is, if you can get it, you know what to do, right?So then it's just consistency and having all the procedures in place in order to obtain consistency and maintain consistency. And then after consistency, then you want to improve. The easiest way to is your team grows with the business, so then everyone gets better together. This is when you really see improvement. If you've got 30 staff and everyone improves 3%, that's 90%.

Because it's not just about you, it's not just about the, the head chef or the executive chef getting a star. It's a whole team. You need to have everyone on board with you.

People have to be aligned.

I guess you have to foster a sense of belonging and goodwill in the staff that they want to be on that pathway with you.

There are definitely easier ways for people to make money.So you need people that are passionate about it and they have to be interested and enjoy what they do. In the recruitment process, you will get people who think that's what they want to do. But the reality is it's not, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Recruitment can be quite tough in Singapore just because of the way that they handle visas and things here.

How long have you been in Singapore?

Four and a half years.

What took you there in the first place?

I was working in Shanghai before, and I met my wife in Shanghai, but she's from India and she moved out to Shanghai. She was living in the US for a while and then she moved back to England. And then we got married. We couldnt live like that. We needed to be in the same place. And then my now business partner, I met him when I was in Shanghai because he had some restaurants there and an opportunity came up here. They had a restaurant in that premises before. And they wanted to redo it and have a whole new concept and everything. So we worked together on that and put two new concepts in there.

So that's Hortus and Marguerite?

Yes. Marguerite's the fine dining restaurant and Hortus is the casual Mediterranean restaurant. All share plates.

I'm really fascinated by the Marguerite menu. Especially reading some of the dishes, for example, Duck, duck, duck, cherry. Tell me about that.

It was me taking the piss out of duck, duck, duck goose. It's a classic combination of cherry and duck. There are a few layers to it. The bottom is the financier cake, but it's made of duck fat rather than burnt butter. And then we changed the sugar and we used a different kind of sugar that's half as sweet. So then we have a savoury financier and then a duck liver mousse. And then we make a duck ham. We take duck breasts, salt them for 48 hours and then dry them for about 70 days. So then it's like prosciutto. On top is cherry leather, like a rollup. So classic flavour combinations, but just textually, it's like chewy, acidic, savory, umami.

So now that sort of explains to me a bit more because I read that you like to call it 'creative cuisine'. And I guess a lot of chefs would describe what they're doing as creative. When you are applying that to your particular cuisine, is that about the way you put the menu together as well and provenance and all of those things?

I think that in Australia, if you say it's modern Australian, it's understood. If you say it's Italian, it's understood. My previous restaurant, Phenix was French. Marguerite at its core is probably more French techniques. The way the menu's built is definitely probably a French restaurant. But the problem is, I'm not French, but when I turn around and I start manipulating food in a different way, we use a lot of spices and in the food, like North African, Mediterranean spices, but at our root, we're still using traditional French methods of cooking. We just like a little bit of spice in our life. So then when people ask, is this modern Australian? No, it's definitely not. Most of the ingredients come from Europe. We have tried to work with foragers in Australia to try and get some native ingredients, but we've been unsuccessful thus far. But essentially we don't really care where the ingredients are from as long as it tastes nice. And if it tastes nice, and it makes business sense, thenwe're happy to use it on our menu.The Duck duck duck cherry is just one element of a degustation.It's just one bite.

One bite.That's intense work for one bite.

The food is very labour intensive. We do a cheese course: 'Would you like cheese tonight?' If they say yes, we give them cheese. If they don't, we don't charge for it, but it's just three little bites. One is inside a little tart shell with a green tomato chutney. Then we do an apricot fruit leather that inside 3-year-old Comte cheese and Sauternes. And then we do a walnut macaron with gorgonzola and fennel and apple. You have cheese, but you just have these three little controlled bites rather than an onslaught from a trolley.

How many courses are there in that menu?

We call it a seven-course menu. But within the seven courses, there's six petits fours, four canapes. Every canape is labour intensive. There are multiple components to it. We make all our own chocolates.

Obviously there is a lot of planning. But how? Do you have big whiteboards? You must be thinking 70 days out for this thing and then making the chocolates on this day. There's so much going on.

Divide and conquer. I have a head chef and a sous chef who look after the savoury side. And then I have a pastry chef who looks after all the desserts for both restaurants. So I work with them independently. They all work together, but I'll have the meetings with her and I'll have the meetings with them and for planning, it's always handy to look at the menu from that time of the year before. And that'll tell you straight away what ingredients are in and what you used. I have tried the whiteboard method. What I found works because you have to have an omnivore menu and then we have a vegetarian menu. Because it's a set menu, I say we're running duck, we always have a suckling pig dish in the background that's not printed on the menu. Theres a whole other menu behind the menu. And we're lucky because we have another restaurant upstairs.

So for the suckling pig, we can take out the belly part and we sell the legs upstairs so we can literally just cherry pick the best out of every ingredient we want to use in the restaurant and then sell the rest upstairs in another restaurant. But typically menu planning, you're testing three months out and you are implementing when the season changes. In a couple of weeks there'll be a new implementation. We're coming off the spring menu, so we're coming off the rhubarb, the asparagus and we're coming into summer, so we're coming into Momo peaches from Japan, really super fragrant, coming into cherries. We're going to be using duck from Challans. And then there are these beautiful zucchinis from Italy. Most people eat zucchini and think it doesn't taste like much, but these have hardly any water in them, they're about $60 a kilo. They're super expensive, but they're amazing. You eat it and you go, wow. That's what a zucchini's supposed to taste like, mate.

What will you do with them?

We make a little tart with it. We slice it all on a slicer and then we line it all up and then we cut it all down and then we roll it all up. It's like a spiralized tart, and at the moment it's getting razor clams on half of it, and it's being served with some fish and a nice sauce.

These are some amazing ideas where, and obviously you're inspired by the seasons and the produce and when you are having these out there ideas of rolling things up or drying things for 70 days and so on. Where are you getting that inspiration? You've been in the industry for a while, but is it books, is it social media, is it other people?

Of course you're always influenced subconsciously by social media or other people, whether you are aware of it or not. But I think if you really want to get into the depths of something, you have to travel. You have to immerse yourself into it and understand why things are the way they are. When I was 24 or 25, I went and travelled through Europe and I had the work visa for the UK, but I just didn't want to work in the UK. You went to these kitchens and it would be, oh, not another Aussie. I wasn't interested. I felt like I was seeing the same thing I was seeing in Melbourne.

What I ended up doing was working on a winery in Bologna as a farm hand. I lived with family and I worked there and you were just exposed to so much, you understood why tortellini are so small and why they are made the way they're made. You saw Nonna making the broth and the way that they made it and you ate it and the way it tasted, it's the providence as well of all those ingredients, the eggs taste different there, the flour's different there. The charcuterie. It all makes sense. Another example is you want to make a mojito, and everyone loves a mojito. But I guarantee you if you go to Cuba, the mint will taste different.

I had a similar experience. I lived in the south of France for a year, quite a long time ago. But just watching the way families would come together around the dining table and people would bring things. But as you say, it was all from the area. The tomatoes really tasted like tomatoes and apricots in season were like a mouthful of sunshine or a mouthful of apricot jam because the flavour was so intense and they didn't do much to things either.

In my opinion, the biggest struggle is getting really good ingredients and then not overprocessing them. Super important. But it's difficult. There are so many people in the world and everyone wants the good stuff, right?

That's right. Do you think about food 24/7?

No. 23/7. You have to compartmentalise everything right into boxes. At the casual restaurant, the menu doesn't change as much because it's 48 seats, but it'll do 250 covers in a day. It's pumped. And then when people come back, they want to come back, and they want to eat the same thing. So there's a different challenge. We offer the same thing for the majority of the year for the people that want to come back and eat the same thing. So, then it is about food quality and consistency. But when you are working on Marguerite, you will spend more money than you should in order to make the experience better. You take so much pride in it and you want it to be better and so you'll have way more risks. You'll change the furniture that doesn't need to be changed. You'll polish the floor that shouldn't need to be polished yet. Tens of thousands of dollars all the time that have been reinvested and reinvested and reinvested to keep it at the standard you want to keep it at. So not food 24/7.

That sounds exhausting. But what do you love about being a chef and love about that style of cooking that you're doing?

One of the best bits is watching everyone around you get better. And, as a team, how everyone has the same goal and everyone pushes towards the goal. It's a very satisfying thing to see everyone together. Another thing is, it's not you against other restaurants. It's not about you being the best. I don't believe that there is such a thing, the best restaurant in the world. I'm not an advocate for this. It's you against yourself. No one will make it better than your team. It doesn't matter which journalist says it's good or this needs to happen. Ultimately you can't rely on the media to give you success. You have to earn it.

That's right. That does beg the question of what role the media plays or what role does social media play? And who are we to judge?

Sometimes it's 'cool' to talk shit about a restaurant.

I don't like that though. And I feel like particularly nowadays, it's hard work. It's hard to get staff. It's the food costs. And so to navigate all of those things and of course you have to meet certain standards and of course people have to feel like they've had a good time when they've come to eat. But I think the diners have to play a part in that as well. There's a lot involved. Maybe ratings are good and criticism's good, but I feel like we're at a point where there needs to be more uplifting of hospitality than tearing down.

I agree. I will say though, recently we've been getting a lot of Australians passing through Singapore, coming to the restaurant and they have such a good time. They're on holidays too, but when people are so happy to be somewhere great, it just changes the environment. There's nothing worse than people who go to a restaurant and then they bag it, but they never really wanted to go.

I feel like you've probably already answered this along the way in terms of what would your advice be and it's a bit of a fraught question – I asked this of someone recently and the question is, what's your advice to young people who are starting off out as chefs? And he said, where are those people?

Nice. I'll tell you what, it's easier to get chefs here than it is front of house staff. I feel like the professional waiter is actually dying out quicker than the chef. Personal opinion. But if you want to be a chef, don't go work at the Fat Duck. Go work in a bistro. The first guy I worked with in a suburban restaurant, he taught me how to work. Be on time, work hard. That's what he taught me. Then I went and worked with Guy. Guy taught me how to actually cook with my hands and my eyes and my ears and my nose and of course my palate. Then I went and worked with Andrew and Andrew taught me like a lot of precision, a lot of cross culture stuff and how to control the kitchen with rigid recipes and things like this. So I wouldn't recommend that your first job in hospitality, you go work in a fine dining restaurant, I recommend you go work in a busy bistro, where you learn to cook. Because if you don't know how to cook with instinctively then you're going to have an issue because you're just going to learn in these other places how to cook someone else's recipe. Perfectly, mind you. But then what are you going to do? You're really good at using agar.

Can you still be surprised by food, by flavours or dishes?

Yes. Wouldn't that be jaded: I don't like food anymore! My most recent surprise. I went to Dewakan in Malaysia in, Kuala Lumpur. He uses a lot of indigenous ingredients from the jungle and stuff in Malaysia. That was surprising. There was a dessert that was made from chocolate, but not from cacao. A different thing altogether. He had lots of little jungle ingredients. It was pretty cool. For sure you can be surprised. But I think the other thing is too, we talk about trajectory expectations and perception. As we start to get impressed by this and this, all we really want is this and this, and you just want the perfect country pate or something simple.

That's right. Or the spaghetti that everyone's on about now because Stanley Tucci talked about it when he went to Puglia. Spaghetti all'assassina, the pasta is cooked in the tomato sauce. So this, so, and that's, yeah. I'm seeing that everywhere. So sometimes that's right. Sometimes too much is just too much. You just want the goodness, don't you? But then to be taken on a journey like through your menu that is such a treat and it's so incredible when you know that backstory of how you've created those dishes.

It's a treat, right? It's not somewhere you go for daily nourishment or a quick meal. It's an occasion restaurant. Or for people that really like their food. There's many restaurants like this here and this city a bit spoiled. There's, there's about 50 of them. And sometimes you think people forget to savour their experience or savour that time with the person in front of you. This is a big thing that I have with the restaurant, and it gets me in trouble with my PR because they want a story. But I think, no story. It's about the person that's sitting next to you or in front of you that you're dining with. We need to make sure that these two people have this beautiful interaction with each other. We're the supporting cast, they're the stars.

I love that.

That's my number one thing. Don't spend too much. Not every dish is prepared at the table. Don't overload people. Give them beautiful food. Treat them, amaze them. Tell them everything if they want to know it. If they want to know nothing, Im absolutely fine with it.

Thank you. It's your day off. I better let you get back to it. It's really nice to meet you through the screen.

My pleasure Jo, if you are ever in Singapore let me know.

Oh, absolutely, I will.

Marguerite, Flower Dome at Gardens by the Bay, 18 Marina Gardens Dr, #01-09 Singapore 018953