When I went in to talk to Neil Rocke at The Commons Collective in Ormond Hall, a beautiful art deco complex with various venues like the Moubray Bar, Rose Garden, Conservatory, Chapel and more, I actually felt as though I had stepped back in time in the hall which has the most beautiful wooden panelling and paintings of the hunt and an intriguing collection of old leather boxing gloves plus Christmas wreaths and stars and fairy lights, so a ye olde English pub at Christmas time. I wanted to be in that world, and I didnt want to leave. Neil met me there and took me through a complex labyrinth of passages, the sort of situation where you wish you had some breadcrumbs to drop along the way so you can find your way back, but I took in all the various spaces and the loveliness of the building and we eventually ended up in the office. Now, this was the kind of office I see myself in. There was a bar at one end, but that wasn't even the best bit, a chandelier made of antlers, walls covered in art and big old comfy leather couches. I loved all that with an ardour far exceeding moderation. But I loved more the conversation I had with Neil. Neil is the epitome of hospitality. He has mainly worked in catering across his career and he is all about the people, both staff and guests and he is all about the food and giving people a good time. When Neil talks about what he does, his eyes sparkle. The Commons Collective is doing some pretty fun stuff over the winter months Christmas in July, Yum Cha, Cabaret Thursdays, Weekend Roasts and with Neil in charge of the food and the ambiance of that magical place, you know you are going to be in for an excellent time.
Thank you Neil for chatting to me today and for that tour through The Commons Collective, what a beautiful place. I'm interested in your journey, but I am also interested in The Commons Collective and what is happening here at the moment because there seems to be a lot happening. When I was reading about the nine different venues and all the different things that are on over winter, it sounds amazing. Could you maybe run me through the cabaret and the Christmas in July and so on?
Yes, it is a very exciting time of the year. We have our winter collection happening. Our menu changes every season and we have the winter menu on as our Commons basic, which is warm, English pub-style which is what we saw downstairs in the bar; hearty dishes: lamb and barley broth, shepherd's pie, soup. We have the staples we always have there as well, a burger, a chicken schnitzel and it gives us a chance to do something new every season. We have also brought in the Christmas in July. We tweak the menu to bring in the ham and turkey feel, the pea soup, anything that is a bit Christmassy. There's a croquette with turkey in it. We have a couple of desserts like a little snowman meringue in a glass that is going quite well. We have a Yum Cha coming up in 8 days' time. We are doing Yum Cha over four weekends, Saturday and Sunday, and we do a lot of bottomless brunches.
And is the Yum Cha happening downstairs as well? I saw a different name attached to that. Is that one of the chefs?
No, that's an alcohol, a Chinese alcohol (Fen Jiu). We are basing the cocktails on that.
Oh right. Shows how much I know! What is that?
It is a Chinese spirit. They came to us and we have designed some Christmassy cocktails as well as some Asian-influenced cocktails to fit in with the Yum Cha.
What a great idea.
They never rest on their laurels here. They are always trying to do new things.
I can see on the big screen there that there is that kind of vibe. There are lots of encouraging phrases there. "We are hospitalitarians extraordinaire." "We think differently."
We try and think outside the square in a lot of ways but it is always about making the customer happy.
How long have you been with The Big Group?
Just on 18 months. They were my number one opposition for twenty years. I worked for another big catering company called Peter Rowland Catering. I was their Group Executive Chef for 15 years, then changed and did a few things and then Covid hit and then this came up. In between I did some charity stuff with FareShare. They were good to me and it got me out the house.
I love FareShare. I used to volunteer with them on a Saturday morning.
Cricket and the team are great. Then this came up and it is what I had done before but the creative element this company has was something I hadn't had before and that really excited me. The last 18 months some of the functions we have done are amazing.
I think this is what got me into food and cooking, I am one of eight and we would sit around the table there were two groups, the younger ones and the older ones, I was one of the little ones and we would hear about each others’ day while mum cooked and then we all had dinner together. Thats what got me excited about food.
I was going to ask you, because this is coming up a bit lately, I wanted to ask about sustainability of chefs, rather than just about sustainability of product. Without saying the wrong thing, it feels as though you may have been in the industry for a while and you have done a lot of catering, but have you always been in catering?
I started cooking in '85, which is a long time ago. I did my apprenticeship in the airlines. I was with an airline called TAA which later became Australian Airlines and is now Qantas. We catered in Melbourne and did every international flight that came out of Melbourne, and we had a large kitchen with 70 chefs in it. It was about First Class and Business Class where you got the service. I did a four-year apprenticeship there and did big cooking, batch cooking, bulk cooking as well as the intricate stuff. We were flying gorgonzola in from Italy and the smoked salmon would come in from Scotland and the chocolates would be flown in from Belgium. It was that sort of produce that I got to play with, but it was big numbers and that excited me. I did that and thought I better learn a bit of the restaurant scene, so I did a stint at a little restaurant in the city called Dom's, an Italian restaurant, which was pretty popular at the time. It was Mediterranean, but predominantly Italian pasta. A lot of the footballers would get there and that became a place. Then I thought I should get some hotel experience, so I did that and worked at the Airport Travelodge at Tullamarine, which I think is still there. That was during the pilot's strike which is a long time back and that became one of the busiest hotels in Melbourne because of all the delayed flights and people being offloaded. You'd have no one in there and then all of a sudden 120 delayed passengers would come in and we would have to start cooking for them. That was an experience. From there I went and worked for a big catering company and looked after a couple of air force bases and learned how to manage people and manage food costs. From there I went to Flemington Racecourse and became executive sous under Peter Rowland Catering and that was an experience doing all the Melbourne Cups and all the racing.
Just thinking about the number of people and the volume of food and each dish has to be consistent, it is such a big thing, and it is all coming out at the same time rather than in a restaurant where it is perhaps more staggered.
Consistency is the perfect word to use. That is something I have always tried to do; to be consistently good or very good, not having low periods or taking shortcuts. With catering, for me, it is like trying to bring restaurant quality that you had the time to do to the big numbers and working on the background and how to do that.
Is that a thrill or is it anxiety inducing?
Both. I still get goosebumps, well not goosebumps, but I still look for appreciation even when I cook for my family at home. It still gives me a buzz when people enjoy what I do. In a nutshell, that's why I am still in catering and the young ones coming through keep me excited, the new way. They are much more level than we were back in my day. They don't take the rubbish we did. I didn't have to take it and I didn't because Im a big boy, but back then there was a lot of harsh behaviour in the kitchen and you just put up with it. You'd hear about it I was lucky enough I didn't have that experience but these young ones these days just don't put up with any of that, they are good at it. They are keener and they are probably not as scared of trying new things as we were. We were trained to try them, if you know what I mean.
Yes and it does sound as though the environment earlier on was one where you didn't want to put a foot wrong so it would have been harder to experiment and try things if you were afraid of making a mistake and being yelled at.
Then from Flemington, I took over as Group Executive for Peter Rowland and took over the Melbourne Museum in 2000, which was a great venue to open and since then have opened a lot of venues and interstate openings. I left peter Rowland and opened a little place called King and Godfree for the Valmorbida family. That was a great experience. That was probably a career highlight, going to Italy and eating and drinking for two weeks. That was what my job was with the family; they took me over there.
That's incredible. Was it all around Italy?
Mainly the north. They based their food around there. We started in Rome and then it was mainly around there. It was great to try every type of deli and restaurant. It was a real buzz to open that one. Then I took over food and beverage at the showgrounds and did that for 12 months before Covid hit.
It sounds to me that you are the epitome of hospitality because, listening to you talk about helping out with FareShare and so on, it seems as though it is as much about the people as it is about the food and I love that.
Doing a function like The Longest Lunch, or Spring Carnival and you know you have 50 or 60 back of house staff that you need to employ from the kitchen hand to the runner to the commis chef to the chefs in charge and people looking after ovens, you do build up relationships over the years and you stay pretty tight.
We talk a lot about wellbeing these days and I was just talking to Michael Smith who is executive chef at Hubert Estate and also overseeing The Prince in St Kilda at the moment and in the past I have spoken to Dan Hunter from The Prince and he talked about how they have things in place for wellbeing, like doing yoga together or maybe having smoothies at the end of the night rather than always knock off beers. What do you think about that? How do you see wellbeing in the industry?
I think Covid has helped a lot in that we stopped and could think about what we do and how we do it. I always try and have a balance. Catering is great for me for having three young sons back in the day, they are all grown men now, but being able to see them grow up. I did do the restaurant thing and you are chained to that restaurant from dusk till dawn and then you go again. Not that catering is not like that when it's busy and there are those spells, but I have always thought about work life balance. The staff I have worked with and who work with me have always known that family comes first. If a child is sick or a husband or wife is unwell, they can always go home. We deal with it. That has always been a motto of mine; family first. They are better at looking after themselves now than we were. Knock off drinks used to turn into finding a pub and finishing off late. You do have to have an escape to something that relaxes you. I fly fish. Thats my escape. I try for twice a year but I definitely go once a year to Tasmania and spend eight or nine days fly fishing on the great lake and there is no one else except my brother-in-law and a few friends and we will fish and maybe catch something, maybe not and recharge.
That's good. I wonder too, I'm a French teacher as well as a writer and we often, as teachers, are replaying things in our minds and can never really relax. Is it like that for chefs? Are you constantly thinking about how you can do things better?
Every function. You virtually high five yourself and the team after a good function. 90% of the time they are good but when you get a really good one, it is such a good feeling, but you are always driving home from a function and thinking, should I have done this better, if I had twisted that, would it have been better? Are those people gelling as a team? Its about the people and the food. Or that particular dish worked well, keep that. At the end of the day, it's what you want, but also what the clients' expectations are. If they want a $20 parmigiana, it has to be the best parmigiana. If they want a $250 whatever it is, it's about meeting their expectations.
I guess that's the thing, isn't it? Coming up with menus that fit the budget and we were talking about creativity before, how much say do you have in the menu and the creativeness of it? I guess that is also squashed by food costs.
You look at the venue. For example, Christmas in July and I could bring in whatever but it is about the client and the budget. We are lucky here at The Big Group because we have some big clients who have the expectation to buy the best and we have others who want to come down and have some bread and a bowl of soup, so it has to be the best bowl of soup we can make.
I guess you have a repertoire of a few years of cooking behind you, but in terms of ideas and inspiration, do you still look in books or online?
Everywhere. Books; I was always a book person. At home I have all my books around me. I'll google like the best of them. I'll read what is going on. I share with the team what is going on as well. There is a head chef here who looks after the venue and there is a head chef of production and I go to them and say, look spring and summer menu, any ideas? Anything you've seen, any restaurants you have been to? And we share and talk about it. But again, it is giving the client what they want and if it is a wedding, unfortunately it is beef, chicken, lamb and fish and a vegetarian option and trying to keep the dietaries as well. We use seasonal produce and whatever is on trend, so Asian fusion, bit of Italian, bit of Japanese, so we try to include that too. I am a big believer in using great producer and I am lucky enough to be able to have the clients buy that produce. I like to let the produce talk for itself without doing too much to it.
Are you still on the pans?
On a Thursday night we have the cabaret here. It's fun but they all come in at the same time. They usually book their table for 7pm and at 7.15pm, 115 dockets come in. I call Thursday night my penance but I come in and jump on the pans with the guys.
What sort of food are they having at the cabaret?
It's a pasta, a beautiful tortellini with pumpkin and ricotta, there's a burger, a winter soup, a fish, barramundi with an Italian gremolata, there are a couple of desserts. Its quick and clean to get it out before the cabaret. I do that every Thursday night. It's a bit of fun for me, I get in here with the team. If there is a big function, Ill be in here, weddings. I do the tastings for all the weddings, we do group tastings. 20 couples will come in on a night for a tasting of the meals and I will sit down with the clients and have a chat with them. It is still definitely hands on.
I like that. You are talking and your eyes are lighting up. You are still very enthusiastic about what you do. I love that. Thinking about winter warmers, what would be for you personally, not cooking for anyone else, but you eating, what would be your ideal winter meal or experience?
Ok, experience. It's a long time ago, maybe 30 years ago, we went around Europe and my wife and I, I remember going to France, the western part of Paris, I cant exactly remember where but we went to a caf and I remember ordering a Tagliatelle and it had chanterelles and rabbit and cream and a glass of wine. It was lunchtime and it sticks in my mind. It was amazing; mushrooms, rabbit, pasta. But then as a young one and I think this is what got me into food and cooking, I am one of eight and we would sit around the table there were two groups, the younger ones and the older ones, I was one of the little ones and we would hear about each others' day while mum cooked and then we all had dinner together. Thats what got me excited about food. I remember lamb shanks were an offcut and mum would make a lamb and barley broth and that is something I have put on here because it is a great dish. An Italian chef I worked with did me an Osso Bucco and it was the first time I had tried Osso Bucco so it was a long time ago and I thought wow, what is this?! Corned beef, once or twice a year on a cold day, that perfect corned beef with mashed potato and onion and peas and carrots, that is something that is special too.
And just to finish off, we did mention the young ones and their different mindset, what would your advice be to young people who were thinking about becoming chefs?
It's a passion. A lot of time when they sit down with them to talk about it, I will try to talk them out of it. If you haven'y got it, it sticks out after a while and becomes a drudge. It is a beautiful industry if you can immerse yourself into it. I say to the young ones, especially in restaurants, Fridays and Saturdays you are working and you can't see your friends. You will make new friends with waitstaff and other kitchen people, but your older friends will drift away because thats what happens in this industry. You have to enjoy serving people, not being a servant, but serving people and fulfilling their expectation. My son is a chef and I tried my hardest to talk him out of it. He is actually really good. I've had guys come through as apprentices and I sit with them and tell them about all the worst things and a couple of them have gone really well. One of them went to Mugaritz, which has been the third best restaurant in the world and another one worked at NOMA which has been best restaurant in the world, but then I had two who got to their second year and left because it wasn't for them. It's hard. The money is not great. I don't know how to explain it to them other than if it's your passion, you will love it and have fun. I still have fun and make sure that everyone around me has fun and that is part of being in The Big Group, every time we have a function, it is enjoyable.
17 Moubray Street, Melbourne