Oliver Gould is softly spoken and fairly intense, and I mean that in a good way. He knows what he's doing and he values his team and the journey they go on every night. He is known for being at the helm of for 10 years and also for winning Young Chef of the Year in 2014. He has been described as someone to watch. I reckon he is someone to listen to. Now at , I was struck by the honesty of Ollie's answers and his dedication to his job and appreciation of those he works with.
Hi Ollie. I read that you had an epiphany at 15 and that led to you becoming a chef.
15 was when I was still at school in Year 10. I did work experience and I was just washing dishes but I loved the fact that I was in a kitchen that was really busy with lots of energy and things getting thrown around and lots of camaraderie. That’s what got me excited about the industry. From there I had more exposure and was still doing it when I left high school and realised that was the career path I wanted to take.
Was your first job at Stokehouse or was there somewhere before that?
While I was still at high school, I worked in a restaurant in the suburbs and from then my first job outside school was at Stokehouse downstairs. I did that for a year and a little bit and then moved to a middle eastern restaurant on Chapel Street for six months and then went traveling. The first ten years have a very short resume because I was back in Melbourne and at Stokehouse for ten years.
I’m a teacher as well as a writer and we always tell our students that mistakes are ok and we can learn from them. You had a fortuitous mistake at the start that led on to great things. I read that you turned up for a trial at the wrong time and so had to go elsewhere and that led to Stokehouse.
Yes. I was very lucky. It was a restaurant called Maxim’s at the Como and there was an angry chef there who was highly skilled and ran a great restaurant but in the wrong location. So thankfully I didn’t get that job and the next job interview was Stokehouse and that led me in a better direction.
Do you think it matters where you do spend your formative years as a chef?
It’s not so much about what you’re learning in your young years; it’s more about enjoyment of your job. That comes from your senior people who may only be four or five years older than you but if they have the right attitude and drive and passion for what they’re doing. Obviously there is also the little things you learn along the way is part of the job. An apprenticeship for me is not learning as many skills as possible, it’s knowing that you are going to enjoy the career.
That is so true. It really is a career where you need passion because you’re doing long hours and working with hot things and lots of people and pressure.
It bogs you down sometimes. I’m 33 now and I have days where I go through mental battles where I ask why I’m still doing this and why am I here. As long as you have positive friendly people around you who get on really well, it puts things in perspective. When I’m recruiting a kitchen team, it’s people I’d like to work with and I build a team where everyone will get on really well. You need to create an environment so you want to come to work.
That’s a big thing to consider. And there’s a big difference between being a head chef and thinking about all facets and being a chef who just comes in and cooks. What else do you think you need to be a really good head chef?
Patience. I call this thing I have and not many chefs seem to have it, ‘flight mode’, where you can turn your brain off and go through the motions no matter what’s happening around you; just keep at one pace and your brain ticking over like a cog. It’s about getting it done. As an example you might be cooking for 300 people and 200 sit at the same time and most people might be going ballistic and falling to pieces but as the head chef you need the mind set that you can control your team and you also do twice as much as is humanly possible just to get things happening. That probably comes from my background of big volume venues. 40 seater fine dining venues allow you to be more composed. I think it’s about having a brain that doesn’t lose where it’s at.
300 covers sounds alarming. But there are chefs who love that high volume and the challenge to produce high quality as well and obviously you do.
My last place was The Shorehouse on the beach in Perth and that was high volume and we were trying to do great mid-range fine dining food at the same time as doing big numbers. That’s frustrating because you do lose quality control sometimes. A good restaurant gets the balance right; you do the big numbers but the quality of food is where you want it to be.
I have days where I go through mental battles where I ask why I’m still doing this and why am I here. As long as you have positive friendly people around you who get on really well, it puts things in perspective.
Do you think getting accolades and awards such as Young Chef of the Year puts pressure on chefs to continue to perform and surprise and rise or is that what you’re striving for?
Not really. When you get an award in the industry, it’s just nice to get an accolade. Particularly in hospitality because you don’t get very much recognition whether it be from customers or the owners who are never there. You’re giving praise to your staff but no one is giving praise to you. An award is a nice achievement but people bring up 2014 Young Chef of the Year and I laugh it off because it’s this thing that happened but I don’t really think about it any more. It was great at the time. Has it given me more exposure? Probably. Particularly in Perth. They don’t know much about what happens on the east coast so they see an award and think oh that guy must be good.
Now Palermo….you’re cooking over a wood fire. I feel as though that’s the next step up. As chefs you’re either making edible balloons that float or something or you cook over wood as a challenge. Had you had much experience cooking with a wood fire?
Stokehouse back in the day had a woodfire grill which was a third of the size of this. It was a beast to operate and I was about 22 when I was working with it so it’s something that becomes a bit of a craft. Once you cook with any grill, whether it’s gas or wood fired, it is all fairly similar. You have to understand what the heat will do and what the charcoal looks like when it’s at the right point for doing certain things. It does become an art. I’ve been here six months with the Parilla grill and there are still new things to work out. Everyday I discover new ways of doing things to make it better. We are working in a way that’s probably not very Argentinian because they cook things low and slow and let things sit until they’re well done but we are obviously trying to achieve that rare, medium-rare point with great flavour.
Are you cooking whole animal?
The Asado fire pit is for cooking whole animals on crosses called à la crux. They get brined for eight hours then we cook them from 11 in the morning until 5 in the evening then we pull them off and portion them for the night service. That’s a bit of an art. The first couple of weeks were trial and error to get it to a respectable point and then from there figuring out how to make money from it. We can only really charge a certain amount for something that’s perceived as quite small on a plate and people probably don’t look at the quality of the produce or the time it has taken to get there. So getting that balance has been challenging.
Are you using Ironbark?
Yes. We’re using charcoal as well that’s made from mallee wood and ironbark. We need the charcoal for higher heat at certain points. The iron bark burns at a lower heat.
Gas cooking for me, now that I’ve used this and I’m not sure about the Josper and there are flat tops around as well, but it’s more enjoyable cooking with wood because you’re thinking constantly rather than just turning on the gas and going through the motions.
Were you familiar with Argentinian food before you started here?
A little bit. But it was knowing that it was empanadas and meat, basically. We’re trying to do it a little bit traditionally but also making it relevant to Melbourne. An Argentinian salad might be some tomatoes and some onion on top and that’s pretty boring. So you have to develop dishes and that’s where the link to Italy and Spain comes in. We can pursue more interesting flavours to accompany the beef.
Where do you start when you’re creating your menu?
I start with the base produce. If I think I need to come up with a salad, I might start with tomatoes and then I think about what goes with tomatoes and I think about three or four combinations. Trial and error over the years means you get familiar with certain combinations to the point where I can quite confidently create a dish and most likely it will taste good. Whereas seven or eight years ago, particularly at Stokehouse where I felt as though I needed to push the boundaries a bit, there would be a lot of trial and error and a lot of mistakes along the way to get it to the right point. With Argentinian, Italian and Spanish you can follow certain guidelines and as long as it looks good and we’re using fresh produce and it’s being executed the way you want it, it’s fairly straightforward. And obviously seasonal produce with the right balance of ingredients that make a menu sound interesting are a good starting point.
401 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne
PHOTOGRAPHY: KRISTOFFER PAULSEN