Paawan Engineer

Paawan Engineer: How was the other night?

Conversation with a Chef: It was amazing. I've been telling everybody about it, and my friends came last night because I told them they had to experience it. I was talking to you on Thursday night about how beautiful it is and how carefully thought out it is. There's so much to look at. I looked at your LinkedIn, and I see you've been in hospitality for a while. But you started in India?

I started working in Bangalore. I was studying there. And while I was studying, I was working in some of the hotels over there.

So you've been in hospitality a long time?

20-some years this year.

What do you like about hospitality?

I'm a very particular person. I like to do things properly. I don't like to do things, and she'll be right. It can be very challenging to be this way, but, basically, once I decide what I want to do, then I stick to it. I'll give you this information, which quite a lot of people don't know, is when I was very young, my mum and dad used to take us to these restaurants and that's when I said that I want to do this. Then I went to Uni to study hospitality, and I did a few shifts, and I realized, hang on a second, this is tough. But I didn't give up. I just persevered and then I did a 6 months internship at a hotel. I can't forget that. That was really tough. I was starting 6.30 or 7 in the morning, and I was working till midnight and then coming back to work.I worked 4 months without any days off and I remember one time my mom showed up to work, because I was 17, and was worried and was crying in the lobby. That was the Holiday Inn in Ahmedabad. I still remember.

What was your role there?

That was an industrial placement, which means that in the 3 years course for 6 months, you have to go and work in a hotel for 6 months, and they put you all over the place. And they roll you. They make you tough. In those days, it was very different because in those days, it was very old school. And the people who are working in hospitality, you don't see many of them now, but it was very hardcore. They expected you to keep moving. It was tough, and they don't haveany mercy on you or anything because you 16 years, 17 years old, and you've never worked a long time in the industry. They put you in the situation to make you understand that this is what hospitality is. Because after this, you're going to go back and study for another year and a half. You need to make up your mind if you're going to do this or not. Those things make you very tough. It can go either way. It can really leave a funny mark on a few people and can really put them in distress, especially now with all the social media, I dont think they would be able to do that. Anyway, I did that, and then I just continued and I just loved it and I was really good at it. Let me put it this way; in 12 years that I went to school, I was shocking. Not because I couldn't count or I couldn't do things, but I never wanted to study. I only studied in the last 2 weeks. But in hospitality, in my last year, I was first in my university. It created that passion in me. Since then, I've not looked back. In the last year of my Uni, all the different hotels come to select management trainees. I remember I got selected with 3 companies. 1 is Taj, which is a pretty big hospitality company in India, and there was the Welcome Group, ITC they call it, and Hyatt. I decided to pick Hyatt because it was an international chain, and that was amazing. The way we were selected was we were the potential general managers of the future.

You go through a year to two years of training, and they put you everywhere. You do housekeeping, security, food and beverage, kitchen, front office, rooms, everything. So you do everything, and then the last 4 months, you go and do your hospitality. I worked with them for about 12 years in different places and it was amazing.

You were in China and the Philippines?

Yes, I was with Hyatt for 12 years. And then when I came here, I realised that the hotels over here are a little bit different to Asia. Especially if you go to Asia, the level is very high. In Australia, the rooms are spectacular, but in terms of food and beverage, it's more a place for people who don't normally go to restaurants and bars. One of the senior people in Hyatt, he left and joined this company, Rosewood, which was an American family-owned business, very ultra-luxury hotel. A Chinese owner from a very big family bought that chain, and they used to own hotels which were managed by Hyatt and Marriott and Sofitel. They started to take them back and manage it themselves. They called me and said, are you interested? I joined them. My first posting was in Philippines as Director of Food and Beverage. I was responsible for restaurants, bars, banquets, all sorts of stuff, and worked with them for about four and a half years. During that time, the Manila Hotel was about 25 years old. What they did was they rebranded it into New World, which is a sub brand of Rosewood, and that was a project which was replicated in all the new worlds. So that was a very important project. And then after that, they sent me to Beijing to open New World Beijing, then I came back, then they sent me to a small town in China to open a hotel there, and they sent me to different places to set up the hotels. That was my specialisation; setting up hotels. From there, I went to Beijing, worked there for a few years, went to Cambodia. I was a month or so helping out over there. I was spending too much time in the office and in meetings. The money was phenomenal. You get paid US dollars. You don't pay tax. They pay for your accommodation. They pay for insurance up to $5,000,000 in surgeries for your whole family. Everything they give you three free tickets to come back home. It was great, but it was not what I was really passionate about. So I said, let's go back, and I decided to start my cafe seven years ago. I bought an existing cafe. It was a bit rundown, but I built it up. That's the whole story.

When did the idea for Mill Place Merchants come about?

Actually, about 5 years ago. It was not an exact idea, but about 5 years ago. The people who own the building where my cafe is also own this building. They saw me operate that caf and they had been going there for many years. They had respect for me on how I turned it around. They called me over and said, let's go. I'll show you a place. Let me know if you're interested. I came in, and I had a look. It was a raw space. The floor was not sealed. The ceiling was all naked, and there werent many utilities. They said they would put in the money and I could do what I wanted. We were starting to talk about it. I was still thinking what I wanted to do. I was not a 100% sure, and then COVID hit within 3 or 4 months. This was in 2019, November. In March, I said, time out. Obviously, we can't do much. We just need to make sure that the cafe can keep running. Alex, who's the landlord is also a builder. Due to the uncertainty, he got this place ready to be an office. He built the toilet, he sealed the floor, he did a bit of plumbing and electricity, and he did the ceiling, and the ceiling had all these white strip lights everywhere. Nice and white and bright. That's what it was. And then I just came in one day. Some guys who come and do work over here, they get coffee from my cafe. I just came to deliver coffees and I had a look, and then I just looked around and said, this could be a very cool bar. That was end of 2022, early 2023. I started to look at the traffic in the city. And I remember a report, I don't know whether it was the Financial Review or The Age where it showed that the highest traffic in the city is Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday all day, and Sunday morning. I thought, there's an opportunity. The CBD is becoming more of a leisure centre than a central business district, it's no longer a CBD in my opinion. Even my caf was a corporate cafe, and I had to completely change it into a leisure style venue where we converted it into a suburban cafe and started to attract the people living in the city, people living on the perimeter of the city, students, and young couples.

I had always wanted to do a bar. So, I came here and spent two or three hours and I said, okay. This could be a very good speakeasy. Because we have disadvantages in where we are located, because this part of town is a very neglected area, because of all the construction and everything that happens in the city, A lot of the homelessness and the drugs cause a lot of issues in this part of town. So I said, let's make this into a Speakeasy and create a concept so that we can use the disadvantage we have as an advantage. Because when it's a speakeasy, people have to work hard to find the place.I have a friend, Victor, who's an architect. He's very experienced and a wise man. He's responsible for the Izakaya Den. I got him here, and I told him my vision. He said, I think that's a good call. You can spend millions of dollars in fit outs and stuff like that, but that's not what fills restaurants. I learned this 15 years ago. What makes a place work is the service, the relationship and being intuitive, understanding the customer and creating relationships. In my previous company, there's this thing they used to say: relationship hospitality. When you open a business, you are actually a part of the community. You're doing something in the community, and I know most of the people who live around here. They've seen me here for so many years. People appreciate what we do. We have a very strong regular customer base, mainly because they enjoy the people who work with us. They were very supportive with this project as well. There are always a few people who have concerns because, you know, when you're living in the city, you want to make sure that you're bringing the right crowd around you because it can cause issues as well in terms of noise. It is a city, but people live here and we need to respect that. So we build a relationship with them and the people who had who had concerns, I actually brought them here to the bar. I said, come over. I got him here, sat down with him, had a drink, and he saw what we were trying to do.

Everything we do is part of the community; when we hire people, when we run a business. If I'm here from 7 in the morning till midnight, I want to make sure that people are happy for us to be here. This is a very important thing that everybody needs to understand, you can have arguments and you can have disagreements with people, and you can't always come to the same agreement about everything, but you have to remember that you are here for the community. And if you're not part of the community, you're not going to be able to succeed.

When you were thinking about the setup, there's so much to look at, it's great. The little touches like the book with the cocktails and the recipes in them, what do you do when you're brainstorming a place like this? Does it all just come together or do you write things down or how do you approach it?

I'm very big with lists. I have lists everywhere. First of all, the space is just so beautiful by itself that we don't need to work too hard. What I have seen in other places is postcards. They do these postcards of the venue. I've seen it in Manila. I've seen it in in China. I was looking at the postcards, and initially, we were going to do a photo album, and then when we were doing the whole decor, while we were putting things together, the people helping me with the interior decoration said, look, we found these very old books. Do you want them? I said, yeah. Because I wanted it to be like somebody's home. I wanted a small little nook where you could have some books so that people can open and read andwe had almost 200 books. And then I was looking at the book. What I had done was one of the sample postcards that I had made for the menu, I put it in it, and it was just sitting there as a bookmark. I looked at it, and I said, you know what? I think this could work. When you're starting a business, sometimes you have to make sure that once you hit about 80% of what you want, you just go ahead with it. I was reading an article about someones experience with opening businesses, and they mentioned this. When you want to open a business, if you're going to wait till everything is 100% before you open, you are going to keep running around in circles. The best thing is to get everything right 70 to 80% and then go ahead with it because in the first 6 months, you will find lots of things that you have to change. I looked at the book and I said, well, that's not bad. I showed a few friends, and they thought it looked cool. And we just went with it. It gives a bit of it gives people a bit of a visual understanding of what they are ordering. It's very old school. A lot of Asian restaurants do this where they have all the food items with photos on them and it always works. So I just went with that.I think people really like it, but first of all, the books we received, some of them are100 years old. When I was sticking these photos in them, it was a bit sad. But it's alright. It's serving a purpose. It could have been in a bin somewhere.

It creates a whole scene, doesn't it? It's pretty otherworldly here. I think you've done a great job. You really do enter in the door and enter another era and I love that you use the books for that.

In terms of the food, the food is from another era as well: the devilled eggs and the croquettes. Did you work with Deepak Mishra in the hotels?

It's a funny story. Deepak, I've known him for, about 16, 17 years. When I was working at Grand Hyatt, Deepak used to work at Stanford. Somebody introduced me to him. And you won't believe this, but we found out that his wife used to study with me in Bangalore. She was my one year junior in 1998. It was amazing. Anyways, I've known Deepak a long time. When you run a business or just in life in general, you have to make sure that when you find certain people, you stick with them and you build your relationship with them because it's very difficult to find people who are on the same wavelength, who understand, who have the same passion and he's extremely passionate. We are some of the very few people who have still been working in the industry after 27, 30 years. There's not a lot left. I think COVID destroyed a lot of people, unfortunately. It's very sad, but, we enjoy this. Iit was stressful when we were creating the menu, but we thrived in it because we learned so many things. I did a lot of research. Like I mentioned, I like to do everything as close to perfect as possible. And what I did was I researched about the drinks. I did research about the food, basic research. I spent a few days on it, and then I realised that there was no fridge during that time. A lot of the food that was eaten was cured meats, cheeses, fried things, small little tins with seafood and whelks and devilled eggs and things like that. I made a list of about 40 things, and I showed this to Deepak, and then Deepak did his own research. We started to source a few things, some good suppliers and put it together. But we wanted to make sure that we werent complicating things. Things need to move fast because food is a is a sidekick. It needs to work. But food needs to be a support mechanism for the drink so that people can have a bit to nibble on. There's a bit of nostalgia as well, things like bread and butter.

Oh, that butter was amazing.

Deepak actually cures the butter. My message to everybody that works with us is, you can do a lot of funky things, like you can add this to a particular drink to make it this. You can add this to a particular sauce to make it taste this way and stuff, but there is a place for that. At this place, we're trying to educate people on how things used to be before. Sometimes I explain to some of the customers, just think of the mother sauces. You've got mayonnaise, you've got hollandaise, you've got bechamel. Those are the mother sauces, and then people add things to it to make something else. You add something to hollandaise to mayonnaise to make it into a tartare sauce and so on and so forth. What we are showing people are the mother cocktails and the mother food and telling people that, okay, this is what was eaten and consumed, and we want you to experience it.

A lot of people come and say, I want a very dirty martini. By all means, we can do it, but I always question, have you had a chance to look at our list? I would love for you to try something on our list if you feel that you are comfortable doing that. If you're not, that's fine. We will give you the drink that you want. And then they try it and they're like, oh, this is good. We show them the history. Every drink we have has a history.We have something which was the first drink that created the name cocktail. Because Rabo De Galo means rooster's tail. And that was the drink due to which people call all cocktails, cocktails. So we put that on there.

We did a lot of study and the whole place is designed like somebody's home. We wanted to make sure that we keep the whole concept going. If you look at our bar counter, a bar counter is like somebody's home. It's a simple bench; there's no ice well, there's no speed bar. It's very like a home. People come in, and they sit at the bar. They sit at the bench in the in the kitchen. They sit at the dining table. That's the whole flow, and that's why the drinks that we created, I didn't want to do 50 items. I just wanted to do a small selection of 12 cocktails, and that is the old school way of doing things. Eventually, we ended up doing 16 just to keep the bartenders happy. But these are all the original cocktails.

The Martini, has a bit of a grey area in terms of its origin and the way it was made. Our recipe comes from 50 years ago. My bartender said, but, Pawaan, people like it dry. I said, that's fine. People can have the drink the way they want it. It's like a perfume.You're not going to like all the perfumes, but let's give people the opportunity to try something that was done the way it was done, and then they can choose. If we give it to somebody and somebody says, uh, no, this is not me, no problem. Well make it the way you like it, but at least experience something that you're probably not going to experience in a lot of places. That's what I'm trying to achieve. I have a bartender who's Japanese, and when I told him that I want to educate the customers, he said, no, that's disrespectful. I said, it's not. We are not considering customers as not intelligent, but we are exposing them to something that they may not have experienced before.

I think you've totally nailed it. It's beautiful.

Mill Place Merchants, 2 Mill Place, Melbourne