My chat with Paolo was full of smiles and laughter. He clearly loves what he does and this comes through in his delicious take on Italian flavours. has only been open for a month and yet people familiar with his food from are already coming in their droves. I ate there on a Monday night and it was packed. I loved hearing the story behind Paolo's food.
Hi Paolo. I’ve been reading about you and I see you have done a lot of travelling…
I have.
I also saw that you say that you fell into being a chef. You started cooking when you were 17 so how did you fall into it?
It started a little bit before then working casually in kitchens. I failed at school a couple of times. My father said he wasn’t going to pay for my summer holidays so I started working in kitchens like that. By the time I was 17, I met someone who was working in a Michelin star restaurant and that’s when I started working in fine dining and that’s when I fell in love with cooking.
I always have this idea that Italians are innately drawn to food and cooking. It’s a tradition in Italy to sit down together and enjoy the meal. I guess being on the other side and preparing it for a dining public is quite different.
It is. But we do enjoy long dinners and long lunches, especially on the weekend. We normally have a big dinner with the family that goes for hours. We are all very involved with food.
I love that. You went to London, then Los Angeles and now here and you have always cooked Italian food. Do different countries do Italian food differently?
Yes and no. Italian food in general is different in every country but when you take it to a different level like here, or the place I worked in Los Angeles, they make the traditional food of Italy; they try to use original flavours from Italy in a different country, using different ingredients, but always following the traditions of Italian food. Even in Los Angeles, where it is generally a little different, I was working with a lot of Italians there and you get to almost reproduce the same food we have in Italy. When you work in Italian kitchens with Italians, it is pretty much the same all around the world.
There are different regions in Italy and you would eat differently in those different regions, wouldn’t you? Do you still cook regionally when you are overseas?
The food in Italy is very regional, but outside of Italy wherever I go, even though I might have more of a northern style of cooking, I include dishes from the south and general Italian food.
Then you put your own twist onto the dishes as well. Where do you get your inspiration to add to what is already there?
I always start from something that is already there. Like Vitelo tonnato or Tiramisu that I make at Sarti and here at Carolina, I start with the original dish and I think about what I love and then what I would change. I think about how I could make it better to cook and to eat. For example, with Vitello Tonnato, traditionally the veal is always overcooked and it has a heavy mayonnaise. At Sarti, I started slow-cooking the veal at 55° so it’s nice and tender and juicy and then I did the mayonnaise in a foam so it was lighter. So my twist or interpretation is all about making it better. Even here at Carolina, I have changed it again. Here it’s more a game of textures and having the raw fish and slow cooked veal that is similar in colour to the tuna but has such a different flavour but whether you eat them together or individually, you get an amazing flavour.
It’s a beautiful dish and the flavours are so subtle but work so well together.
Thank you.
I really loved the tortelli with the beetroot. Is that something you would see in Italy?
It’s actually typical of the Cortina area, instead of folding it like a tortellini, they make a half moon shape called casunziei and made with sage, butter and poppy seeds. Very simple but beautiful flavours.
Yours is so artistic on the plate.I talked to another chef about plating. I think you need to be artistic to work out what would be visually appealing.
I actually went to arts school.
That’s probably why.
Whenever we do a dish, the first step is always the flavour. We work out the flavours and what works together and once my sous chef and I have decided on that, it’s the plating. Sometimes we plate something three or four times until we find something that is interesting and different and looks good. I like to play with colours and do something different with the plate.
Tell me about the Tiramisu. It is total Willy Wonka.
That started with an idea Joe and I had to try different restaurants. I had something similar at Sepia. They had a sugar sphere and I enjoyed it and really liked the idea. I thought maybe I could do the Tiramisu in a sugar sphere, but then the sugar sphere would take away too much from the Tiramisu so then I thought I could do a chocolate sphere. The whole idea started like that. We thought we could throw the sphere onto a plate and then because it was white chocolate, we thought we would sit it on white powder and it would look like a snowball. So an idea can evolve over three months before we get to the final dish. It starts with the flavours, though. Once you get the flavours, you can play with everything else.
Apart from eating out, where else do you get ideas? Do you look at books or Instagram?
A bit of everything. Sometimes you can get an idea from reading a book. You can see something interesting and think about how you could use different flavours; you can follow the same concept but change the cooking technique. You might see a picture of something cooked sous-vide and you think that would taste amazing so you do that and then add your garnishes. Or you might go to a restaurant and eat something great and so you go away and do your research. Sometimes just talking to friends, you can get ideas about ingredients.
I remember I did a function with Sean Donovan and he told me about some beautiful chickens he sourced from a place in Victoria. So I bought four of them to try. I cooked the breast sous-vide and roasted the legs and we created all these dishes, one thing after the other. Then we though about how we would present it on the plate.
In the first few years, it’s about the basics. If you don’t have that, you can’t grow strong. Be patient.
It’s quite a small kitchen in there. You’d have to get on well with the people you work with.
It’s nice and cosy. When it’s busy there are five of us plus the kitchen hand.
Are you all Italian?
No, three of us are Italian. Sometimes I get confused and speak Italian even to the guys who don’t speak Italian but they understand me. Mainly during service it’s about timing and what you need so they know the names of the dishes in Italian and they know the numbers in Italian so they know what I mean if I talk to them in Italian.
What do you think chefs coming into the industry need to keep them going throughout their career?
Patience. That’s the key. Be patient because when you start in the kitchen you have to start from the bottom, but once you learn the basics, nothing can stop you. You have to learn to work in a kitchen; how to keep your section clean, understanding whether a delivery is good or whether you should speak to the chef and ask him to collect it.
Once you have a solid base, you can build a career on that. I see a lot of young chefs coming onto the kitchen in a hurry to see how you do the meat and the fish and all the beautiful things. But unfortunately in the first few years, it’s about the basics. If you don’t have that, you can’t grow strong. Be patient.
44 Toorak Road, South Yarra