Punit Ferrnandes

It’s so nice to see you again, and we’ve just been reminiscing that it’s been a few years since I last saw you in Black Rock. It sounds like you’ve lived a lifetime in those five years. 

Things have taken through 360-degree turn for me. The last time when we met at Elichi in Black Rock things were very different. I was a go-getter. I wanted to do everything. But then after that I had a 360 degree view of my career and of my life, where I’m going, where I’m heading, what I really want to achieve, what food matches my identity. What sort of food am I doing? Is it right? Is it wrong? Is it good? Is this good on paper, or is it good? Different perspectives kicked in. 

Elichi was fine dining, wasn’t it? 

Correct. We used to do a little bit more refined food over there. We were getting into more native slash Indian sort of thing. We wanted to do that. It was good because, everyone loves to work with native ingredients and especially when you start to pioneer that sort of stuff into different cuisines, you start to blend that into your cuisine. It gives you a different result altogether. 

How long were you there? 

We were there for almost 3 and a half years. It was a good time. We had really good times, we had a few regulars. I managed to get in touch with a few of my regular customers and they always asked me to come and do all these specials here and there, and their private events and functions. 

Did you finish that all up, pre COVID, or was it COVID that made you finish? 

It was COVID that made us finish. We tried to understand what we were supposed to do and the government rolled out the new rules and how it would affect hospitality. In the middle of that, we decided it wasn’t going to work out for us. We made the decision to walk away from that business, we were three business partners, we decided to go on our own paths and started to live our lives the way we want to live. 

It sounds as though you had a bit of a break over that lockdown period and just did some cooking at home. 

Oh, absolutely. I guess that was the best time of my life. Every time my kids and my wife would ask me to do something, I was like, man, I can’t be bothered. But then during COVID, oh my god, from garlic bread, focaccias, your cookies, you name it, and we used to do it, and I used to tell my daughter, oh, what’s on the menu today, and she’d get really excited, and she’d say, oh, dad, let’s make tomato focaccia bread with some cheese. I was like, oh, wow, amazing. Lets do that. It was absolutely fun. My daughter, my son, we all had a ball cooking and baking. My wife absolutely loved it. She would come home and all the chores would be done. 

Unusual when you’re living with a chef. 

Exactly. She said, why don’t you just become a house husband? I said, well, look, I would love to. It was good times. 

Then obviously you felt the pull to go back to the kitchen, though. 

After six, eight months, I started to feel a bit itchy. Once the vacation is finished, you always feel like, oh, I want to go back to work. This is exactly what happened to me, my mind was refreshed and I was ready to go back. But there were no jobs, it was absolutely dead. The market was dead. All the chefs were either sitting home or doing all the odd jobs to make ends meet. But I guess for me, I was taking it easy and then I was waiting for a right opportunity, which happened to be W Melbourne. I worked with Chef Jun, who came from W Dubai. Adam DeSilva was a consulting chef, it was an absolutely brilliant team over there and I would say all the chefs who were on board, we got to pick the best of the best because they all were at home. There were six venues. One was Warabi, which is a specialty Japanese restaurant. Second was a Lollo, which was all day dining restaurant, followed by a cafe just next to the restaurant called Culprit. And then we had room service, banquets, pool deck, which was upstairs. The there was a hidden underground bar called Curious. There was a lot of work to do over there.

You’d worked in hotels before?

I had worked in hotels. I worked all the way from restaurants to hotels. I started in hotels and then moved my way into restaurants where you get to learn more, get to explore more. Restaurants are like a raw battlefield. You get to learn a lot of things there. There are no boundaries over there. A farmer or a veggie supplier would just walk in with a box of artichokes and chef would go, guys, what are we going to do with this? And everyone would just jump on and say, oh, can we do this or can we do that? It’s very straightforward. There are no hidden agendas. I love that atmosphere. Everyone was so energetic, so young. That atmosphere was really good. I love the restaurant of atmosphere. During my time at Rockpool as well, it was amazing. The crew was absolutely brilliant. You get to learn from the best, someone is travelling, someone has worked in this restaurant, that restaurant, he has done this, he has done that, and you just absorb everything. 

What was your role at W?

I was executive sous.

You had already done the business side of things with your own restaurant but as Executive sous, what is your role? What was your job description? 

Basically, what happens is I was 2IC to the executive chef. I was more involved in operations than the numbers. Because the exec chef is so busy with liaising with other stakeholders. The marketing team would come and talk to the executive chef and say, hey, look, I want this event. What can we do? So he’s busy planning this. Whereas my job is taking care of operations. Say with someone calls in sick, it’s not his job, it’s my job to make sure the shift is filled. You fill up all those gaps and make sure the operation is smooth for the day. I was the barrier between the executive chef and my team, before anything goes to him, it comes to me and then I just filter information to him and I just tell him, hi, this is what the day looks like, this is where we’re heading, this is a VIP. 

Across all those restaurants and room service, that’s a lot. 

It’s a lot. To be honest with you, you need someone who is super experienced, who knows what he is doing and, and considering the demand and the market here in Australia. At that position, you need to know what you’re doing. You need to know your job. 

And that was when Melbourne was coming out of lockdown in COVID, so you had added challenges.

Correct. People’s expectations, all of that. It was a blessing in disguise, because Melbourne was in lockdown and there’s nothing happening. There’s no movement. And all of a sudden, W Melbourne is opening up and people are so looking forward to it. There was a stage when we would have to stop people. We were absolutely running out of produce. We didn’t have anything to serve. We had smashed 300 covers in a 70, 80 seat restaurant. The hotel did very well. It was absolutely thriving. It still has a name. 

How long were you there? 

I was there almost for two and a half years. 

You really don’t have to worry about recognition, or you don’t have to wait for someone to recognise you. I always believe hard work always gets recognised. It always comes in whatever shape or form . Last year it came in the form of AHA awards. I always believe it’s good because then your team really looks up to you. Eventually one or two of my yeam will be an exec chef one day and they will want to achieve this accolade. When you receive something, it’s good to have the feather under your belt, but I always keep on doing my hard work. I don’t wait for recognition to come, because I know eventually hard work does pays off. 

Punit Ferrnandes, Bombay Meri Jaan

What came next? 

I went to the Park Royal Monash. Again, I was not looking for an opportunity. I was happy where I was, but then, the industry tends to poach people from here and there. My ex-general manager, we were still in touch. He messaged me saying, hi, look, I have an Executive chef role, what are your thoughts? I said, mate, look, I would love to join you again, but it’s a bit far for me. He said let’s just have a coffee together. When you join someone for a coffee, that’s it, he’ll get you. I went for a coffee. I had a chat with him, and he had a pretty good offer for me. know? It’s a business hotel, so there are a lot of big companies out there. Peter’s Ice creams are there. Bosch is there. They all have their big head offices over there. CSRO is there. They wanted to change the direction of the restaurant to modern European, southern Italian, modern French. I took the job and I’ve been there almost for three years and the restaurant is doing amazing. They are thriving, the numbers are really good.

Are you still there? You obviously, don’t sleep. And Bombay Meri Jaan is your brainchild. You’ve had the idea to open somewhere for a while. 

Correct. Different thoughts come in your mind. But then eventually this was something I thought was going to be really good. When you talk about Indian food, it falls into that one category. Everyone thinks Indian food is butter chicken, rogan josh., chicken tikka, but that’s about it, and there’s nothing wrong in that. There are heaps of good restaurants who are doing this amazing food. For me, it’s very important because if you see India on a map, there are different regions, different cuisines: the spice level, the intensity level changes wherever you go. It’s like France, when you go to France, the northern part is colder. The southern part is a bit hotter, they like to have their certain food. The same thing in India. The northern part is colder, the southern part is hotter, more humid, they go easy on spices. On the top side, they are a bit heavier on the spices. When we thought about doing Bombay Meri Jaan, what we wanted to do is we wanted to introduce something new to Melbourne. India is on the map now, butter chicken is there, tikka masala is there. But what’s next? That’s where Bombay Meri Jaan comes in. There’s this restaurant called Toddy Shop. They started doing Kerala food over there, which is absolutely amazing. Baba Ji in Belgrave, they are doing amazing food over there. They have introduced southern food. What we are doing is western food. We bring a lot of food, which has been unheard of. One of the dishes I really love is a railway lamb curry. This dish has a little bit of a story behind it. How it actually got his name, was what was happening is when East India Company had their headquarters in Kolkata. All the sailors would come to Kolkata and when they had to travel to Bombay, they would travel in a train. When they would travel, there was an instruction to the cooks to not cook heavy curries. Make sure it’s nice and easy and light, and have some potatoes into the curry, so it’s easy on the guts to digest. One of the British officers who was travelling on the train, he loved the curry so much, but he didn’t know the name. Then he boarded the same train again next time, and he found the curry. But he couldn’t name it. He couldn’t pronounce the name. And so he named it Railway Curry. Then there’s another dish called Goat Zakuti. Zakuti is like another Goan dish, from another region in Maharashtra where they use a lot of dry red chillies. Everything is cooked in dry red chillies, which are less spicy, but very good in colour. The taste and the flavours are amazing. In that region, it’s all about roasting and grinding. They dry roast the spices, and they grind them. 

I really love Dal Makhani with the black lentils. I went to Rajasthan. We flew into Chennai, and then we went to Mumbai. I did a bicycle tour around Mumbai. It’s 10 years ago. But we went all around the fish markets, and across to the elephant caves. I’ve got little flashes of memory of Mumbai. I read too on your website that you talk about using coastal spices. What do you mean by that? 

When you talk about coastal spices, it’s like peppercorn, cardamom, these spices they grow very well in humid climates. Cinnamon, cloves, and then you something like a long black cardamom. And then there is a tree, which leaves the bark as well. So, which is scraped out and use it as a flour. Then there is javitri, nutmeg is another spice. There is another spice called Goda masala, which literally translate into sweet spice. When you smell that spice, you activate your sweet notes on your palate. It’s not spicy at all. You can use it as a seasoning, you can use it as for anything. The fragrance you get is absolutely amazing. 

When I first Googled the name, it came up with a TV show or a film. Meri Jaan means ‘my love’. I guess that’s about you putting the love into the food. 

Correct. Whoever is from Bombay, they would connect with this very easily because Bombay has always been love. Whether you travel there or you live there. If you live in Dandenong and if you travel to Melbourne every day, you take a train journey, you travel and you fall in love with those little things, it’s the same thing with Mumbai, because Mumbai is so busy and there’s so much hustle over there, people love every moment of it. In Bombay, there’s a specialty, you would say, hi, look, I want to eat this. For example, I want to eat pani puri, they will take you to this spot where you get the best pani puri ever. So these are the little spots of Bombay where people have memories. There’s a lot of love in the food as well. What we do, what we present here. And then, of course, it’s the emotional connection most importantly. 

How are you managing to be an executive chef and to be a co-owner of a restaurant? 

I have a chef. Sandeep Rawat to execute the menu and everything over here and, he’s absolutely amazing. He’s an ex-Atta chef and he was my head chef when I was at Elichi. He’s absolutely phenomenal. So I have roped him in to execute the job to take care of the operation part of it. His flavours are absolutely amazing. 

You sound like someone who needs challenges, and I know you were saying before we started recording that you were chef of the year, AHA Chef of the Year, last year, congratulations. A really great recognition of all the work you’ve poured into hospitality here. Do you need those accolades? Are they important for you? 

I always believe that you have to do what you have to do. You really don’t have to worry about recognition, or you don’t have to wait for someone to recognise you. I always believe hard work always gets recognised. It always comes in whatever shape or form . Last year it came in the form of AHA awards. I always believe it’s good because then your team really looks up to you. Eventually one or two of my yeam will be an exec chef one day and they will want to achieve this accolade. When you receive something, it’s good to have the feather under your belt, but I always keep on doing my hard work. I don’t wait for recognition to come, because I know eventually hard work does pays off. 

Congratulations. Just to get back to the food, though, because I did take a sidestep there. What’s the best way for people to experience Bombay Meri Jaan? Is it all shared? Do you work your way through the different sections of the menu? What’s the ideal dinner? 

The best way to start is with the street snacks. Imagine you’re going to Bombay for a trip or something like that, and you feel a bit hungry. I just want to snack on something, but I don’t want to eat something full. So snacking is a corner we have, which is called Bombay Streets. The Bhel is absolutely outstanding, and then the samosas are either plain or you can have it in chaat. Chaat is basically a chickpea gravy and then you have your garnishes, your two sauces. People love it. Another favourite dish is the Ragda patties, basically a small potato patty, very refreshing. There is a place in Mumbai called Mohammed Ali Road. This is the ultimate place you need to go for your food, for all your non-vegetarian items. They do one of the best seekh kebabs, tandoori chickens, shaami kebabs, you name it, and they do it. They cook the best offal; you can get a good liver masala over there and they do a good tripe as well, goat tripe as well. That’s the place you need to be if you’re in Bombay next time. We have a few handpicked dishes over there, which we really want to highlight. Then the section Koli Wada Koli means literally means fishermen’s village. So this is like the catch of the day. In Mumbai, whenever the fisherman goes out with the trawler and when they come back, local people wait for it. Local restaurants. These people have their connections, they would say, hey, look, can I get this? Can I get that? It’s the same concept we have here from Koli Wada. We’ve got some Tandoori prawns, Bombay fish cutlet, and then Bombay tuna cutlet is my favourite. This is what my auntie, my dad, everyone makes it at home. They absolutely love it. We normally we make it from mackerel, but I find that works very well. Then obviously you’ve got your food from the pot, your classics are there, butter chicken is there. 

You have to have it, don’t you? 

You have to. I’m probably at that stage where I’m going to name it as a Melbourne butter chicken. It’s become so iconic. The railway lamb curry is one of the best. And then your Mutton Kolhapuri is the best dish for heat. If you want to experience a bit of everything, Thali is the way to go. In Bombay, Thali is quite popular. You get you choose what Thali you want to have: vegetarian, chicken, goat or seafood. You can choose your entrees and then it comes with your main. 

It’s interesting because I used to live down the road, actually, and I’ve been living in Port Melbourne now for two years. Victoria Street has changed, even just in the last two years. It’s always been known as a Vietnamese street. But now it feels as though there’s a lot of different foods. There’s a Kurdish restaurant, there’s Japanese, there’s all kinds of things happening down here. It’s becoming a lot more multicultural, which is great. 

I believe this is a fantastic addition to Victoria Street, because street has always been dominated by Vietnamese food. But what we are bringing to Victoria Street is as you said, it’s multicultural. When you go to Gertrude Street, or when you go to Fitzroy Street, you know, they have these options of restaurants: Indian, Chinese, Japanese. You name it, they have amazing pubs all. It’s the same thing here now. I think the dynamics are changing. Down the road, there was a Mexican restaurant over there, next door is Japanese, and then out the front is a Vietnamese steakhouse. Things have been changing and I think that’s the beauty of it. There is variety in the street. 

You’ve had a lot of experience in all kinds of ways now. What would your advice be to your younger self starting out? 

I would say slow down. Think and then make your move. When you’re young, you’re so energetic, so passionate, you are discovering yourself. I always think, if it was 10 years back, what would I have done or what could I have done better? Just stop, think, take a deep breath, and then start all over again. There’s no need to rush. It’s not going anywhere. Sometimes you take a hasty decision, sometimes you make a wrong decision, but then my advice would be just take it easy, just think, and then start again. 

Bombay Meri Jaan, 94 Victoria Street, Richmond