Reuben Davis is a magician and a wonderful thinker. I loved hearing him reflect on the way he works at . Eating his food was a whole other dimension. I don’t often get to eat the food. Sometimes I talk to chefs because I have eaten the food. But often I go in and talk to chefs and really want to go back and eat the food but life gets in the way. To have been able to talk to Reuben and then experience what he was talking about in the same night was incredible. It was theatre, it was magic and it was totally delicious.
Hi Reuben, how are you? What did I take you away from today?
Making spanokopitas. Very small ones. That’s a new one on the menu and when I change something, I tend to do it for the first little bit and once the guys get their head around it, then I hand it over to them.
How often do you change the menu?
We change the menu as and when seasonally. When something is coming into season or when something is moving out of season or maybe not even with produce but there’s a shift in the mood of the city…do you know what I mean, I think in Melbourne sometimes the produce doesn’t keep pace with the seasons. It changes season but you can still get something but you don’t wan tot have it on the menu because it feels wrong to have strawberries on the menu when it feels so cold.
Everything is available all the time.
Exactly. We try and change and keep it exciting for the guys and for people coming back.
Spanakopita seems quite traditional though. That must have been on the menu before. Are you doing it another way now?
We messed around with it for quite a long time. When we do the Karesma menu, which is our taster menu, instead of bread, we give a baby spanakopita with a sauce on top. Tonight it’s going to be maybe some buttered uni from St Helens, so some little sea urchin from St. Helens on top or we’ll change it to yabbies or black garlic or whatever we want to use at that point. We try and do things that conceptually stay similar and then we change the flavour or the ingredient.
How long have you been at The Press Club?
I’ve been at The Press Club for two and a half years.
Is this your first time doing Greek food?
Yes.
So to work with some of these ideas and flavours, how have you had to adapt what you came from?
I guess it’s quite a large shift but it’s been a lot of reading and talking to people and trying to learn as much as possible. I think that the Greek heritage is really important here, even though I’m not Greek and the guys who work here might not necessarily be Greek, it’s vitally important to us as a restaurant, to our DNA, that we stay true to that because if not, then we’re just any other fine dining restaurant.
That’s right. So how do you go about tapping into that?
I think we always start, well for me personally, I always have maybe like a set of…not commandments, that’s too far, but a set of pillars I try to work to when I think about dishes. The first one is, is it Greek? Is there some sort of Hellenic soul to it? Either in the culture or in the way of cooking or a technique or in an ingredient that is very Greek.
What does that actually mean? Humour me…if it’s an Hellenic technique what kind of technique would that be?
For example we have a wallaby dish on the menu that is seasoned with eggplant that we cook kleftiko, which means to cook under ash or underground. We use the as left over from the barbecue at the end of the night and we bake the eggplants overnight and marinate them and season them. So we are using something that does align with other cultures in the world, in that it’s similar to a hangi and stuff like that but it’s Greek too and that would be a cooking technique that makes a nod to Greece. Obviously you’re going to use a modern sensibility but that’s really important for me personally. If people come here and don’t recognise it as a Greek restaurant then I think we’ve failed.
I see what you’re saying. Where were you before here?
I used to work at a place called Restaurant Sat Bains in Nottingham for three and a half years. I met George there. He came over and spent a week with us. I’d already planned to come out here and he had a job.
That was good, wasn’t it?
It just worked out, yeah.
Were you head chef over there as well?
I was sous chef.
You came to a new country and a whole new role.
I started as development chef and then gradually the restaurant has evolved what we do and what we offer and we’re starting to find our stride. Me and George are starting to find our stride in our relationship too.
I was going to ask whether you have autonomy or do you work as a team?
I have more autonomy now but it’s his restaurant so he has to agree with the direction but now I think we’ve got to a good point where our views align a lot. It’s not very often that I want to do something and he says no and vice versa. He’s more of a mentor and guide than someone just saying you have to do this and that. It’s more like he’ll say I think we should go down this route and this is how I’d like the food to develop and he’s more of a pair of fresh eyes and a guide and a sounding board, which is important because this is my first head chef job and sometimes it can be quite daunting.
There’s a lot more to take into consideration, isn’t there. It’s not just about cooking food. You’re in charge of a team and you have to think about costs. There’s a lot more happening.
Definitely and as the industry evolves, there’s a lot more competition and it’s like how do we make ourselves stand out? That’s why I think it all comes back to that Greekness and if we can do that and we can start with that and achieve what we want to achieve with the food then it gives us a good platform to operate.
It’s about being into what you’re doing. You have to focus on what you’re doing and trying to produce. That’s when people will buy into it because you’re focussed and into it. If you worry too much about what everyone thinks and try and please everyone then you end up pleasing no one.
You started your cheffing journey in England. How long have you been cooking?
Properly ten years. I started when I was 16 but part time. I was at school. Then I moved to Canada for a little while and made pizzas which was pretty fun, in a ski resort. Then I worked in winery and then went back to England and went to college and worked in London and worked around. A fair amount of time but not long enough to be complacent. I’m still learning all the time.
I think that’s really great. A lot of the chefs I speak to talk about continuing to learn from those around them and from new produce and wanting to find out new things. Has Melbourne lived up to your expectations? Was it Melbourne in particular, or Australia in general, that you wanted to come to?
Melbourne because I had some friends here and we chatted and they said it was a great food scene and a great city. I had some friends in hospitality and friends who aren’t and I got a broader view of it. It’s interesting, I still feel as though I’m learning loads every day about the produce every day because things are new to me that might not be new to an Australian chef in my position. Hopefully I bring a lens of new ways to use that product a little bit. I think Australia has this fantastic food culture where it’s very open to new things and the consumer is open to new things. Maybe people are still discovering…maybe the link to the land went away for a little bit but now it’s starting to come back and people are discovering all the time, maybe rediscovering, if discovering is the right word to use. Finding new things and new ingredients.
Do you get some of those through the suppliers? So saltbush and native ingredients…can you use those in Greek food?
Yeah. The spanakopita we’re making now has saltbush and warrigal greens as well as some cultivated greens and Geraldton wax and nasturtium. I think we can definitely use it because the produce gives the restaurant the idea of where we are and what time of year it is. That’s what getting the best produce is about. Whereas the heritage isn’t going to go anywhere. How can we take this Greek heritage and make it about where we are, which is Australia.
If we use Greek produce we tend to marry it with something Australian. So we use Geraldton wax but we marry it with mastic in a yoghurt and that goes with duck. There’s a synergy between the two because Geraldton wax is native to Australia and mastic is native to Chios. Those two ingredients are only found in that part of the world and this part of the world, which is what the restaurant is about. It makes sense. If it doesn’t make sense to us, or to me and George and the guys downstairs, then why are we doing it? It has to make sense to what we want from the restaurant.
It’s interesting because you are downstairs and lots of places nowadays are open to the public so chefs can…well they probably don’t because they’re so focussed on what they’re doing…but they can see how people are reacting but if you’re downstairs…and I guess that’s the way it always was, how do you go on getting feedback?
I think we still have a lot more interaction with guests than 10 or 15 years ago because the chefs will drop some dishes off at the table and have a chat. There’s a window so you can see down into the kitchen if you’re sat on that side of the restaurant.
The industry has changed. There are so many different ways to get feedback now; Trip Advisor, reviews, the paper, social media. People are a lot happier to give you their feedback, even via email.
Do you read all that?
I take Trip Advisor with a pinch of salt. Don’t get too excited about the good ones and don’t get too excited about the bad ones. It’s the same with everything really. It’s about being into what you’re doing. You have to focus on what you’re doing and trying to produce. That’s when people will buy into it because you’re focussed and into it. If you worry too much about what everyone thinks and try and please everyone then you end up pleasing no one.
It’s important if you’re in a creative industry to have a little bit of, I mean not totally, but be able to block things out a little bit and focus on what you’re trying to do and what you want to achieve and the rest will look after itself, hopefully.
That’s a good perspective. How many guys do you have down there?
We have five full time chefs and a couple of casuals. There are eight of us in total but not all there at once. Four at a time.
How do you go as a leader? Are you a show-er or a teller? Or a get alongside-er?
I like to think of myself as a little bit of both. I definitely show but I’d like to think, well you’d have to ask my chefs, but I like to think that they think that I lead from the front, I’m in there with them doing things. It’s not like I just tell them what to do and send them off. I’d like to think that they feel supported because I’m there with them.
It’s really important that everyone grows. Because if everyone is growing, the restaurant can’t help but grow and get better. If every single chef gets better by ten per cent, there’s no way the food can’t get better. Including me. If I get better a little bit and then all of them get better a little bit then eventually what gets to the customer is a better product than we would have produced in the past. If we can keep that ethos and momentum then that’s how you see these restaurants that grow into something they maybe weren’t at the start.
That’s a lovely reflection. I was just speaking to a chef who was saying that there are aspects of fine dining that even though you’re being creative and doing technical work, that there is still a routine involved. But at the same time, and I was thinking about it while you were talking, it is a creative industry and you have to strive for consistency but also be growing, so there’s a tension.
It’s a juxtaposition.
That’s right. There’s muscle memory but also something more.
I think kitchens get to a perfect balance where there’s just the right amount of chaos to make it…if it’s too routine, then it’s too safe and not very exciting. If its too chaotic then you’re never going to be able to produce anything of a high standard.
Creativity and consistency are almost paradoxical. They are almost at odds with each other. It’s about trying to find a balance between the chaos element and the routine. There needs to be structure and discipline and standards in place, but there needs to be that little bit of chaos that keeps everyone on their toes and keeps everyone thinking about a better way, not necessarily a new way, to do things. I always say to the guys, when you come to work you should be looking at your work and thinking about how you can do it better. Because at the end of the day they are the ones who are doing that job over and over again, so is there a way we can do it better? If that’s the case, then let’s try it and if it’s better, it’s better. I don’t have that thing where I can’t be told about a better way. I don’t let ego get in the way. It’s all about getting better.
Listen to our chat here.
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