I drove out to Common Ground Project, a not-for-profit café at Freshwater Creek, just out of Geelong on a balmy spring day. Sandy and I sat outside surrounded by chooks, raised garden beds and children running around in the sun. I had been wanting to talk to Sandy for a while because her name kept coming up in very favourable terms when I spoke to other chefs. Note to self: do not listen to Russell Brand in conversation with Lena Dunham while driving to talk to a chef; my brain was scrambled from the intellectual repartee and the struggle was real to get any kind of coherent statement out. I’ll cleverly edit it here, but there’ll be no escaping it on the podcast. Luckily for me, Sandy thoughtfully articulated everything I wanted to know and gave me even more to think about on the drive home.
Hi Sandy. Thank you for your time today. I have just pulled you away from making caramel. I came out a few weeks ago when Common Ground Project opened to write about it for Broadsheet. How has the uptake been in terms of chefs coming up and working on the land and resting their souls?
We have only really had chefs from within the group come down and do work down here. We haven’t launched to the other cafes and restaurants yet. We’ll be doing that in about two weeks. We’ve just started promoting it.
It’s an amazing idea and as it says on your menu and up on the blackboard inside, the connection between the hospitality industry and the Victorian food bowl being really explicit about that is really important.
Yes, it really is. That was the whole idea behind our concept.
Having spoken to people like Annie Smithers who grows most of what she cooks at Du Fermier in Trentham and Alejandro at Pastuso who takes his chefs out to Gippsland to see where the vegetables come from, I think it also says on your menu that it’s important to witness the provenance of the produce and respect what you’re using.
Completely. We are doing regenerative agriculture, so it goes a bit further than just growing, it’s all about the land and the soil, which has been a really great journey for all of us, especially Sam (Slattery), Simon (Pappas) and myself. Simon is the farmer and Sam is the General Manager. We started a couple of months before everyone else to get this all going. This one out here just had goats in it. It’s one of the market garden areas. That was compacted, dry, full of onion weed and it was terrible. You couldn’t have grown anything in it. We’ve treated it…we’ve been using biodynamics as well; we put the 500 (biodynamic soil fertility spray) in there and now there are actual things growing. We didn’t think we would get a spring crop, but we trialled it and put some cover crops in and it’s going really well. Then we’ve got the greenhouse being built over there, it’s actually very big so we’re going to be able to produce a lot out of there, then we’ve got another two plots of one acre each. We’re walking in very small portions to begin with and then it will move out, so we’ll have a lot.
What’s in the spring crop?
All different sorts of peas and things like that, but they are basically to give back to the soil. Simon trims it back and puts it back through the soil. We’ve done that once and we’re just waiting for the back bit to grow again and this front bit, we’ve put some stuff in to see how it will go and it’s going really well.
What was your experience of vegetable growing before now?
At Top Paddock we did it, but not to this extent, it was a bit of trial and error to see how we would do it and how the logistics would work if we were to deliver because it was in Red Hill, the first farm. We delivered it to Top Paddock and Higher Ground. We got to play around with a lot there and that was heaps of fun, but before that, it was just home gardens and things like that, nothing too much, whereas this is big scale. It has been very interesting. We’ve learned a lot.
I was thinking when I read the blackboard in there, that so many chefs have a good relationship with their suppliers and know where their food comes from but knowing to this extent, has it changed the way you cook?
Yes. At Top Paddock we started a Zero Waste dish there trying to get chefs to think more. When people are doing a dinner menu, there are a lot of ways to use the excess stuff. In breakfast, it can kind of get lost and no one does it very much. Somewhere like Top Paddock where it was mass production, we had so much going into compost and we were using that compost, but when I came on board, I saw there was way too much going into compost and I wanted to look for ways to utilise it all, to the point where it could be a complete dish. So we put the Zero Waste on to utilise that and we halved our composting. It became a thing. Simmo would even have some of the brassica stuff that he was pulling out that was really woody and not good to eat and people wouldn’t use it, but I was using it and turning it into pastes and playing around with other stuff. It went to the next level where he was sometimes struggling to compost stuff because we were trying to use everything and respect it. Now our staff think about what to do with stems and other stuff. It has gone a bit further now and we are trying to make sure that we’re respecting what we’re using as well.
How do you work out what you can do with things that ordinarily would be thrown away?
Trial and error. We have a taste of it raw or we just do something with it and see what the flavour is like and then we go from there and build on it. The team at the moment is fantastic. They’re all about that. Since opening, we’ve saved all the barista’s milk and made Dulce de leche; that’s on our hot cake now. We turn it into ricotta as well and we turn our whey into a reduction for our fish dish. All our excess vegetable scraps that we just cannot use at all, so a last resort, that goes into a treacle that we reduce down and we use it on our beef dish as the sauce. We’re coming up with different stuff all the time and I encourage the staff to play around with stuff. We’ve even been preserving some of our scobies out of the kombucha to see what we can do. The boys are making sweet jubes out of it at the minute. It’s pretty tasty and it’s fun.
It must be quite satisfying as well.
It is. It’s really good, especially here when you see the whole composting system and how it works and how much is actually going into the piles. We’ve got the food bins outside and we can see on a daily basis how much is going into it and we try and work on that to have less. It’s really satisfying to see the effect that you can have by reducing it and pitting it back into the land.
I see you have a Gratitude board up in the kitchen as well, so I was thinking that you’ve got everything covered, haven’t you?
We meditate in the morning…we don’t do it every single morning, but we encourage everyone to take time out of their day to do that and it’s definitely happening a couple of times a week, which is great. Any chef will understand that it’s such a fast-paced job. You come in and your mind is set on all these things and it just takes one person to suggest that we all meditate that morning. We take that time and we sit in the meditation room all together and everyone is encouraged, they don’t have to, but it usually starts with one person walking up to the Gratitude board and writing one thing and it doesn’t have to be a whole sentence and it can just mean something to you and not to anyone else and we find that one person will write on there and then others will go, oh yeah, and they go up. It’s about starting your day with a positive thought rather than coming in thinking about all the stuff you have to do. It’s really nice because you find people write stuff about other staff members and things like that. It has been a really positive thing we’ve implemented.
It feels like you’ve then got a collective energy where you’ve come together and been really intentional with the way you start the day, that must create a different vibe throughout the day.
Yes, it does. We found that the mornings where meditation doesn’t happen, when we know we’ve got a lot on and it’s put on the back burner or forgotten about it, we don’t get the same result at the end of the day. It’s helped all our staff with stressful situations. If someone is having a really bad day, we’ll say, just go take five minutes and meditate…instead of it being, take five minutes and go have a cigarette, we’ve got an app accessible to all staff and they go out and do a quick meditation. We do one a lot of the time called 10 deep breaths. They go out and do that and usually, it helps, which is really good.
I’ve heard we all need to do more deep breathing in our day.
Definitely. I agree with that one.
In terms of you and your career, you’ve been with The Mulberry Group for a while now?
A little while…two and a bit years. But I’ve known the guys for years. I’ve worked with Nathan’s sister for three years and I’ve known Ben since I was about six years old. I’ve known them and had lots of friends who have worked with them, and then two years ago it was time to take on that role and work with them.
How long have you been a chef?
17 years. I took a couple of years off when I felt the industry was quite toxic and I didn’t want to be part of it. I was working at a venue in Crown and we were working underground, and it was really dark. I didn’t see daylight; it was 6am until 1am, long hours, then I took a job working outdoors and that was really nice. Then I got back into the industry because it was what I loved doing. Once I got back into it, I knew it was what I wanted to do and the passion was reignited.
I was actually studying massage. I was cooking just to earn money on the side and the chef said, you should really become a chef. I didn’t think much about it then I went to have dinner somewhere and they had a sign up on the door saying they were looking for apprentices and I thought I’d give it a go. I went in, got the job and that was it. I loved how it was fast-paced, there was a lot to do all the time, you’re juggling a thousand things. I’ve always thrived when I’m in chaotic situations.
When you got into it initially, had you always felt drawn to being a chef?
No, not at all. I was actually studying massage. I was cooking just to earn money on the side and the chef said, you should really become a chef. I didn’t think much about it then I went to have dinner somewhere and they had a sign up on the door saying they were looking for apprentices and I thought I’d give it a go. I went in, got the job and that was it. I loved how it was fast-paced, there was a lot to do all the time, you’re juggling a thousand things. I’ve always thrived when I’m in chaotic situations.
And I guess that’s what also drew you back into it again. 17 years on, the industry has changed ad now there are positions like this where you can explore more of the breadth of cooking in terms of zero waste, but also more of the holistic side.
It takes a long time to figure out what kind of chef you want to actually be. This all happened quite organically. You know, you work for people ad it’s all about the money and the end result, and it still always is to some extent. But it’s not just about that now, especially for these guys and for us. This place is not-for-profit, so everything we’re doing is going back into the project and back into mental health in the hospitality industry. It’s amazing for it to be heading in that direction.
Absolutely. I think we talk a lot about climate change and how can the individual make a difference, but we do all have to make an effort and I think we are beginning to see different venues starting to say, we make a change in terms of hospitality and sustainability of staff and all of that and creating a better environment for staff and ultimately diners…well, not even ultimately…but at the same time…for everyone. Hospitality is about being hospitable to those diners, but if you have happy staff, more for the better.
It’s very important. It has been evident with this group. In any group or any venue you work, there are going to be people who are unhappy, but what I’ve noticed with The Mulberry Group is that everyone still wants to help out. A lot of their staff have stayed with the for an extremely long time. It goes to show, if you treat your staff right and you care, genuinely, people will stick around. For them to pull up and say, let’s do something for everyone in the industry and mean it, because I don’t have to vouch for them just because I work for them, but they do care. They’re doing this to give back to the industry and it’s working for our staff. There is a constant, what can we do to help? How can we make it easier or better? There’s always that support there.
I really love the idea that people are looking out for each other.
For me, I’ve never been a massive drinker, I’ve never played into what the typical stereotype chef is and so naturally for me to be around this sort of stuff is naturally what I’m into and it’s attracting those kinds of chefs and staff members, it has really made such a nice positive atmosphere. People come in and they’re fresh and ready to go and you know that if there’s any sort of substance abuse or even just recreational, you can tell because there are people doing twice as much as them in terms of the amount of work they can do because they’re not on anything. They’re looking after themselves.
I read a book a long time ago and I often quote it. It’s a Spanish book called Like Water for Chocolate and it tells the story of a woman who whenever she cooks her emotions flow into the food and the people eating it are affected by that.
Definitely. It’s all part of it, I think.
Kate Pratt mentioned you when we were chatting as someone she looked up to and got ideas from for food and saw you as a mentor, do you have anyone who along the way who has shaped you particularly?
Yes, but I guess it’s not anyone with a profile. I’ve worked with so many chefs, especially one who has become my best friend over the years and he is always, what can we make from it and why would we buy it when we can make it from scratch? He was my head chef as an apprentice and it has always been why buy it in when you can put love into it and make it better than the product you buy in. So it has always been people like that who have been creative in wanting to make it all themselves. It has always been the hands on mentoring I’ve had that I’ve learned so much from. Working with some really good chefs along the way has helped, but it’s more taking bits and pieces from so many different people and even leaders who aren’t necessarily great chefs. It comes down to that as well.
When it came time for you to step into that role of head chef, did that feel like a natural progression for you?
No. I think it’s like anyone. You come to that time and you think you’re ready, but you never really know until you’re actually in that role. Then once I was in that role…it’s always overwhelming for anyone when you first do it. You think you sort of know everything, but you have so much to learn. But you have to start somewhere. I don’t think you’re ever really ready and 100 % confident, there’s always going to be a doubt.
You strike me as someone who is a team leader, rather than a leading from the top person.
There has been a lot of training, especially with these guys. Sometimes you can be in roles where you have a certain standard but the owner or manager doesn’t have a similar standard so you’re pushing for something but there are thing slacking on the other side and you get frustrated then you can’t quite be the leader you wanted to be and you get stressed. Whereas here, we have an amazing General Manager, Sam and he makes my job so easy because we have similar standards. It’s the same with the guys from The Mulberry Group; when you have similar standards and want the same end result, it makes it a lot easier to be a good leader. It means I can do my job properly without being frustrated because I want to see some sort of result and I’m not getting it.
Nice. In terms of ideas for food, and I know we touched on this before, are you a cookbook person or do you look at Instagram for inspiration?
I read a lot of cookbooks, but at the same time when you have the basic culinary skills and the methods of cookery you learned from school, you tend to lean back on the classical methods and build on it and try and play around and swap things out. I might try and use something as a base recipe if I haven’t done something before but I never end up with that recipe and it is always so far from it, but that’s just the base I start at. I might look at something and think, I reckon it’d be better with a bit of this, which is why your team need to be able to play around with those things with you. It’s always good to bounce those ideas.
I think that’s the thing that fascinates me the most about chefs is your repertoire of flavours and flavour profiles that you must hold within you like some sort of amazing library that you can draw on and know that this will go with that and understand the structure of different products and how they might work when you do certain things to them.
That’s right. There are certain chefs out there that do crazy things and you think their palates must be insanely good because other people wouldn’t even venture down that path, but their end result is amazing.
What advice would you give to a young person, or anyone who wanted to enter the industry now?
I think it’s getting better and I think it’s now an industry that people should be excited about and want to get into. We’ve been talking The Gordon TAFE down here about working with them to hopefully to encourage more apprentices into the industry because when I was an apprentice, there were so many and now there’s not. People need to start treating staff better. It’s getting better but it’s not quite there, I don’t think, for all venues. It depends what kind of chef you want to be but pick a goal and go for it.
675 Anglesea Road, Freshwater Creek