There are ways that some things can be done and more and more people are looking at the gaps in our knowledge and in what we are doing to ensure that what we are doing is ethical and responsible. It’s about being more considerate about what we are doing whether we are in a restaurant or a farm. We’ve spent decades now ignoring the flow on effect of our actions.
Sascha and I sat up at the long table at the Alps in Prahran, surrounded by walls of wine and talked all things food and culture and philosophy and goodness. I really only scratched the surface of Sascha’s wealth of knowledge, experience and his passion for the food industry. We could have talked for hours, but that would have been a really long podcast to listen to and transcript to read and this way, I’m leaving you with your own questions and thought spin-offs to explore. You’re welcome.
Sascha, I met you when I was writing about the GoodFish Project and I thought then that I’d like to talk to you a bit more because you seem like someone who is all over everything.
That’s the overstatement of the century!
No, you are so busy and have lots of things on the go. And then I started reading about you and I feel like you are really cinematic because you have a whole story of German ancestry and a migrant family making their way in a new country. Perhaps we will start at the beginning and because you mentioned in the article I read that a lot of your food interest comes from your family background, so did you always think you were going to be a chef?
No. I think it was the complete opposite that I was never going to be a chef. You’re right, I was always surrounded by food. I grew up on a mini hobby farm in the very north of the country and spent my time on the reef, swimming and seeing all the fish but we’ll get to that later. Ultimately, it was a German family who had just migrated. My granddad was a baker and he was baking dark rye bread in Townsville to essentially a local community who had no idea what those things were. The business essentially failed.
Well there was no Instagram to run a marketing narrative…!
And also dark rye bread in 40 degree temperatures, isn’t a thing. It was pretty much an army base and a few migrants at that point, so his number 1 customer was the guy that ran the Greek restaurant down the road. As a kid, I was very much making pastries and was surrounded by food, produce. My mum has always been a massive gardener, even today 60 to 70% of the food that she eats comes from her garden, so when I go home, I get inspiration from all her beautiful heritage vegetables. It was amazing to have grown up around all that and it was inevitable that I would have a passion for food. Did I think I was going to be a chef? No, that just happened.
What did you think you might do?
I went to Business School, so god knows. probably something very boring and far away from food and faraway from anything with any sort of creativity in it but I think I made that decision because I thought it was the decision people make. When you’re 18 or 19, who knows what they want to do? I thought it was something that would teach me something and a year and a half in, I came back from a trip to Europe and needed a job, fell into a kitchen and then a decade later, I’m still in a kitchen.
That’s interesting. Obviously you have a background in food but having that background and loving food doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to make it as a chef so what do you think drew you in and kept you there?
I guess I’m a fairly competitive person, not aggressively competitive, but I don’t like ever being in a position where I don’t feel like I can be something. I always feel as though I have to prove something to myself, so if I take on a job or a project, I need to nail it; at least nail it to my own standard, otherwise I feel like I’ve wasted my time. I put a lot of pressure on myself. So I think when I started in the kitchen, I thought, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it properly and I put myself into ridiculous situations I definitely wasn’t ready for, like I became a chef de partie when I was probably still an apprentice and there are really good and bad flow-on effects from those decisions, but I guess it was about challenging myself.
But people must have seen something in you to put you in those positions as well.
Yeah, fake it till you make it, right?
Ok, so good acting. I’ve spoken to a few people lately who acknowledged that they were really ambitious and were in roles they couldn’t handle and then had to step back, so what was your trajectory then?
I think I’ve only just found that point where I’ve realised that I might have been out of my depth or maybe not. Or maybe not because I’ve changed my tack, but that’s another conversation. I’m not really answering your question, but I think I realised that a chef is maybe not what I thought a chef was. There’s one chef that trains as an apprentice, becomes a CdP, becomes a sous chef, becomes a head chef, becomes an executive chef. I now think that being a chef can be so many different things and it’s more of a mindset and a way of working, rather than a particular role. You see what people are doing now; chefs running restaurant empires, chefs running catering businesses, chefs going into media or going into farming. They are going into all these sorts of avenues with a chef mindset that was bred in a kitchen. I think that’s the way it’s going. I think until recently most people didn’t realise you could do that and I don’t think that people realised until recently that there is some kind of support to do that.
And that’s the path you’ve chosen?
I guess so. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve found my next thing forever, but I think I’ve realised that I may not be the chef who works in the kitchen from now until I’m 60. I think there are other ways I can be involved with food. For me, that has come from a love of produce and farming and farmers, that bigger story that I was passionate about as a kid because I was around it and now it has come through. Through my whole career I think I was more excited about that side of it than I was necessarily about the other side of it, which is interesting. I think I’ve only realised that recently. I was describing it to someone recently as food anthropology; that human intersect with food and the natural world.
Are you still cooking?
Not actively at the moment because I’ve been running other projects and studying and doing other things and there is no capacity to be cooking amongst all that outside of consulting and bits and bobs. I still love it and it’s not to say I won’t ever do it again, but I think the way I look at that role has definitely changed. I don’t know for sure that I’m going to be a full-time head chef in the next six months to a year, that’s a question mark.
You must have been young, both in age and in your career when you joined forces with Ashley Davis to run Copper Pot. How did that come about?
Like all good ideas come about. One too many beers, I suppose. I was working in a really bizarre role for a couple of years because I had a dream…I guess I came up with the idea – potentially before my intelligence or ability or capacity was there – to open a restaurant. So I found a way to facilitate that which, for me, was taking on this weird role consulting on a shipping industry project, so building food and beverage systems for offshore industry. It was super dry and benign and so far removed from beautiful produce but it paid well and they gave me heaps of time off to pursue other things so I found myself working for five weeks on a ship, possibly somewhere off the shore of Singapore and then the next five weeks I would be in the South of France making charcuterie. I had a couple of years of amazing polarised life where I was literally double lifeing it but putting away money to own a restaurant.
This is what I’m saying…cinematic. There is already a memoir there.
Meeting Ashley was a coincidence. An old sous chef of mine when I was an apprentice, was working as Ashley’s sous chef at Pure South and I went to help out because I was on one of my off periods and we just aligned on a lot of things. We found ourselves talking about food anthropology and all those bigger stories around food. We had a lot of similarities in that we both thought about food a little bit deeper than what was on the plate.
Can you talk a little bit more about that depth of food? You mentioned the intersect of civilisation with food, what are your thoughts around that?
That is a big question. It’s central to it. There hasn’t been a single culture that hasn’t built itself around food. It is material to our existence. You can’t separate the two things. if you have a culture that grew up in a cold climate, you have ingredients and types of cooking that suit that climate and soils. They might bury things or not bury things or ferment things in ash, whatever it is, environment and people and food are all tied together. None of those things can be pulled out for people to say, oh this was developed for some other reason. There are a lot of layers built in and that is super fascinating to me.
It is, but is it worrying now that we have fucked that because we are not following those rules governing the environment we live in and what the land and climate can support? We just have what we want. is there a need to pull it back?
Potentially. It depends how meta we want to go. We could argue that our current dire situation is our version of shaping our own food culture. That’s getting a little high level and abstract but it is changing the way we eat and cook. Part of the reason I’ve done the study I have done and part of the reason I’m working on the projects I am working on is that I do think the food world can do a far better job at listening to science and embedding that into the that we cook and the way we work around food. We have this untapped resource of hundreds of thousands of years of understanding and yet we only embed that into parts of what we do and I think that’s a big gap at every level from farming to cooking in a restaurant, to growing at a boutique level. There’s an application of doing things that’s better for the future.
Let’s talk a little bit about some of your projects. So I’ll take you back to the reef, is that how you got involved with the GoodFish project because of a childhood association?
Definitely, it’s one of those things you don’t think about at the time, but then you think, oh yeah, there’s a reason why I’m doing this. I had the pleasure of spending my weekends seeing the reef before it was bleached, before it was dead. I’ve got a before and after physically in my head, seeing both sides of it and it is a pretty impactful vision. By nature, I don’t think I was conscious of I until I got to a senior level in the kitchen, but I’ve always had that concern for the natural world. That has morphed itself into an understanding in the last couple of years where I remember having all these conversations with chefs about sourcing things better, being more environmentally friendly, about knowing more about the products. We could get all that information about our vegetables and about our beef and pork, because those things are farmed and have people attached to them and have a lot of science attached to them and there is more of an understanding of the food chain. What we don’t have an understanding of is wild fish because we don’t know what happens under the ocean. Even the scientists know very little about what happens in the ocean. Over the past couple of years I’ve had that conversations with people a number of times. It would be so great if we could sit at the table and talk about a piece of wild fish the same way we talk about beef to the point of what it ate, what it lived nearby, the land, the terroir it swam around, the things we pay a lot of attention to as diners and chefs when it comes to everything else, but we don’t talk about it at all when it comes to wild fish.
The GoodFish Project was something I was approached about, loosely, and it fit from a time and values perspective and it fit that niche. I thought, cool, we can tap into science and translate that into an accessible body of knowledge. Then we thought, how do we make that useful at the table?
Was the app your idea?
No. God, no. That’s about 15 years of work from the organisation, but it was inevitable that it be translated to food service. Some people use it and you spoke to Ben Shewry, he has used it for a few years.
How has the uptake been since launching it to the restaurants and making it more well known?
Good, really positive, I’ve had conversations with people who say they need something like it and it’s valuable to have that information. The bit where it gets hard is that we don’t have enough information. That’s still the issue with the whole concept; it’s still under the water.
Things can change, can’t they?
Things change so rapidly. We know, unfortunately, very little of the effect if we take, say a Southern Blue Fin Tuna out of the water. What does that do to all of the fish it eats, what are the things in that ecosystem that are affected by that? It’s a timely conversation because currently on the market you have people telling you that Southern Blue Fin Tuna is sustainable again, but the reality is that up until a few years ago, it was fished to about five per cent of historical levels and now it has returned to eleven per cent, but that’s eleven per cent of historical levels, but until you reach a point of around 20 per cent, it’s not sustainable, it can’t conntain its fishing level, it can’t breed in a rapid enough way to not impact all of the other things. So yes, as a species, it’s healthy, but what about all the other things that rely on it. If you take 100 fish out of the sea, what about all the other fish that rely on them?
Unfortunately it’s still so complex and it’s not something you can easily find a solution for and that’s what chefs want. It’s a massive struggle, but you have to start somewhere.
I feel as though there has been a shift. I know there have been chefs passionate about seasonality and sustainability but I feel like everyone is talking about it a lot more now, for better or worse…for better, of course. But sometimes when there is a buzz word, you want to make sure that it’s genuine. I just wonder…because all the chefs I speak to are obviously great and they all seem to really care. I’ve been hearing a lot lately about not doing the Parisian bistro style of things where you have a recipe and then procure the ingredients, but instead saying, what has the supplier got and then building a dish around that. A lot of the chefs I’ve spoken to talk in those terms. It used to be that chefs just cooked what they wanted to cook and the diner didn’t know any better. Do you think globally that most chefs are into sustainability and seasonality and wanting the best?
That’s a really broad question. You touched on it when you said sustainability as a word is not a defining term and it’s so many things to so many different people. So yes, broadly I think people are into it because it’s a buzz word and they love the idea of it and that’s why it’s applied to every product you buy off the shelf. But the reality of that is it is usually not accurate. Yes, everyone wants to do it, but is everyone prepared to do what it takes to get there? No, not everyone is. It is definitely changing because people have to change. At some point you won’t have whatever it is you’re looking for, so it will change. Hopefully we can avoid that.
Is it a myth that it’s more expensive to go for products that are more sustainable?
It is if you don’t change the way you work around them. What you mentioned before is quite right, I think that’s what most chefs are realising now, if you let the ingredient lead you, it’s not more expensive. If you see what’s available at the market and you think, cool there’s grass whiting available. They’re an abundant catch and they are in the middle of their breeding season and it’s not King George Whiting and it’s $14 a kilo. It’s not expensive and it’s hyper sustainable. If you buy a peach in peak peach season, it’s not expensive. If you use the whole thing, like the tops of the carrots as well as the carrots then yes, you aremaking money off things that would have gone in the bin even if you spent more money on it. This isn’t new. A lot of people are talking about that. When you’re highlighting an expensive ingredient, it doesn’t matter whether it’s foie gras or a carrot, if you’re highlighting it, it stands on its own merits because of its quality, it’s peak seasoness and its deliciousness.
Foie gras is an interesting example. Haven’t they just outlawed that?
That’s a point of contention. I have visited foie gras farms and I’ve seen gauvage and I’ve held the geese while it happens and it’s a lot less scary than you think.
Weeelll…
And this is where it’s a contentious issue.
Absolutely and it is so delicious.
And somebody with the values I’ve just spoken about, for me to go, I’ve sat there holding it while the pipe goes down its throat, there are systems built around best practice in these things but I don’t have a clear answer on that. I’m not putting down a position.
Sometimes it’s about changing systems.
Again, do we know enough about it. Does every person making a decision about that…have they done enough research. Have they asked the right people or have they just done what their peers have told them?
I don’t know. I visited somewhere in France where they were keeping calves in tiny stalls in the dark and I was struck by the fact that veau in French means veal and calf and all I could think of as I looked at these little calves in the darkness was that they were veal and how awful that was.
There are ways that some things can be done and more and more people are looking at the gaps in our knowledge and in what we are doing to ensure that what we are doing is ethical and responsible. It’s about being more considerate about what we are doing whether we are in a restaurant or a farm. We’ve spent decades now ignoring the flow on effect of our actions.
Absolutely. I feel like sometimes the weight or the pressure or the expectation is that the chefs will lead the way, and to a certain extent they can, but who else should hold some of that responsibility? Food writers, for example?
I don’t think it’s fair to pinpoint any particular person as the leader who needs to lead. Everyone needs to take their own part of the leadership. Until you get that community of people agreeing and working on an ecosystem together towards a solution, it’s never going to work. That’s unfortunately a hard thing to do when you talk about these things because there are a million opinions about everything and no one is necessarily completely right. In fact, usually they’re not because we don’t know enough. I’ve spent two years now with scientists and the one thing that has come out of it is there is no such thing as certainty and you never know enough.
That’s what always bothered me about science. I remember at school they’d say, we just keep experimenting until we get the result we want.
But what else do we have? We have no other option than the most tried and tested process that has ever existed in humankind’s existence. It is the only process we know that is designed to test itself to failure so it’s imperfect but perfect.
Can you talk about any of your other projects?
Sure. I’ve been working very closely with a good friend of mine who works for a Social Enterprise called The Social Food Project. They work around changing the conversation around the food system in a very kind of event-driven way. They use catering and events and workshops to tell stories through food. They host a lot of dinners, using faring leaders to host a group of people in a great restaurant and they do really accessible loe lever low price point experiences around really beautiful produce. That’s their bread and butter but we have just gone through the throes of opening a pop-up wine bar at the Prahran Market hopefully this week which is going to be really great. It’s a really nice bricks and mortar way to have that conversation on a daily basis using the market traders as the equivalent of the farmer. We’ll invited the traders in and do workshops about their story and extended network. Again it’s about community and about an ecosystem of people that work together on something and share knowledge.
That’s a great idea. What’s that called?
Social Wine Project.
How long will that run as a pop-up?
Hopefully over the summer.
Just to crowbar it in, because of course we have fabulous markets here, but when I lived in France for a year, going to the market and speaking to the producer, which is what you’re talking about and getting that direct information about what they’ve been growing and if you want to ask them about how the season was and what does that mean for their product and what can I do with this? I love that.
It’s such a rich conversation. We can talk about so many facets of this. Every time I get stuck into a really deep conversation about food systems, I always reference a really pivotal statement I heard when I attended MAD in Sydney a few years ago. David Chang said something along the lines of, our food systems are going to have to change, our food is going to have to be less delicious to survive in the future, or something along those lines. It really flipped a switch for me. Immediately I thought, that’s bullshit, we’ll just get better, but then you watch the trajectory we are on and no one is changing their behaviour; we are continuing to do what we do and land quality is still reducing, water quality is reducing; I just saw a picture of someone pulling plastic out of a muscle of a crab on a plate the other day. Maybe he is right.
The exciting thing about this and this is where I always turn the conversation, is that this is where creativity thrives. It’s not about presenting a doom and gloom picture, it’s about getting excited about the fact that you have a constraint you are working within, whether you like it or not, constraints make you more creative and they make the end product better and more unique. Frankly, if you only have this weird bizarre fish to use, someone needs to get really excited about that. It’s our job as chefs to be excited about that. It’s material to our existence.
Absolutely. I do think some things are cyclical. You mentioned using carrot tops before. That whole using everything is not new.
It’s not new at all, but now we have, realised that it makes money so it’s the thing to do.
Everything has to be a commodity.
I think that’s not a bad way to work it, because it motivates people. It’s the smart people who can adjust their business models and their systems and practices and they become successful and they change something.
People like to put boxes around things. It makes them feel secure and if that box is a value, then ok. If that’s the box that delivers a solution, then ok. Right now, if you look at all the positive changes in the world, it is all driven by finance. All of the things that are happening quickly are happening because there is money behind it.
I guess. Until we change the paradigms and the language associated with them, it’s perhaps hard to shift anything without that. It’s not going to happen in our lifetime.
God no.
But do you overall feel positive and hopeful about the food industry and food?
Totally. 100 per cent. I, like everyone, fall into the trap of sometimes saying, oh shit, everything is fucked, but ultimately it comes back to what I said before; we are all really resilient. Humans are super resilient and super creative. I think chefs and the food industry and farmers and the whole ecosystem have always done a lot with nothing. We find positive solutions to stuff. There are a million roadblocks to stuff and I come across them every day in conversations with people; I have arguments and disagree with people and I think that’s great. Those conversations are the beginning of important and successful change.