Sitting down with Sophie Storen is a soul filling experience. Her energy and excitement for creating food is palpable and her story had me on the edge of my seat, wanting to hear more and maybe secretly even wanting to be her.
Sophie, you sound like exactly the kind of person I love talking to because you are obviously really passionate about what you do…
Totally.
…and you’ve made that work in perhaps a different scenario from what you initially might have thought you would be working in.
Yes a hundred per cent. I still get that creative expression. It’s definitely not what I though I was going to be doing.
I finished school and worked for a guy called Pitzy Folk who owns Capi Mineral Water and he used to own The Observatory Café and he'd to do massive functions and run a cafe out of there, but on a large scale. It’s the one that used to be in the Botanic Gardens. I did Uni while I was working. It was full time Uni and pretty much full time working. I only did it because I wanted to be a chef but my parents told me I had to go to Uni.
What did you study?
I did a Bachelor of Arts degree. It was fun. I was sitting at Uni listening to people talk about fascinating subjects. I did Women’s Studies, Witchcraft in the European Mind; all kinds of things. I thought something might twig and I might decide not to become a chef and it didn’t.
So you always knew you wanted to be a chef then?
Yes. I used to bake. I was terrible at it. It wasn’t something that came naturally to me. I had to learn how to do it, but I loved it. The passion was great but I wouldn’t have got anywhere without learning more. There was a moment when I tipped the other way and I understood balancing flavours and why you put certain things together. I finished Uni and did a graduate diploma in professional writing because my parents were really sure I should be doing something else. But I was working as a commis chef for Pitzy as well. Working felt like fun and I was young, so I could go out all night and then get up and go to Uni and then go to work. It’s all fun. Now I do one late night and I have to sleep for a week.
I begged my parents just to let me be a chef and they finally said yes, I could do it. I went to cooking school in Paris. I did that for 12 months.
That feels very cinematic. Why Paris?
I wanted to do something drastic and a little bit aggressive and really out there. It was quite a posh school and for that reason not everyone had my mind set. I was all, “Isn’t this awesome? We are going to have the best time ever. Can you just not wait?!” For some Americans it’s like a finishing school so it’s about teaching the girls how to cook and I couldn’t quite get past that. I wanted them to get out the way so I could see what was going on. Chefs would be making croissants or chicken stock. We’d learn about the history of it and then make it. It was great. I loved it. I was eating, going out and spending time with French people and having a great time. I did it for about a year and then my funds ran out and I knew I had to go and get a job.
A family friend knew Petersham Nurseries in Richmond, London, so I went over there. My parents gave me a week or two to get a job before they said I’d have to go home and work out what I wanted to do. I thought, No, I’m not leaving. I walked into Petersham Nurseries…
Is it true you arrived at 5 am for a 9.30 am interview?
I was so nervous. I basically didn’t sleep the night before. I was so desperate for it. I wanted it so much and I had no skills because I’d been at cooking school and I would have been a great chef if it had been 1972. We were doing aspic jellies. You do two weeks on aspic. I get it, I get the history of it and I appreciate that but at the same time…
Does anyone still do it?
They do in Paris. They do jellies and that sort of thing. But no one really wants to sink their teeth into a meat jelly. It was all about presentation and they still do it in some of the really big old fashioned places. I knew that wasn’t where I wanted to go but at that point I didn’t know where I wanted to go.
I walked into Skye Gyngell’s office wearing a t-shirt that said 'I love cooking'. It was a poky little office and there were two of them sitting in them and Skye had her arms crossed and I thought I was really going to fuzzle it because I was nervous. She was hilarious and asked me lots of questions. I made huge broad statements about how cooking was the most important thing in the whole wide world and how I’d work for free. To which she replied, 'Listen, no one works for free. You’re not a slave.' I couldn’t have worked for free anyway because my parents were about to have a heart attack. I was so desperate that I thought if I showed ultimate desperation that she just might take pity on me. She just said, you can come back. We laughed later because she said, 'You were just so ridiculous; you were so desperate and so needy and wearing the I love cooking t-shirt; it was shocking.'
She took pity on me and I did a three-month trial. I remember thinking that I absolutely had the job and she came up to me a the end of the three months and said that they would let me stay. I’d already thought I was in. I spent a few years there working with different people, like Thomasina Miers who was on the first UK MasterChef and now owns a whole pile of Mexican restaurants. She is great. She’s this gorgeous girl who used to sit up on the pass and eat out of pots and pans; very English and different. We used to do events with all kinds of chefs, so I met Maggie Beer and did a verjus event using her verjus that she had brought over. We’d cook with her and do product tastings. It was a very natural way to cook.
Were they growing their own food?
Some of it, but not a lot. Because they are a green house, they grow all their own flowers. They do have a vegetable garden, but to feed a 100-seat restaurant you need a lot. I think we got all our herbs from there. We did go foraging there. An Italian guy, Bruno, used to take us foraging for mushrooms. The general public would buy tickets and then as chefs we would go and help them and show them how to brush the mushrooms. To clean them you should always brush, never cut. I was like a sponge that couldn’t get enough information.
How long were you there?
Three and a half years. It was really fun and a great experience. Skye s a very, very, very clever woman. On a completely other level from everyone else. She now owns Spring in London at Somerset House.
I walked into Skye Gyngell’s office wearing a t-shirt that said ‘I love cooking’. I was so desperate that I thought if I showed ultimate desperation that she just might take pity on me.
It sounds as though you had some quite strong women influences earlier on.
Yes I did. Then I came back here thinking I had all this amazing experience and it would be really easy to get a job and I found a very masculine underbelly. I asked Skye whether I should do an apprenticeship and she said no, just work with us. But I got back and every single person would cross out my name because I hadn’t done an apprenticeship. Whether I’d cooked for them or not. I was very disappointed not to find work. I couldn’t find a kitchen like that anywhere. Working with six to eight women every day was quite amazing. There was a real sensitivity to it. We would talk about buffalo mozzarella for an hour and a half. I went to different big Melbourne restaurants and none of them wanted me. Denis Lucey gave me a job in the office at one point. I needed cash and he liked me but his head chef didn’t. I did that just to get some cash. That was a nice gesture.
How long ago was that?
At least 11 years ago. I got some work at a few different cafes but it was a big step down and was a bit soul destroying. Then I went to Sydney and applied for the only job I’d wanted since I got back which was at Sean Moran’s Panorama and he had just hired before I came in. He gave me a trial because he knew who Skye was. I would have loved to have worked there. He sat me down and said he would have loved to have hired me but he had all his staff at the same level and he had just hired and he couldn’t do it. It was devastating for me. It was good though because I learned how to be down at the bottom and work my way up.
I met Nicole who I started the business with. She was in events more than food so we balanced each other out. She’d do Front of House and I’d do back of house for at least the first five years, because it was just the two of us. Even as we got bigger and the teams got bigger, it would still be the two of us.
When you start up something like that in Melbourne where it can be tricky on a few fronts, how do you get your name out there?
We started doing events with very little experience. Catering is very different to working in a restaurant. In a restaurant you can really only do a table at a time, whereas this is 60 plates now. You have a certain amount of lead time and then someone will stand up and make a speech that wasn’t planned and you’re told they need another half an hour and you’ve just plated up 30 pieces of fish.
I had a chat to Quinn Spencer over at and he was talking about doing events in really poky places that were never meant to be cooked in, like dining in a jewellery shop.
Of course. Sometimes the event managers come to me and tell me that the client wants something like cacio e pepe and I say, so you want me to make spaghetti in a space that’s one metre squared with no cooking equipment and 300 guests and how do we think that’s going to work. You have to be really practical. We write the menus. I need to know what the space is and who the client or brand is.
You sit down and do bespoke menus?
Every single one. It can be over the phone or skype. Sometimes they email me enough detail and I go from there. My preference is to sit down with them; especially the brides because I have to get a gauge on them and see what their style and vibe is.
Tell me about the 10/10 Dinner Series. It sounds ambitious…well, like a lot of work.
It is huge. It’s 10 people for 10 nights. Having said that 10 nights after last night makes me wonder what I’m thinking. But it’s two nights a week for the whole of June and first week of July.
But obviously you feel as though where you have got to and the journey up until now is worth celebrating. Is that what the intention is?
Absolutely. I bought my business partner out in the middle of last year and moved on my own to take this on and it felt daunting but exciting. We’ve rebranded and gone back to our roots to focus mainly on food and how that can represent a person or brand. because of that I wanted to celebrate that we have taken a huge turn and gone almost right back around. Ten dinners is definitely ambitions and I did say to Jodi (Crocker) I thought ten was too much but she thought, no. Ten is a lot. But it’s good. The good thing about it is you’ve got 10 people and the good thing about 10 people is you’ve got a captured audience that you can explain things to. I would have thrown the same amount of money at one massive cocktail party and spoken to 8 people and not have had a meaningful experience.
The whole point of what we’re doing is to create food that has meaning. Last night it was really nice to explain why I was serving what I was serving. I’ve picked 10 ingredients that have had some kind of influence on me.
What are those ingredients?
Last night was anchovies. I didn’t bash it to death so that everyone thought it was too much. We had veal katsu sandwiches; crumbed veal, fluffy white bread, anchovy mayonnaise and watercress. Warm, delicious, clean. I did scallop tartlets, taramasalata and, well it was supposed to be wakame but we turfed that in the end and used sandfire because it was different. We had some pickled sandfire so it was really yummy and a little bit of anchovy oil. The entrée was all raw vegetables with bagna cauda, which means warm bath which was extra virgin olive oil, black garlic and anchovies all melted down into a soupy thing and you just kind of dig the raw vegetables into that. We did little tiny baby kale balls. Weird things but they taste delicious. Then we did piccolo fritto; fried herbs fried anchovies, fried lemon wheels so it was like this fried, salty thing. I did a roasted lamb with an anchovy crust and pan-fried barramundi with anchovy butter.
Wow, that’s a lot of food.
It is but it was small portions. I wanted to keep it so that people could taste everything but I didn’t want them to walk out and want to vomit.
No. I’m coming to Tuesday’s dinner. Is the ingredient a surprise?
No, it’s fish. We finished the menu today, but I’ll surprise you and I won’t say what’s on it. It’s fun. We’ll have a couple of canapés so that everyone can have a glass of wine and relax and then we’ll do a seated entrée. It’s all shared.
Where do you get our ideas?
A lot of it came from Skye. I have a lot of cook books and I also look at a lot of menus from overseas, New York, France. My best friend lives in Paris and she’ll ring me an tell me to check out a particular restaurant because the menu is unbelievable. It’s all very pared back and I love that. When you get a piece of fish and it has the best aioli you’ve ever tasted and a lemon cheek, it doesn’t need all the fluff. I hate fluff and gimmicks and all that stuff that’s themey. Even though I’m doing 10 themed dinners…
What are some other ingredients along the way you’ve enjoyed using and that you’ll showcase?
Lemons. Olive oil. Shellfish. Herbs is a big one. Red wine, which we thought would be fun. Port Philip Wines are sponsoring so Marco from Port Philip Wines will come and do a little spiel about the wine. That makes it different.
Who is coming?
Chefs, PR people, journalists, clients. They can ask me questions too which you can’t really do if it’s a cocktail party. The venue is amazing, it’s Capi headquarters which is very family.
It’s nice you’re going back to where you started.
It feels as though the whole thing has come full circle which is why I wanted to celebrate it and make it fun.