Tony Twitchett

Hi Tony. How are you? It's so busy out in Federation Square, how is it going up here at Taxi?

We only opened up Saturday, for Monday and Tuesday, but it's good that we did. Last Monday and Tuesday was good and yesterday was really good. There seems to be a lot of people in the city over the weekend and they don't leave; they're still here on the Monday.

I think it's great. People are obviously really embracing getting out and about again. But how has it been for you? Were you totally shut down over lockdown?

Lockdown 1, we were totally shut down and didn't do anything and shut down every part of the building and stood everyone down. When we came back, we operated for that time in between Lockdown 1 and 2. When we went into Lockdown 2 we thought we couldn't just shut down because we didn't know what was going to happen. We thought we would take Taxi Kitchen on tour and started doing pop-ups. We contacted friends of ours who have got pubs in suburbs or down the coast. We did Mornington, Mordialloc, Albert Park, we went out to the Eastern suburbs. We basically took the chefs from Taxi Kitchen and a few of the front of house and did hot takeaway food pick-up. While that was happening, I was badgering Shane Delia to get on Providoor. We finally got on there in August. But we also put Taxi Kitchen on the grocery shelves. We took all of our famous signature dishes and basically prepared them on Monday, supermarkets ordered them from us, boutique supermarkets like Gum Tree, Sciclunas and we put our Taxi stamp on it. We had staff prepping for grocery stores, packing on Wednesday and getting them to the grocery stores on Friday. Then they would sell out over the weekend and give us another order. That was good because we got up to 11 or 13 I think was the most we had. We did get down to Sorrento, which was the furthest we went. I did try to get into Lorne for the summer but I couldn't get it.

That's a real pivot, isn't it?

Yes, it was. It kept this level going, but it's a three-level venue; we have the public bar on the ground floor, Taxi, the restaurant and then we have Transit on the rooftop.

Are you doing food for all those levels?

The pub looks after itself, Taxi looks after this floor and also the rooftop food. But when we did the groceries and Providoor, it was all from Taxi Kitchen.

It would be better to be doing all that; it would keep you match fit in a sense. It would be hard to come back after such a long time if you had done nothing.

We did have a lot of chefs and front of house who were very flat-footed after we came back from Lockdown 1, just because no one had experienced it before. We told them to have some R & R and relax and obviously no one could leave their homes. When everyone came back, people were asking, what's the recipe again?Everything we had taken for granted, we had to relearn. So in Lockdown 2, doing the pop-ups, the groceries and Providoor, did help us when we re-opened in November. We had more synergy, the unit was still tightly knit together. With the groceries, it was good because we got to use all the front of house for packing and labelling and Providoor was the same. Then even some of the managers were driving down the coast delivering. We tried to do anything and everything. We got through and then we got to a point in February where the groceries were becoming a strain, so we dropped them to concentrate on in-house service, but we have kept on with Providoor all the way through, because Providoor has been great on the weekends for this restaurant. He has really good marketing and really good reach.

That was an amazing thing he did, allowing restaurants to take takeaway to a whole new level. It was great for us at home.

I watched him do it in Lockdown 1 and I thought it was a clever idea and I watched Scott Pickett and he was really ramping up his pick-up meals, but we decided to just sit and wait. No one knew it was going to be as long. As soon as Lockdown 2 was on the edge. We knew we had to jump onto it and the platform was so well done and it has grown so quickly. He has seen the opportunity and he has definitely got the right people on board. I was already using the home delivery service, HDS, who are fantastic and they come and pick up products in their refrigerated vans. When we got onto Providoor, we were already using those guys and they are a great logistics team.

The dishes must be different to pack up than plate up.

I have seen some great photos on Instagram saying thanks Taxi Kitchen and I've thought, I wouldn't have plated like that, but whatever! We chose dishes that would be the easiest to reheat and plate up at home, but also included signature dishes like the candied pork and Szechuan duck because that is what people are always asking for when they come here.

How long have you been at Taxi Kitchen?

I got here in 2004. I came over when Michael Lambie started because I was working with him at Circa. When he got this gig, he asked me to come over and it was great. I worked under him for the first six years. Then I had an opportunity to leave the venue and I went and opened Barkers Wine Bar and Bistro. I did that for a year, then came back because Michael had decided to move on and the owners at the time thought it would be perfect to bring me back in to keep the place going. After 10 years of fine dining, we changed it from Taxi Dining Room to Taxi Kitchen. That was to strip it back a bit; we got rid of the white tablecloths and reduced the amount of wines on the list and made the food a bit more open to a larger demographic. We had found after 10 years that it had become a destination restaurant and people dined here once a year. We did a flip on that and it has been well received and we have gone with that since 2014.

How many can you seat here?

In the main dining room? 120. But it does stretch out around to the River Room which seats 50 and the terrace seats 35. When we don't have functions or private events, we'll go out there on Friday and Saturday nights.

On Friday and Saturday nights are you doing that twice over?

Pre-Covid we were doing 240. It's mainly because we have the theatres. People would come in at 5.30 and have a pre-show dinner so they are in and out by 6.30-7pm and then you have the diners coming in at 7.30-8pm.

You obviously love it because you have been here a long time, but that hustle! In that height of service, do you feel stressed or is it exhilaration or are you just totally in the flow?

I love it. I'm probably in the flow. You do get a buzz. Even Saturday nights, with the team being stretched so far and the public bar has been getting really worked over on the weekends so we have had our Taxi shifts down there. We run our Taxi Kitchen with less. We only did 150 with canapes out the back and doing that, everything worked perfectly, the staff are all together. We do a lot of planning. We never go into a service without a game plan that everyone has had verbalised. It's really good because the whole team knows what is going to happen, unless a curveball comes.

When you say team, how many are in the kitchen?

At the moment, we have seven. Normally we would have 13. That's what we had when we were doing 240 pre-Covid. The numbers are reduced so that we can control what we are doing with the manpower we have.

That's the big challenge at the moment, isn't it? Staffing.

100 per cent. Im hoping people will start coming back into the hospitality industry. It would be amazing to see apprentices start coming back through. I've been speaking to William Angliss and to Holmesglen and I have good communication with those guys. They have got staff who have done the courses over the last two years, but they have no trade experience. I'm looking at those guys to come through next year and do almost traineeships. That would be good; get some young people in. But I think everyone wants to have the summer off and we dont have the internationals to bolster up the casuals.

I'm not sure how summer will be. Everyone talked about the hot vax summer but with all this rain that's forecast, they might want to be inside working and earning some money maybe.

It's definitely wet. The rain has been an absolute bother. Especially when we went through the stages of being able to open up at 70% but you can only have a certain density. So we travelled through that and that was a huge issue because the majority of the density was outside so we were moving people inside and then back outside.

Go Melbourne!

Exactly. At 80%, we could have more people but then when it rained, we had more people to shelter. It was a logistical nightmare. It was such a blessing to get back to trading as a licensed venue because then we could make the Public Bar a walk-in venue again, without bookings. We have kept the bookings on the rooftop because that works so well for us and people love to know that when they arrive, they have a table on the rooftop. We run the rooftop like a restaurant now which is fantastic which we didn't do pre-Covid. There are some learnings there; it's a better way to run the business.

I was reading about you and it seems like your family was into hospitality and did you come to Melbourne because of your siblings?

I'm the youngest of four boys and I moved to Melbourne to study IT and get into computer programming. It was probably an excuse to get out of the country and into the city really. My two older brothers were both chefs in Melbourne when I got here. I started working with them at the weekends and after six months, my older brother said I might as well start an apprenticeship because I was working more than I was going to uni. He suggested I go to Stokehouse, so I applied there and luckily enough I got a job there for the summer on the pizza section downstairs in the late nineties.

That was the heyday, wasn't it? All those British chefs coming over and they were all down that way.

Yes! Lambie was upstairs with his Brit-pack. I started downstairs and did my first twelve months and all I wanted to do was get upstairs and then I finally got up there. It was great.

What do you think it is about cooking and hospitality that drew you in then and has kept you doing it?

I suppose it's the adrenaline of service. You get a real buzz out of giving someone an experience or when people come back and say it was the best meal they have ever had or come into the kitchen and ask who cooked that and you stand there so proud and say, that was me. Then you'd have that element, especially at Stokehouse where you have that celebrity factor when people would come in and say, oh my god that was George Harrison from The Beatles. For me, the buzz of service and the creativity and that was one thing at Stokehouse, even as a second-year apprentice upstairs, we ran larder, and it was funny, it was me, my best friend Damien Burke and Sam Forte, Sam works here now, the three of us were all apprentices at Stokehouse at the same time. We used to be up late talking about different ideas for specials and drawing them and we would go into work and the chef de partie would want to make it happen and they would help us create something. That's something I try and instil here; getting the kids to come up with ideas and making it happen for them. That was the best thing to see; a dish we had thought of and obviously it would change a bit as the head chef put his twist on it and made it work it gave us a real sense of ownership and creativity. That is something I have always loved. Even now when I am more in operations and running the business as a whole, I still love getting in the kitchen and talking to Sam about dishes or new things have come through, suppliers have got something, and we sit there and have that spark of creativity. You can't describe it; coming up with something new, plating it up and the customer thinks it is amazing. That's something that chefs get to do because it is a creative art.

That's exactly right. Sometimes with other projects or in other jobs people do it can be a long time, if at all, that you might bet some feedback or the satisfaction, but you get instant gratification; you can look out onto the floor and see if people are happy, or they come up to you. When I was waiting outside there, I saw your sign in the kitchen that says 'Make it nice. Be better.'

I say that to the guys all the time; always try to better yourself. That is something I have always done. That sign has been up there for years. I have probably reprinted it a few times. I just always try to be better as a person. I always try to be a better husband, or a better father, and I try to be a better chef and a better boss. It's for everything you do. When I turn a potato, I try and do the next potato better. You should always try to better yourself and that's why I say to the guys in the kitchen, Make it nice and be better.

That's wonderful. Some of the stories I've heard from people who came up through the nineties are about shouty kitchens and the brigades. It sounds as though you had some people who really took you seriously and were good mentors to you and you are paying it forward.

I saw my fair share of behaviour and you can see why, because they are so passionate about it. They can't hold onto that bubble of anger, but it's passion really, and they just explode. I have seen that, and been on the end of that, and I've always sworn I would never be like that because I grew up in a kitchen where I learned how to be good out of fear because you didn't want to make a mistake and you didn't want to be on the end of one of those verbal sprays. It takes longer but I try and create an atmosphere where a happy chef is a good chef. If you have a place where everyone can feel happy to make a mistake and learn from it and be better then I have found that people stay longer. I have kids in there who have been here for seven years who have come through, done their apprenticeship and now are going into chef de parties. Sam is our head chef and he has been here for seven years. The guys love working here because they've got a place where they can be creative, they know they wont be shouted at. Obviously we have to make sure that everything stays consistent, but a happy chef is a good chef, that's for sure.

Tell me, how did you get into southeast Asian, Chinese, Japanese food?

Travel. Coming from the country, our Chinese shop was like any Chinese shop in a country town, you'd go in and get your sweet and sour pork and your fried chicken and it wasn't anything very special. Every time I'd come down to the city, I'd go to China town with my father and we would have banquets and eat quails and all these different things. But then I worked at Stokehouse which was British French cuisine and it was really intricate, with the sauces and so on. In the larder, we were building terrines and everything is measured and has building blocks. Then when I travelled through Thailand, as soon as I had finished at Stokehouse, I was blown away with how people were eating over there and how light and fresh everything was. The flavours were so huge and I fell in love with it. When I came back to Melbourne, I needed to find a chef and I found Rob Cunningham who was right into Asian cuisine and we worked together for nearly two years in a couple of different venues and then into Ezard. I was chasing that cuisine, or a chef to opened me up to that. Through Rob and Teague was where I found the love of bringing Asian cuisine into my building blocks and basic French methods. Less butter and cream and more vibrant, more fiery. There are some really big flavours in southeast Asian cuisine but if you can control it and balance it, it's really good.

I guess that's what happens too, when you become really good at something and you love it, then you are probably open to how you can draw in other elements. You are building your repertoire all the time and being inspired all the time.

Exactly. I think one of the biggest compliments I have ever had was from Rita Erlich. She said, "You just have a knack of talking that Asian cuisine and making it palatable for Westerners. Global flavours with local produce." Thank you. It's good, because a lot of people say they can't eat Thai food because it is too spicy. But you can if it is balanced right. If you get hot, sour, salty, sweet balance right, most people can enjoy it.

Even now, my candied pork I have on here, we start off brining the pork and then confit it, so very French, but then you finish it during service flash fried with star anise palm sugar caramel with a papaya salad, so it ends up as a Thai dish, even though the method starts off primarily as a French cuisine. I am always exploring those flavours. I think Asian cuisine suits Melbourne; people like eating lighter. When we do have hot weather!

To finish, Tony, and you have already touched on this a little, if a young person was thinking of becoming a chef, what would your advice be?

Find a kitchen that you love. You do interviews and trials and the trial is really for you to see if you like the kitchen. If you don't like the kitchen, go and find a new kitchen. If you find a kitchen that you love, you will learn so much more. And find a mentor, someone you want to learn from. If you find a kitchen that you can go into and feed off the knowledge of someone, you will fly through your apprenticeship and it will not be difficult, because you will be constantly fed knowledge, you will always feel the gratitude of the kitchen and you will have the passion and pride of serving a dish, that will be that chef's dish, but you will still feel proud looking out at the customers and see them eating something you have created. Just find that kitchen. If you don't find it the first time, go and find it somewhere else. I'm lucky because I found it straight away and did my whole apprenticeship at Stokehouse. Then I did a couple of other kitchens looking for the Asian-inspired chefs and then went back to Circa and ended up working with Lambie for 12 years. I have learned so much from him and it was cuisine, but also how he ran his business. Find the kitchen that suits you. I think that's the best thing to do. And find someone you are going to learn from.

Taxi Kitchen

Federation Square, Melbourne