Sitting chatting to Yannick Beaucaine in the window of , it was hard for me not to have flashbacks to my stint as a waitress there when it was Elwood icon, The Turtle Cafe. But as hilarious as some of those memories are, they were quickly eclipsed by Yannick's enthusiasm for hospitality and this new venture. I found out later that not only has he trained under some top de chez top chefs in Paris and worked in top Parisian restaurants, Yannick also goes by the name Häzel and is a wildly successful hip hop and R&B music producer. I could have talked to him for hours!
Hi Yannick. I used to work here five years ago when it was the Turtle Café. It looks so different now.
We got everything custom made. Anthony designed most of it and I just gave my opinion about some things from the experience I’ve had. Anthony is a super ambitious man. He has run a couple of other venues in Melbourne, a club called Glamorama on Brunswick Street and he has another bar called Less than Zero on Commercial Road in Prahran. I was working for him as an executive chef and we jumped into the adventure together.
How long have you been a chef?
About 17 years.
So you started in France?
I started in France when I was 15, just about to turn 16. In France it’s a career thing. You take it very seriously. It might be the same everywhere else, but you start very early in France. Long story short, I was watching a program similar to A Chef’s Table and I was amazed by it and I wanted to be a chef. My mom works for the French Embassy and was traveling a lot, so as soon as I got the chance to move to Paris with her, I started in hospitality.
I did four years; two years at a school called Belliard in the 18ème arrondissement and two years at the Superior Cooking School of Paris, CEPROC. There it was more about pastry, molecular gastronomy and things like that.
When you study at schools like those in France are you also working in restaurants?
In French we call that alternance, which is when we spend two weeks at school doing the theory and two days of practical a week and then you spend three weeks working full time in a venue and you alternate. You can spend six months in a venue and then change if you want to. I only changed once though and spent most of my time working in the same venue. It’s like a fraternity working on the kitchen.
I started working with a very good chef, Pascal Jouan. He was on the way to do the MOF, Meilleur Ouvrier de France. It’s a contest of the best chefs in France. Have you ever seen the chefs with French flag colour on their collars? That’s what that is. It’s the highest rank you can get for a chef. While I was working for him as his commis, I went through the entire adventure with him for about a year. It was terrible but it was good at the same time. I was getting yelled at all the time. It’s a lot of responsibility when you’re a 16 year old.
It didn’t put you off, obviously.
It was completely different from now. It’s still a difficult job but it’s not like it used to be. You used to get kicked up the arse. Physical and verbal abuse all the time. It was very military.
Has that changed in France? I know it has here.
I think it has changed because work rights have changed. If you’re about my age, you’re used to it. It doesn’t do anything to me. I wouldn’t do it to anyone because it’s degrading. Most of my class gave up in the first three or so months.
When you started and you were working for such a high level chef, did you have aspirations to be at that top level or did you have another vision for your food?
Of course I was extremely inspired by the chefs I worked with. Not only Pascal Jouan, but also other chefs I worked with. With time, my ideas changed a little bit. Obviously I can’t take that much pressure any more because of my physical age. I just don’t want to live at that high level. It’s too much now. But it used to be something I was really looking forward to. I still do, but in a different way. I used to want to achieve a goal for myself, but now I just want to focus on pleasing people and enjoy what we are doing here.
About 20 years ago there were no open kitchens. Everything was at the back so you were just focussing on your personal goals and what you could achieve career-wise. My friends would say, oh I work with Bocuse or whoever. One of my friends spent three years for Troisgros, one of the oldest chefs in France. He pretty much created most of the dishes that we are still making today. I wasn’t really into that level, three Michelin stars, it was really life consuming. You had to move to the venue and live here. I’d travelled a lot with my mum and I just wanted to settle for a bit.
You do it for the passion. If you don’t love what you do, you can’t do this. It’s very hard.
Some of those great chefs made dishes that were then always made in the same way, were those kitchens very innovative or did you just have to make things by following the rules?
At that time what they were making was innovative. Someone had to come up with hollandaise. When someone first made it, everyone was all, wow. Then someone added tarragon and it became béarnaise. There has always been innovation. For older chefs like that, they have generation of people following them. Their status is so high, their kids and grandkids become chefs.
If I ever have children I would love to see them thrive in this business but in a different way. More for the love of it.
That’s a wholehearted hospitality approach; creating a team and an environment people want to be in. It’s already like family.
That’s the best scenario. It’s magical when you have that. You trust some people at work more than you do your own family in many ways.
For you now, it’s your business, not just your place of work.
We are still building it. I’m very lucky to have all the people I’ve found. It’s pretty hard to achieve all of that. As soon as everyone walked in and we started working we all instantly became friends. It’s how it works in this industry.
You do it for the passion. If you don’t love what you do, you can’t do this. It’s very hard. You don’t count the hours or how much you put into it. You don’t count the customers who come in and are hard to please and demanding. We have lovely customers most of the time but sometimes there are customers who have had a bad time and they hold onto that bitterness. Our goal is to make them forget the bad experience; have a good meal, a good chat with strangers, the music was nice, they had an excellent coffee and things get better in their heads.
Well, that is the goal, isn’t it? Are you cooking French food here?
I used to mostly cook French food but now it is five and a half years that I have been in Australia.
Always Melbourne?
Yes. I’ve been learning about the scene and what people like and I've moved towards a mixture of everything. A lot of food here is inspired by European food. I would say I do more what they call Modern Australian for breakfast and lunch, but of course I’m always tapping into my old French cookbook.
In the evenings here, I’m going to do more Mediterranean flavours. There’s nowhere really doing Mediterranean in this area and we are 400 metres from the beach.
It’s such a prime location. Give me an example of some of the dishes you’ll be doing in the evenings.
I had some time with friends in Spain and I have some ideas going around in my head. Like big green olives stuffed with chorizo, crumbed and deep fried. It’s one of the best things I’ve had. I’m probably going to do a little version of raclette; a little board with charcuterie and a couple of small purple potatoes and cornichons. I found these little things that you can put a tea candle under and you put the cheese on top and it melts and you can pour the cheese over the other things.
Raclette has become popular in Melbourne.
Yes, but they are doing the traditional large raclette. I’m going to do raclette for one, maybe two.
I also want to do a pickled mackerel taco with a purple corn shell. One of my best friends is a super famous DJ and she opened a Mexican taqueria in Japan. Mexico is her favourite country and she goes there all the time. Her food is the most traditional Mexican food I’ve seen in Japan and she has been experimenting now with Mexican-Japanese fusion. She said making a taco with the pickled mackerel you’d normally find in sushi is incredible. It’s super fresh, I’ve never seen anything like it. You’d think a fish taco is a fish taco. But it’s not anything like that. It’s not just a fish taco, it’s an experience. So I'll do that and I have a few other ideas I'll sort out this week. [laughs]
34 Glen Huntly Road, Elwood