Zackary & Jake Furst

Hi Jake. Nice to see you again and nice to meet you Zack. I know you're both so super busy, so I really appreciate talking to you. I've just been invited to Pincho's Disco, and I thought, Jake Furst, he's everywhere, isn't he?

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J: It's all happening down there. The builders are trying to get it finished and they tried for the Occupancy certificate yesterday and got knocked back. But we're still on track for opening on the 17th. It's all happening just down the road there.

I'm going to the opening on the 16th. It looks fun.

J: The venue looks really good. It's multi-level. The kitchen is stunning. We've got a really good Colombian head chef, so his ceviche and all that sort of stuff is so good. Ive been eating so much of it lately, because we've been doing all the test cooks. Its been really good. Exciting, but not the best time for an opening

November. We can always roll on from Spring Racing Carnival into openings.

J: Then Christmas, it all rolls into one. We've got a couple more venues coming up in Queensland as well. It's all fun.

How are things going for you, Zack?

Z: Good. I mean, I just had a month off, so I can't complain about that. I've been back for about a week and a half now and then just straight back into it really, changing the menu little bits by little bit. Weve got two new dishes coming on today. And then a little bit of a staff changeover, but it doesn't seem to be too much of a hiccup, which is good. We're just flat out now, but thankfully I only have one venue to look after in comparison to Jake.

Oh, I know. Was it a month of travel?

Z: Yeah, legit. I did a week in London where I just ate and saw some friends and then I did pretty much a full month in Poland. It was my first time going to Poland. I started at the top in a place called Gdansk, and then made my way to Torun and then to Poznan and then to Warsaw and then Krakow, which is where our family comes from. Then also to this small town in the mountains called Zakopane, which another side of our family also, which is pretty cool. The whole time I just ate and researched and wrote lots of notes down and went to galleries and met lots of interesting industry people as well. It was really, really fun.

J: You nearly stayed there, didn't you?

Z: I nearly stayed there. It was great. Thankfully I think I did 26,000 steps every day, so I managed to work off some of the food I ate, which is good.

That's the good thing about traveling; you can do all that walking around, just taking things in. I teach French. I took some school trips to France years ago and the students would say, "Why are we doing all this walking around? It's like bootcamp." Me: "What do you mean? This is the way to do it."

Z: It was really good. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole time. I ate at these places called Bar mleczny which essentially translates to milk bar, so a Polish milk bar. It's almost like when you go to America and you have a diner, it's the equivalent in Poland, but they only serve traditional food there. And it's really cool. It's really cheap. So every place that I went, that was my first stop and I made a rule to eat something different every time I went in there, which is cool because there were some great meals, and some bad meals, but it's really good.

Is it regional in Poland?

Z: Super regional. It's surrounded by so many countries, you can see obviously there's a huge, huge German influence on some towns. And then obviously you have a huge Ukrainian and Belarusian influence as well.

Jake, we talked the influence of your family, coming up through catering and that you are from Wodonga, but we didn't actually mention the Polish heritage.

J: Dad's Polish. I remember we got Christmas early, which was unreal.

Z: Christmas Eve and Christmas.

J: Two Christmases which was perfect. And there was a lot of food. We used to go to our grandma's and she'd have been making food for three days leading up to that; Borscht. What was that cabbage dish that we hated?

Z: Kapusta.

J: Braised cabbage with peppercorns, so imagine a little kid going up and crunching on these peppercorns, it was pretty nuts. We get used to get dropped off there and it'd be 34 degrees outside and you had to eat chicken noodle soup before you had anything else.

Z: About a litre of it.

J: Youd have a big bowl and you'd be sweating through it. But then all the food after that was definitely worth it.

Is that about preparing your stomach?

Z: Poland actually consumes the most soup in the whole world. I literally probably tried maybe upwards of 20 soups while I was there and they were all incredible. We mentioned chicken noodle soup, which for us was just chicken noodle soup. But then I go over there and it's actually a traditional Polish soup called Rosol, which I had no idea about. It is only in the last five years that I realized that they have an actual name for what we do.

And are they making the stock from bones and all that sort of thing?

Z: Something I realised is that the country's population is 42 million, but the largest city is only 900,000. So they're all spread out and extremely rural. Everyone grows their own stuff, so everyone's making soups, everyone's making broths. It's pretty cool to see that craftsmanship or trade to just general day to day life there in terms of cooking. I think the best soup I had was this soup called Flaki Soup, which is actually made from tripe and it's like shredded tripe that it's braised down in chicken stock and then finished with a little bit of pearl barley and lots of vegetables and potatoes. It's really good.

Delicious. I don't think I know much about Polish food.

Z: I don't think many people do.

J: Probably pierogi is about it.

Who does Polish in Melbourne?

Z: The closest you get to Polish, Ukrainian and Russian is Borsch, Vodka and Tears. That's the more well-known one. But I think for me the best Polish food you get is just in the delis as well. There's the obviously incredible deli in Queen Vic market, but also there are two in Altona that are really good as well. There's a restaurant in Canberra called The Polish Club, which is pretty incredible as well.

I've heard of that. Or is that a band?

Z: I think it is a band as well.

So growing up, obviously you were both influenced from your family's background in catering and so on to become chefs. Did you cook together at an early age?

Z: We worked together in the catering company, all of us as a family. And then Jake had moved to Melbourne to do his apprenticeship and by the time he had finished his apprenticeship, I was getting ready to leave school. I managed to convince my mum and dad to allow me to move to Melbourne and I think I was only just turning 17 or16-ish. Their one rule was that I could only move if I had a job. I called Jake immediately and he spoke to a good friend of ours, Gabriel. And then a week later I got a call from Gabriel and he told me I could start the next day. I had to leave at five in the morning and start work at eight. I worked at that place, the French Brasserie for around four months. And then Gabriel opened another spot where we worked together. Jake was my sous chef for two and a half years there. It was on Sydney Road and it was called Metropolis Eating House. We worked pretty closely there together with Gabriel. It was just the three of us in the kitchen.

How do you work together?

Z: Pretty well. I mean, of all my siblings. I mean, I love all my siblings, but we definitely work a lot more fluidly than anyone else. We can have a service where we sometimes don't even have to say anything, but we just know.

J: There are five of us. I work with older brother, Bart. He's one of the venue managers or general managers up in Townsville, one of our venues. We work together okay. But there's a good distance between here and Townsville.

What's the age difference between you two?

Z: Seven years between Jake and I.

I was wondering that as I was driving here whether you had a special brotherly thing that in service you would just know what the other needed or how to how to make it work together.

Z: I think we just, I mean especially at Metropolis Eating House, it was a hard slog for a lot of the time.

J: It wasn't a modern kitchen or anything like that, but we made it work and we had a big say in designing it all and moving stuff around, which was really good.

Z: It was a good thing because obviously we got to design it, but also if it didn't work, it was on us as well at the same time. So you kind of adapt that responsibility as well.

J: There were days in there when it was just us two.You depend on each other and everyone's got their back. It definitely helps. I

I love that.

And so this dinner, how did this come about? Was that the plan before you went away?

Z: It was locked in before I went. I've got a solid team now. So I've got a lot more flexibility to come out and, and stress a little bit. And then definitely over the past two years I've kind of defined what I cook more as contemporary Australian Polish food because it's something that I focus in. The only person that I know that around Melbourne that is confident enough to cook that food is Jake, and it makes sense to cook in this incredible room together. Plus, half of our family want to come. It's about time, they always get our food for free. So we'll make them pay for at least one.

What should people expect?

Z: We were actually finalising it yesterday. We've got four snacks to start and then it'll be two shared entrees, a main course which will also be shared and a dessert. For the canaps we're going to do a take on this rollup that my dad used to devour by the <inaudible>. To be honest, I didn't like them. They were a bit strong for me, but essentially it's a cured and pickled fish with lots of mustard and in the centre is a cucumber. I've made a version of them before with garfish; super, super nice. And then for the shared entre, Jake's going to do a version of that soup.

J: With a little twist with some scallop and stuff in there as well.

Z: Then for the main course we're going to come together and do – I mean pierogi is obviously huge in our family, so we'll do pierogi, for sure and Golabki, which is essentially like a cabbage roll stuffed with rice and pork. We are doing a potato dumpling that I only found out about on my recent trip, which is essentially a dough made from potato starch, mashed potato and egg yolk and they get stuffed with a braised pork mince and some cabbage as well. Then there are two salads that Jake makes better than I do, which are really, really good.

J: Nice and simple. Like the ones my grandma made. We had it on the table every night. We didn't even know what it was. It was like a lettuce, iceberg lettuce, cream and pepper and it's so good. We saw it every day and would think, oh not this again, but we put a version of it on here, like a wedge salad with a pepper berry ranch and it's our biggest seller.

Z: And that's another thing as well as when after doing more research and deep diving into polish food, that's an actual Polish salad that we thought was just randomly for us.

J: It's comes through and evolved into something that everyone likes.

How was it made in your household?

J:Just chopped lettuce, with cream on it. We just thought mum and dad and grandma had made it out of whatever was in the fridge. Its just chopped iceberg lettuce and they cover it with fresh cream pepper.

Z: And vinegar as well. There's actually a version of it in New Zealand that they do with condensed milk. My New Zealand sous tells me about it all the time.

That's right. I hadn't thought of that connection of cream, but yes, that's true, condensed milk mayonnaise. Isn't it funny though, iceberg lettuce? I feel like it got shunted to the back and all those fancy lettuces came out, but I reckon I've gone back to it. It's the best. It's crunchy. Absolutely right. Ice cold, refreshing. And that's all you really need that with some mayo.

Z: Some lobster and a bun of course. My God.

Yes. Wow, that sounds delicious. And what sort of desserts does Poland do?

Z: They're super well known for cakes, in particular. Growing up we used to have this biscuit, which is a honey biscuit and it's one of the hardest recipes I've tried to find my life to be honest. But then I met a couple of bakers while I was in Warsaw and I found the name of the biscuit and it's called Pierniczki. Actually at Bar Liberty I do a version of that as a cake. On the day we'll do a version as a biscuit. For the cake itself, it's like a honey cake that spice with lots of cinnamon sticks and cloves. And then we soak it with a honey syrup, which is made from Sebastian, our little brother's beehives, which is cool.

Where are the beehives?

Z: He's got 16, some in Footscray and Kingsville where he lives now. Then he's got some of my dads and some of my uncles as well. Then I make a mead custard. Mead is essentially fermented honey wine, which is made from the honey honeycombs as well. And we make that into a custard. It gets layered, with a little bit of raisin puree in the middle and then finished with nutmeg. It's like a two layered cake.

That sounds delicious. What about wine? Is Poland big into wine?

Z: That's one thing I was looking at while I was there. They do produce a whole lot of wines. The ones that I tasted weren't particularly to my taste, but they do have one natural wine producer, which is pretty cool. I bought some of that. I might actually bring some that on the night. A big thing over there is vodka. In particular, cherry vodka, which is what we drink for Christmas. Sometimes we definitely corrupt our uncle into drinking a lot more than he should, which is also really fun at Christmas time. We're also contemplating doing a paczki, which is essentially the traditional Polish doughnut, where dough is rolled out and filled with jam, normally rose or cherry. We might do that and accompany that with a shot of vodka for those daring.

That's great. I'm just imagining how many people you have at Christmas then? Is it one of those big European feasts?

Z: We celebrated Christmas Eve when we were all younger. We would always go to our grandparents house before they passed away. My mum was one of seven, my dad's one of seven and they all have kids and those kids have kids. I was pretty little when I was still going to them. I remember 40 to 50 people at those things.

J: There were cousins running around everywhere. The uncles on the vodka, presents flying everywhere as well and food everywhere. They liked to deck out the whole carport with trestle tables and there'd be food everywhere.

I love that. No wonder you stuck with the food industry.

Z: But for now our Christmas are a little bit more smaller.

J: We're starting to get bigger as kids arrive.

Z: Jake keeps having children, so we have to have more and more seats, which is good. I think it's about 25 to 30 now. It normally starts with Jake and I drinking two or three bottles of champagne and cooking lunch.

J: We start fire the fire out the front; Kingfish, we had mud crab last year. Everyone gathers around the kitchen bench, makes pierogi. It's pretty cool.

How many will you have here for dinner?

Z: I think we were cooking for roughly 60 to 70. It should be good.

J: Its only been out there one day. We're 35 already, so we're selling pretty quick, which is good. I think thats all our family, so we'll have to filter through that to see who's going to behave or not.

It's 2 November?

J: Yes, it's come up pretty quick. Weve got you a seat as well.

Oh, thank you. I wasn't expecting that. That's really lovely. I was just thinking about the idea of you traveling around with all your notebooks. What is your process then, do you taste something and then write about it?

Z: Yes, like a journal essentially. I just journaled everything that I ate, good or bad. For two things, one, it's a good memory for me and I could look back at it. Second thing, I can claim all of that stuff on tax as well, which is very helpful. Thank you Pete, my accountant, for telling me to do that. But also it's more about like contemplating what it was that I liked about it and then the process of it and in particular the name. I've already made one of the soups, which is a sour pickle soup, into a sauce at Bar Liberty at the moment. It's more about having the name and the information so then I can keep that research going. I also bought 16 kilos of cookbooks back with me. I've got a lot of Polish to learn and then I've got a lot to research afterwards as well.

Oh, so they're all in Polish. Good for you. It's very authentic.

Z: And it stops Jake from taking them, which is good.

I suppose Polish is on Duo Lingo, is it?

Z: Yes, I'm on Duo Lingo and then when I get the time after summer, I think I'll probably go into doing more classes. I'm planning hopefully if everything goes well to go back there next year in September and cook in a few restaurants there, which would be fun.

Okay. You really did love it.

Z: It's an incredible place. The weather there also was beautiful. It's autumn with a great change of season with produce, in between that summer, autumn, winter vibe as well. And everyone's really, really lovely.

What's the country, the landscape like?

Z: Lots of farmland but not industrial farming. Every farm is quite small. Everyone grows. When I was catching the train between towns, it's almost as if you're cruising around France really in some aspects of it. And obviously, it's an extremely old country as well, you cruise around a building you think, wow, this is older than colonized Australia, which is pretty insane in that aspect. It's super beautiful and in particular in Krakow, they have a great history of art and literature in that particular town and city. Its cool to cruise around there. They have cafes that are still open and they have like incredible like masters of Art Poland and they've got drawings of them in that cafe and you're sitting in that seat, which is pretty cool.

Have you been over, Jake?

J: No.

Z: He's coming in September next year. He doesn't know that yet.

J: But I'll make sure Mel doesn't hear this.

Nice. Well, that sounds amazing. When I saw that Instagram photo of the two of you announcing the dinner, I got in touch with Renata at Reymond and asked if I could speak to you both because the whole concept just sounds amazing. If the Fursts are doing something, it's going to be really good.

Z: Jake and I work pretty well together. He is definitely one of the main reasons I became a chef and one of the main reasons that pushed me to keep going. I've been cooking now for 16 years, so that makes Jake like 58 years old now, I think!! But no, it's been, it's really good. It's great to come together again in a professional setting.

Well obviously you have such a passion for it and you are both chefs who keep learning and keep pushing and trying different things. What else is it about being a chef that you love?

Z: It's extremely selfish. We cook to make people happy and then if people are happy, it makes us happy. Everyone thinks, oh you guys are so nice. We're like, no, the whole time we're doing it for ourselves. We're just trying to make people happy and then it makes us happy after. That's the biggest thing. I think it's also having something that you learn and it's never finished. You're always learning and there's so much history in that. And then also I think one thing that Jake and I in particular are really good at is training people.

J: I think if you have the knowledge to pass on as well, keeping it all relevant, keeping passing the knowledge down to everyone and keep spreading it out, it's really important. A lot of people have left the industry and a lot of knowledge has left in the industry as well. I think it's super important to keep it going.

Z: Hundred percent. We both had some really incredible teachers as well, so it's only right for us to be able to show what little we know to others because if those people didn't take the time to teach us in the beginning, we wouldn't be able to teach anyone else. That's one thing that pushed me a lot. I always have a minimum of two apprentices in that tiny kitchen that we have at Bar Liberty. It also creates a sense of responsibility within your team. These people are coming from with a blank canvas and you need to teach them the right way from the beginning because they don't have a reference point already.

Amazing. Thank you so much.

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