Dishing the dirt: What culinary superstars discuss behind closed doors
What do the greatest chefs on the planet talk about when they get together? Ingredients? Fast cars? Other chefs? We locked six of them in a room and plied them with Rockpool Bar & Grill's finest food and wine to find out.
Present were Thomas Keller, of Per Se in New York and The French Laundry in California; Grant Achatz, of Alinea, Next and the Aviary in Chicago; Ben Shewry, of Attica in Melbourne; Brett Graham, of The Ledbury and Harwood Arms in London; Neil Perry, of the Rockpool group; and Heston Blumenthal, of The Fat Duck, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal and The Hinds Head in Britain.
Thomas Keller lunches at Rockpool Bar & Grill with other top chefs.
 Heston Blumenthal. |
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 Grant Achatz and Ben Shewry. |
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 Neil Perry. |
 Brett Graham. |
Between them, they hold 18 Michelin stars and 19 Good Food Guide hat awards, and their restaurants currently rate at numbers 7, 11, 13, 15, 21, 33 and 47 in the World's 50 Best list.
But enough with the numbers. Talking to chefs at this level is not just about bums on seats, payroll tax and profit margins. It's about a degree of excellence that only they can measure.
When they're not discussing the imperatives of staff training (a recurring theme) or dissing the food media (another recurring theme), guess what they're really getting down and dirty about?
Yep, their smartphones. We figured you didn't need to know what they think of Apple's new iOS7 operating system, so here's what else they had to say.
What makes six of the world's top chefs drop what they're doing and travel halfway around the world for no money and lots of hard slog to do a one-off dinner for the Starlight Foundation?
''These events are about camaraderie and friendship,'' says Keller, who has now cooked at The Ultimate Dinner five times.
''We hardly ever get to see each other, so when Neil [Perry] calls and says, 'Are you interested?', your initial reaction is 'yes'.''
Blumenthal admits he gets bombarded with offers and requests every day. ''It's difficult. You have to say no to people,'' he says. ''But it's important, if we gain benefit from this industry, to give something back. On a selfish note, it's a great opportunity to spend some time together, and the pleasure you get, helping the kids.''
These are some crazy lives you lead, attending food events all over the world, flying first-class, staying in luxurious hotels, filming TV shows. Tough life, huh?
''I'm always jet-lagged,'' says Australian expatriate Graham. So is Achatz, having just flown from a chef gathering in Japan to Chicago for three days, before turning around and flying to Sydney.
Blumenthal's life is probably the craziest, what with the scientific collaborations, television shows, supermarket consultancies and catering for the odd monarch or two.
''I met Queen Elizabeth once when I received my OBE,'' he name-drops disarmingly.
''Then I was making ice-cream with liquid nitrogen for her at an exhibition of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Some nitrogen splashed over the bowl and she jumped back and said, 'Gosh'. There was a big photo of her jumping back and everyone told me I would lose my OBE.'' He didn't. In fact, he ended up being asked by Prince Phillip to cater for the household's Christmas party.
At this level of fine dining, you need a dedicated team working in your best interests. How many staff are you each responsible for?
Perry: ''About 600. We have $1.4 million in payroll tax for the benefit of giving people the job. Isn't that awesome?''
Blumenthal: ''I only have 350.''
Achatz: ''200.''
Graham: ''60.''
Shewry: ''23. That's including me.''
Keller: ''About 1000, give or take.''
For Keller, three things are important about staff. ''First, you have to hire the right people. Then you have to train them. When I was a young cook, that was an arbitrary two-week period. It's like saying to a child, 'You need to learn how to swim and, if you drown, tough shit, you didn't learn'. In reality, everyone is different.
''The third part is mentoring, which is not so much about your job, it's about your life. The result of doing those things correctly is what?''
The silence around the table in the private dining room is like day one in the classroom, with nobody quite confident enough to answer his question.
''The result is that that person is better than you are,'' he says. ''That's the ultimate goal.''
The image of a chef used to be that of a screaming, ranting martinet for whom everything has to be perfect. Hands up who screams and rants.
For the record, no hands go up.
''I was trained by French chefs in New Zealand, very angry ones,'' says Shewry.
''One of my biggest motivations for trying to do well as a chef was being told that I was shit, constantly. I never believed that, but it was definitely motivation.''
Graham, too, worked under a tough chef when he started. ''It meant that later, when I had my back to the wall and was struggling for customers at 23 years old, I was also very hard,'' he says. ''There was a lot of shouting. We've completely changed that culture now, and I feel amazingly better for it.''
Keller agrees. ''I've had experiences where I've got very emotional,'' he says.
''Every time I did it, I ended up feeling bad and would apologise. Now, I think the most powerful thing you can say to somebody is, 'I'm really disappointed in you'.''
A collective shiver runs silently across each person gathered around the table at the thought.
How down are you with what's up on social media?
Blumenthal may be notorious for pushing the edges of technology and sanity with his fantastical food creations, but he's not that into new media.
''I don't do Twitter. I don't have Facebook. I never look at comments,'' he says.
Perry is active on social media. Of Instagram, he says, ''Suddenly, you're eating in the best restaurants in the world through your eyes.''
''We use a lot of social media,'' says Achatz, ''when we're hiring, whether its Facebook or Twitter, to get applicants to email and respond.
''We probably get a different demographic due to the nature of our cuisine, the fact that we run a bar and everyone in the company is under 40.''
''Don't worry, Grant,'' says Perry. ''They'll all grow old with you.''
''You'll get older,'' says Keller. ''They'll stay the same age.''
What's more important: food, service or the whole experience?
''I would say that today service is more important than the food,'' says Blumenthal.
''If front-of-house is arrogant and the customer gets that bitter taste, it doesn't matter what you put in the food, it's bitter.
''The kitchen might f--- up, but if the service is human, then, my God, people will forgive you.''
''It's called hospitality,'' chips in Perry, ''hospitality and generosity - and timing. Great waiters know when to get in, when to get out and when not to approach.''
''One of the worst signs of service is to be asked, 'How was that?''' says Blumenthal. ''It's so wrong. It's inviting you to lie. I hate that.''
Just how important are Michelin stars and chefs' hats? Come on, you know you love 'em.
''Accolades for me are a double-edged sword,'' says Achatz. ''I think they have value, one for putting guests in the seats, and two for the cooks and front-of-house. But I think it would be really disappointing for the team to start losing stars.''
''I don't think we go to work to earn stars,'' says Keller. ''We go to work because we love our work. When you reach a certain level, the accolades reinforce what you are doing, but let's face it, everything that is written about you is written about what you did yesterday. I want to concentrate on what we're doing today and what we're doing tomorrow.''
''They can change your business,'' says Perry, ''but they don't change your attitude to why you get out of bed in the morning.''
''When a chef speaks, people listen. When a chef does, people follow,'' said West Coast chef Roy Choi on stage at MAD Food Camp 3 in Copenhagen.
Do chefs really have the power to change public opinion?
''It's an extraordinary situation to be in,'' says Perry. ''Back in the 1970s, I didn't think I would be able to send an email to Tony Abbott and say 'We need to talk about immigration', and get a letter back saying they can meet me on this or that day. So chefs have a view on not just food but a lot of layers of the country.''
This generates a discussion about how chefs should have a unified voice that establishes their point of view on industry issues.
''The medical industry, for instance, publishes research papers, and changes the way in which medicine is looked at and performed,'' says Keller. ''We don't have that, and so our views are left to be interpreted by the press.''
Everybody gets a bum rap, sometimes
When Brett Graham turns the tables and asks his fellow chefs to name their worst review, the responses range from the mild to the horric.
Grant Achatz: ''We had Frank Bruni, of the New York Times, in the first night we opened - literally, the first night. A week later, they ran a feature article with a great big photo of a dish we did, with Bruni saying that it tasted like dog food.''
Ben Shewry: ''It was the first year of Attica, and we didn't have enough money for pots and pans or plates. My sous chef was on the fish when The Age Good Food Guide came in. We got a great review and a chef's hat, but there was one line that read: 'Sometimes overcooks fish'. It was like a knife in the heart.''
Neil Perry: ''I hate it when you've just opened a very big restaurant and you're under the pump, and a reviewer says something like: 'But the service can be a bit haphazard'. That hurts me. I hate that.''
Thomas Keller: ''The first night we opened The French Laundry, we didn't have a saute pan. We were trying to saute in a pot. My then sous chef, Ron Siegel, later wrote in Food & Wine magazine that it felt like the Titanic.''
Heston Blumenthal: ''I once had three reviews in a batch of papers on one weekend. One of them carried a picture of my dish and a great big headline: 'The salmon with licorice was actively disgusting'.''
Brett Graham: ''When [the late] Michael Winner reviewed us for The Times, he wrote that it was very hard to find a car park near The Ledbury and suggested knocking it down and turning into a car park, because a car park is useful and this restaurant isn't. I was absolutely gutted.''
Question: A lot of different skills have to come together in order to run a restaurant and cook beautiful food. Do chefs have mentors and special gurus? (We note Blumenthal is clutching a copy of Bounce by Matthew Syed, described as "a gripping examination of the hidden forces that come together in the making of a champion". We also note that Grant Achatz named one of his two sons, Keller.)
Grant Achatz openly credits his time cooking with Thomas Keller with much of his success. “My foundation for what we've established at Alinea, Next and The Aviary came directly from Thomas,” he says. “Most people say that your second restaurant is your hardest one, and I remember going to Per Se in New York when it opened and thinking there is no way this will be as good as The French Laundry, And it was. So that gave me the confidence to open Next and Aviary at the same time.”
Neil Perry was fascinated by Achatz's revolutionary concept for his "permanent pop-up" restaurant Next, at which the menu, decor and music are completely replaced every three months.
"I had your first menu there, based on Paris in 1906 and it was extraordinary, an incredible experience,” says Perry. “And then to think that you then just turned it all around and did a menu based on Thailand. I'm really curious how you can do that.”
“How do you go from making blanquette de veau one month to tom yum soup the next and get your chefs to understand a whole different style of cooking?” asks Brett Graham.
“We have a team of three sous chefs, the head chef, myself and then what we call our research and development chef,” explains Achatz. “We get together at the least pressured moments during the day or late at night and plan out the whole year ahead of time. Then we have to plug it in.”
Ben Shewry then picks up on the mentoring subject. “I was pretty uptight when I started cooking, and my insecurity came from my inability to meet my own standards” says Ben Shewry. “So I would take it out on others. Then about four years ago I began to coach my son's basketball team, trying to control eight or nine six-year-olds without even knowing how to teach. I thought it was going to be so easy. I was so wrong.”
Doing it is very different to teaching it, he says, adding the on-going experience helped him learn a lot about his kitchen and his own attitude. The other chefs immediately wanted to know how the team is going.
“They won the season” he says with a grin. “They lost two games and both of those were when I was away.”
Lucky Peach magazine recently claimed 'if motherhood makes it difficult for women to become chefs, then fatherhood should make it difficult for men to become chefs.' Where are all the women, guys?
Keller: “Women have different agendas. I have a pastry chef who is 100 per cent committed, but she has also told me that in a couple of years she wants to have children. That's going to move her out of the restaurant, and it's always questionable if they want to come back, because your life changes and your priorities change when you have children.”
Perry: “Men and women generally want to take their roles in the rearing of the children differently. I've had several wives, and three children, and the mothers have a different attitude to bringing them up than I do.”
Shewry: “It has to be an individual choice.”
A chef could spend all year out of his own kitchen travelling the world to food events around the globe, from MAD Food Camp and Aspen Food & Wine to Omnivore, RAW, and the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival (and indeed, some chefs do.) Is it all getting out-of-hand?
“There are two types of events going on” says Keller. “One is purely charity, so we give ourselves freely. Then there are more profit-centred, food and wine events, which I don't agree with any more. They say “come do my event and you'll get publicity”. That worked 35 years ago when it was the only way to generate the publicity we needed to fill our restaurants. Look at musicians, they don't do an event for nothing. These kind of events need to acknowledge that they are making money, and that as the acts, chefs need to make money as well.”
You've all gone through some pretty hard yards before being successful. Was there ever a time when you felt you wouldn't make it?
“I started out at The Ledbury at 23 years old. I had never been a head chef, never been a sous chef, never written a menu, never written a roster,” says Brett Graham. “I owned none of the business at all. I was doing 14 services a week, and we weren't busy at all. Then I bought 10 per cent of the business for £20,000, it was still only turning over £35,000 a week maximum. Then a mate offered me a partnership in a failing pub (the Harwood Arms in Chelsea), free. We started turning it around, slowly, and making a profit.”
Blumenthal recounts what it was like when he first started in the business. “Everything lost money,” he said. “I didn't know about cash flow being more important than profit. I got on the plane on the Monday to go to Madrid Fusion in Spain, knowing that I didn't have the money to pay the wages on Friday. Luckily it was the week we got the third star, so everything changed.”
Last year, several American food critics described the degustation dinner as a form of torture, suggesting it creates a restaurant culture in which chefs are tyrants and diners have less and less choice. You all do degustation in your high-end restaurants, so how do you feel about that?
“You'd have to go and tell the Japanese that kaiseki is dead, then,” says Perry briskly. “They do kaiseki banquets every day.”
Heston Blumenthal explains his drive for a tasting menu was so that he could do simple dishes that had a big impact, like his now-famous orange and beetroot jellies. “What looks like the beetroot jelly is in fact blood orange, and what looks like orange jelly is in fact golden beetroot” he says. “It's clearly not something I can serve as a traditional course. The idea of a tasting menu is that you can create a story, an ebbing and flowing, with a beginning and an end.”
You can travel the globe and eat the same scallop with cauliflower puree everywhere you go, or you can seek out chefs who give you a taste of their specific place. Please discuss.
“I think when Rene Redzepi's Noma put Scandinavian food on the map, there was somehow this idea that modern cooking was dead, and that modern chefs didn't care about where their ingredients came from,” says Heston Blumenthal. “But every chef should look for the best ingredients he possibly can.”
“My opinion is that everybody should cook how they want to cook,” says Ben Shewry. “If we all cook the same, how dead boring is that?”
“I think there are a lot of different ways for restaurants to express themselves, and the media gets this right out of shape, telling us that we have to forage for our ingredients now” says Neil Perry. “Our personality at Rockpool Bar & Grill comes from using amazing, beautiful King George Whiting and Spencer Gulf prawns, and splitting a live Balmain bug in half and cooking it over charcoal.”
“The media constantly wants to write about what is new” says Thomas Keller. “'What are you doing next?' they ask. Stop asking the question. It's asinine. What's wrong with what I am doing today?”
The chefs
Grant Achatz
Head chef of Alinea in Chicago and the foremost progressive chef in the US, founder of The Aviary cocktail bar and pop-up restaurant Next.
Neil Perry
Australia's original "celebrity chef", Neil Perry has built an empire around his flagship three-hat restaurant Rockpool, winning more chef's hats that any other chef in the history of the Good Food Guide.
Thomas Keller
Chef and owner of Per Se in New York (No.11 on the Worlds 50 Best list), The French Laundry (No.47), Bouchon and Ad Hoc in Yountville, California, Bouchon in Las Vegas, Nevada, and two Bouchon Bakeries, he's also the author of four award-winning cookbooks.
Ben Shewry
Chef and co-owner of Attica restaurant in Melbourne, rated No.21 on the Worlds 50 Best list, and holder of 3 chef hats in The Age Good Food Guide, which this year named Attica Restaurant of The Year, and Ben Chef of The Year.
Brett Graham
A proud son of Newcastle and one-time winner of the Josephine Pignolet Young Chef Award, Brett now has two Michelin stars for The Ledbury in London's Notting Hill and 1 star for the Harwood Arms pub.
Heston Blumenthal
In 2005, The Fat Duck in Bray was voted No.1 in the world's 50 best. Today it sits at No.33 with three Michelin stars while Dinner by Heston Blumenthal is No.7 with two Michelin stars, and his "local pub" The Hinds Head in Bray has 1 Michelin Star.
Source: Good Food, 15 October 2013
