PROFILE: Brendan Hill

BRENDAN HILL HAS spent the past20-odd years in the kitchen, working ata raft of venues from island eateries tofine diners. Two decades culminated ina move to Canberra to join a growinghospitality group and work alongsideJames Viles. The chefs make a formidableforce and are moulding a culinaryexperience at Wilma that sees primitivecooking techniques teamed withstandout produce.

Hill speaks to Hospitality about thejourney that led him to Harvac Group,championing cooking with fire and theperks that come with true collaboration inthe kitchen.

Brendan Hill: I grew up in Queensland in a small country city called Toowoomba. I worked with my father in a commercial bakery when I was around 13 and that got me started in the food scene. I went to TAFE in Toowoomba and began my apprenticeship and then I moved up to The Whitsundays for a while. I then went to Victoria before going to a little place doing modern Asian cuisine on the Sunshine Coast. I decided to go to Sydney in 2010 and worked at Aria for four years as a commis chef. I was made junior sous eight months later and stayed there until 2014. I went to Bentley as a sous chef and spent time there working under Brent Savage and Aidan Stevens, but decided to take a step away from fine dining.

I moved into high-end catering for brands like Dior and Cartier for a couple of years until my return to fine dining. I opened 12-Micron with Australian Venue Co. and spent 18 months with them. My wife became ill, so I stepped out of the kitchen for a few years. I decided to get back in with the Harvac guys in mid-2020 at what was Kokomo’s and has now become Wilma.

I think the opportunity to work with James. I crossed paths with him a few times over the years and I had eaten at Biota. During the three-year kitchen hiatus, I was working in foodservice as a sales repand supplying Harvac. James reached out to me and asked if I knew anyone who was looking for a job as I had a lot of contact with restaurants. I had been toying with the idea of getting back into the kitchen and it organically happened from there.I came on board in the first-week of July and Loquita opened in the first week of August. I hit the ground running: the concept was done and James and I developed the menu. I oversee the kitchen at Loquita day to day, maintaining standards and coaching the young team in there.

Loquita’s business structure doesn’t [necessitate] a hierarchy; it’s quite fast-paced and the kitchen is less than 15sqm. We probably do upwards of 350 covers on Friday and Saturday night. We try to be fairly authentic with what we’re doing and we use specialist Mexican supplier from Sydney. People’s perception of Mexican street food is quite murky and Westernised from the reality of what it is. The Canberra market is a little bit of a hard one to crack.

We anticipated launching in early 2021, but the idea was always to rebrandKokomo’s and separate The Pearl and Wilma. It all happened pretty quickly; we had come out of lockdown and were umming and ahhing about what was going to happen to Kokomo’s. Being such a big venue, it couldn’t sustain opening with 25 people, which was the maximum we could have inside at the time. So they sped up the process and decided to do a refit and that happened over five weeks.

We opened on 3 December and hada couple of weeks to come up with themenu. James and I got in there a fewweeks before opening and nailed downwhat we were going to do; looking atrecipes, suppliers, what was in seasonand refining everything. With the menudevelopment side of things, we wanted topay homage to our own backyard usingnative Australian ingredients while heroingclassic dishes such as char siu pork, XOpippies, prawn toast and roast duck. We’rerecreating those flavours with a bit of atwist. We wanted the menu to be pretty bigand grand like the fit out.

We have a wood-fired oven and added abig custom grill made by a local blacksmithto the kitchen. Some deep fryers weretaken out and there were some woks putin before [Wilma] in anticipation of thelocation’s next move.

There’s something really primitive about cooking over fire and wood and we wanted to emphasise that on the menu. We are using applewood and ironbark from Blackheath Firewood. The flavour you get out of cooking with fire is so different and it's a lot harder to cook with. You need to pay attention and use your intuition.

It's set and forget like a combi oven; you have to manage the temperature and its easier to stuff things up. For me, it keeps me in touch with food more. It’s not so generic, if that makes sense.

James is a well-known chef and he has a diverse background having worked all over the world. He’s incredible knowledgeable; I’ve learned a lot from him over the past seven months. He’s passionate and he lives and breathes food 24 hours a day. When we were about to open, he stayed on a property outside of Canberra that’s pretty much an old farm hut, but he loves it because it’s like camping.

A lot of the team are thriving on learningnew techniques and ideas. We have sucha good core team and it’s not just a ‘Jamesand I’ project; everyone has risen to thechallenge to get it off the ground.

We retained 95 percent of staff within the group after lockdown. We’ve added to the brigade as we’ve needed to due to having a bigger menu and a bigger offering. It’s hard to find skilled chefs out there who have experience cooking over fire. We had some people come and go in the first few weeks and it’s been a hell of a challenge; we’re in the same position as everyone.

I think just being in touch with the food and where it comes from; he’s a champion of regional produce and local produce. There is a real emphasis on provenance and we didn't want to skimp on quality. We haveHiramasa kingfish, oysters from Tathra, lobsters from the South Coast, pippies from Ballina and prawns from Yamba.

Working side by side and bouncing ideas off each other is another thing. There is no question that’s stupid; James is a good mentor. He has his way of doing things and comes from quite an old-school mentality with classic techniques and whatnot. But we have flipped that on its head at Wilmawith the volume we’re doing and we had to find new ways to get great results. He's not set in his ways. It’s not, ‘My way or the highway;’ he lets us figure things out.

I have a pretty extensive cookbook collection that I like to read from well-known, respected chefs like Kylie Kwong and Neil Perry. My first look at Asian cuisine was on the Sunshine Coast at a place called Spice Star and I was given Neil Perry’s Balance and Harmony when I left. There is a message in the front saying, ‘Life should be like cooking, it should have balance and harmonyʼ, and that’s been ingrained in me ever since.

It’s been pretty exhausting. I can’t say I forgot what it’s like, but it’s been invigorating. I never wanted to get out of the kitchen, but I made the decision to be with my wife. As a chef, you’re aware of the hours you work; it’s draining and taxing, but I’ve always had to scratch that itch. I had to follow my passion and my heart and that’s all I’ve done for the past 20 years, except for the hiatus.

I don’t know how many other jobs whereyou can really express yourself. Cooking isa real individual thing. There’s producingfood day in day out, and while we aim forconsistency, there’s always individuality.[Harvac] is growing; I think there will bean emphasis on sustainability and off-gridcooking moving forward. The belly is stillburning and it’s full steam ahead. ■