The kitchen god's life

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The kitchen god's life
By Gary Tippet
th
March 8 2009

George Calombaris in his element at The Press Club: "That word passion is overused, but I was
always around food and I was passionate, obsessed about it."
Photo: Craig Sillitoe

CELEBRITY chef: what once seemed a contradiction in terms is now an overcooked phenomenon with a worldwide
roster of breathy, breasty poster girls and pukka pretty-boys.

While no one could deny that one of Melbourne's top cooks, George Calombaris, has the chops to merit the
appellation, right now he seems determined to disavow any notion that he might be dished up as Our Gordon
Ramsay.

He's talking tofu: that slippery, slightly slimy slab of off-white soy-based something or other. (You suspect Ramsay
has a word for the stuff — and we all know what that word is.)

Calombaris admits he rarely went near bean curd until recently, but now he's like an unwatched pot, bubbling over
with enthusiasm for it. After a week of experimentation, he's put it on the new menu at his flagship restaurant, The
Press Club, as an entree: scrambled with feta, chicken liver parfait and bits of chocolate and olive-oil toast.

An almost unrecognisable version of a simple egg-and-feta dish his mother used to make, it is another wild riff that
Calombaris plays off the traditional cuisine of his Greek-Cypriot parents.

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It's an example of the audacity that made him the wunderkind of the Melbourne culinary scene at 24, winning
the 2004 Age Good Food Guide young chef of the year award for his molecular gastronomy inventions at the
now-defunct Reserve.

It's also a mark of the ambition that six years later has him creating a restaurant empire — his word — with
three booming establishments in Melbourne and another on Mykonos, Greece. And it's the reason Calombaris
was an obvious choice for Australia's most ambitious cooking-based reality show, MasterChef, starting soon
on Channel Ten.

With two co-panellists, chef Gary Mehigan and Age food critic Matt Preston, Calombaris will be attempting to
pluck a budding Neil Perry or Shannon Bennett from the ranks of the country's amateur cooks. But he's
already had to slap a little sense into a selection who know who they'd rather be — "celebrity chef".

"It's a problem — even for young chefs who are in the game," he says. "They all want to be Jamie Oliver or
Curtis Stone. I tell them it's not going to happen, it's all about graft, hard work and long, unfriendly hours."

(Calombaris admits the hours and his single-minded obsession with food have helped cost him a marriage.
"It's a hard industry to have a personal life," he says, then slips into a Ramsay moment: "It's not for the f---in'
faint-hearted.")

He says there are two types of celebrity chef. The first are celebrated simply for being on TV, the rest for their
cuisine and their dedication.

He'd rather be among the latter — adding the choice might not be his alone, given he has a face better suited
to radio and a belly that's testament to his love of food.

"People are saying, 'You'll be Australia's Gordon Ramsay.' I'm not Gordon Ramsay and I'm never going to be
Gordon Ramsay. The f-word does get dropped occasionally, but I'm like, 'Woops George, why'd you say that?'
"

In fact, Calombaris knows and likes the gutter-mouthed Brit and lists him as one of the few celebrity chefs he
likes. "I do admire Gordon — not his personal life, but I definitely admire his professional life," he says. "His
empire is strong, he grafts and works hard at creating key people and putting them in his restaurants."

He also respects Rick Stein, and Anthony Bourdain for "his theory of food (and that) he gets in there dirty with
the real McCoy stuff. He looks for substance."

And the others? "No disrespect to Curtis Stone, he's a handsome boy, gets around Australia with a surfboard
and he cooks a bit. And he's massive in America, a rock star over there. But I don't want to be that.


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"Nigella Lawson? My mates love watching her, but I know what they're watching her for. That's food porn.
Licking the spoon, her handbag on her shoulder mixing a quick cake, that's bullshit. I'm not interested. It's not
me."

Nonetheless, there are those who reckon Ten may have unearthed an unlikely "star" in the elfin, mile-a-
minute-talking Calombaris, despite a sometimes "worrying" dress sense that can run to powder blue safari
jackets. "He has a warmth … and a quirky way of looking at food that is both funny and surprisingly evocative,"
says Preston.

Calombaris' books and his earlier TV work on the daytime show Ready Steady Cook have become a rallying
point for Greek and Cypriot pride in their food, says someone active in the Melbourne food scene. "It's funny to
have an elderly Greek come up to 'Georgie, my boy' and want to pinch his cheeks, but it makes you realise
they see him as part of the family.

"Rather than Gordon Ramsay, he is closer to Ang Christou — the footballer everyone loved to 'woof'!"

ACLEAN-LIVING Greek boy. That's how Preston sums up Calombaris. The Melbourne restaurant world's
Bjork, gushed a 2005 review, saying he was famous for experimental work that wowed the critics but made the
punters nervous. The truth lies somewhere in between.

Calombaris is the son of a Greek-Egyptian father and a Greek-Cypriot mother who came to Australia in the
mid-1950s. Mary and Jim Calombaris met, married and ran a supermarket in Mulgrave. Calombaris shared his
father's work ethic and by eight was sweeping up and scraping the weekly special displays from the
supermarket windows.

As a teenager, he worked weekends in a Burwood pasta joint. The food was pretty pedestrian, he admits now,
but while he was scrubbing pots and pans he was looking with envy at the cooks: "It gave me the hunger for
cooking. All I wanted to do was jump on to the stoves with those guys."

He'd fallen in love with food and cooking before he was 10, watching TV cookery shows and his mother in the
kitchen. "I was always at Mum's apron strings," he says. "I think the old man was a bit worried about me." By
15, he was determined to become a chef.

Which was good because he was a terrible student. "The old man was always banging me in the head saying,
'Concentrate, think,' but that was always my downfall. I was too ignorant and arrogant about study, more
interested in living life and having fun."

Calombaris knew he'd done badly in year 12 at Mazenod College, but it wasn't until he was asked to give an
"inspirational speech" to the winners of the Premier's 2003 VCE awards that he realised how badly.


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He had never been game to open the envelope containing what was then known as his tertiary entrance rank
from 1996. He surprised the kids, and perhaps even himself, by revealing a measly 17 out of a possible 99.95.

Luckily, he'd gone straight from school to an apprenticeship at the Sofitel under executive chef Raymond
Capaldi. During holidays, he competed in cooking competitions. "I've got my father's passion, which is to take
life by the horns. Life's too short to sleep," he says. After qualifying in 1999, Calombaris moved to Capaldi's
Fenix and was promoted to head chef within a year.

In 2003, he represented Australia at the prestigious Bocuse d'Or cooking competition in Lyon, France. He
came 16th, but returned with another prize. He had met idols including Paul Bocuse, but also the Spaniard
Ferran Adria, originator of molecular gastronomy. At Reserve, where he had been offered his first head chef
gig, Calombaris threw himself into what then Age food critic John Lethlean described as the Spanish mad
scientist school of cookery.

Foams; spiced venison carpaccio served with a potato crisp full of raspberry ice-cream; tagliatelle made from
stock jellies; cauliflower "couscous"; tuna paired with banana; black olive sorbets; and crab-and-chocolate
cake. It was brave and confrontational and critically celebrated, earning him his young chef of the year gong,
but ultimately doomed. Reserve closed early in 2005 and, according to Lethlean, Calombaris "lost his venue in
a world of conformity".

He has no complaints. Because of limited population and perhaps food "education", the experimentation at
Reserve was before Melbourne's time, says Calombaris. "Australia's only a young country in food terms. It's
only in the past 10 years that people can actually spell prosciutto, or know the difference between a dodgy
Kraft slice and a beautiful, imported Quicke's cheddar."

At the Press Club, he says, "We haven't stopped using those techniques, but we've juxtaposed it with reality.
At the end of the day, people want wholesome food, food they can relate to, something with substance."

In the time since Reserve, he says, he has also learned humility and balance. "When I was at Reserve, I was
the ignorant, arrogant young chef of the year, you know: 'This is my food, you're going to eat it.' I'm older now,
a lot more educated and I actually listen to what the customer's got to say. And care about it.

"I've always loved food. That word passion is overused, but I was always around food and I was passionate,
obsessed about it. I've got an obsession to eat and taste and to put something on a plate. It's clipping the
ticket twice. You create it and feel great about it, but then you serve it to a customer and you want to see they
love it."

In 2007, Calombaris took out the Age Good Food Guide quinella: chef of the year and best new restaurant.


Tel: (+61 3) 9820 4449
©2009

He's continued to branch out with Maha, where he and Shane Delia put a similar contemporary spin on Middle
Eastern food, and more recently at Hellenic Republic in East Brunswick, his "Jetstar version" of The Press
Club.

"We opened up 2½ months ago in the midst of economic crisis and it's doing 300 covers every night," he says.
"It's crazy, it's not right, but I think it's because we've worked hard at maintaining my brand."

"Brand" is important in the new world of celebrity chefing and the new show can only build the Calombaris
brand. But not his ego, he asserts.

"The old man won't let it happen. When I told him I'd got the (MasterChef) gig, he says, 'When's it on?' and I
said six nights a week, prime time. He goes, 'Hmmm, OK — but don't you get a big head, 'cos you know I'll
chop it right off.' "


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©2009

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