Speaker 1: I'll get a team. It's Harps and tiff Sadiano for you.
Speaker 1: Project Hi tiv Hi Harps. Happy Friday, Happy Friday to you.
Speaker 1: How's your energy? You're a grumpy little fucker. Yesterday your
Speaker 1: energy was a two out of tech.
Speaker 2: Are like, you're dragging my grumpiness from a couple of
Speaker 2: days to the all week. It's gone now, but I
Speaker 2: was very tired this morning. I felt one hundred years
Speaker 2: old when I woke up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get that. Were you forty one? Your next
Speaker 1: birthday is forty two, So I mean that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say that it's a slide, but
Speaker 1: it's a slide. I'm scared to blink.
Speaker 3: I'm scared to blink.
Speaker 1: No, that's not true. That's not I'm way older than you,
Speaker 1: and I feel I feel like not every day and
Speaker 1: all the time, but for the most part, I feel
Speaker 1: like I have better energy, and I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: more curious and more excited than when I was forty.
Speaker 1: So if that's good news for anybody, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: But I tell you a bloke who's probably excited because
Speaker 1: he's fucking bursting with energy, although also bursting with snot
Speaker 1: at the moment. It's got the flu or a cold. Hi, Adriana,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Good? Thanks?
Speaker 1: Are going mat How do you live on the Sunshine
Speaker 1: Coast and have the flu? Oh?
Speaker 3: It's traveling to Sydney and Melbourne and places like that,
Speaker 3: you know, for work and then coming home bringing all
Speaker 3: the all the viruses with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. How long have you been up there?
Speaker 3: I've been since twenty nineteen. I moved up to year
Speaker 3: started twenty nineteen. So what's up about five years? Have
Speaker 3: been over five years?
Speaker 1: And do you have your businesses based up there or
Speaker 1: you're just there because it's a nice place to be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I just moved up here. I don't
Speaker 3: have a business. I did have a business for a
Speaker 3: couple of years just after COVID I tried a business
Speaker 3: up here, but I got out of that last year.
Speaker 3: But now I just freelance, so I just kind of
Speaker 3: my works mainly back in Sydney, in Melbourne or overseas
Speaker 3: so or working from home.
Speaker 1: I was reading about I was reading a little bit
Speaker 1: about you, the Sweet Assassin, the Particia of Paying, the
Speaker 1: Dark Lord of the Pastry Kitchen, Lord, Lord Volna answer
Speaker 1: to Willie Wonka. What's your favorite nickname?
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean, I say the one that's clicked the
Speaker 3: motion of sweetest happened. But it's kind of like the
Speaker 3: most common one now. But but I guess I want
Speaker 3: to get the most of the parties and stuff, or
Speaker 3: if I go to Lord Boulder cake because people just
Speaker 3: find out the funniest I think. I think everyone connects
Speaker 3: to that Harry Potter moment and and yeah, it just
Speaker 3: takes a piece out of me all the time.
Speaker 1: When you when you're a little kid, your mum and
Speaker 1: dad are Italian, right, Yeah, did you when you were
Speaker 1: a little little kid, like eight, nine, ten eleven, did
Speaker 1: you have aspirations of becoming a chef of any sort
Speaker 1: and being involved in food or is it how did it?
Speaker 1: Is it innate? Or was did an opportunity present itself?
Speaker 1: How did it happen?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Just opportunity. Like No, I definitely didn't have any
Speaker 3: vision of being a chef. I was the fussiest eto
Speaker 3: when I was a kid, Like I said so much
Speaker 3: stuff back to Mum. I wouldn't need it, the smell
Speaker 3: of it, all the different things, I wouldn't eat it.
Speaker 3: I was very particular. I only ate like certain cereals.
Speaker 3: Only et veggiemike for breakfast. You know, for most of
Speaker 3: my meals, I do only have ham, sandwiches, hot chips
Speaker 3: with chicken salt, or dinner pretty much just have potatoes
Speaker 3: with the steak had to be cut to three milimeters
Speaker 3: stick otherwise I wouldn't eat it. Things like that. I
Speaker 3: was real fussy when I was young at eating, so
Speaker 3: I definitely had no aspirations to be in any kind
Speaker 3: of chef. Sort of came along when I was around
Speaker 3: fourteen and I I had to work every day after school.
Speaker 3: My parents owned supermarkets, and I'd work through pretty much
Speaker 3: every section, and they'd opened a new suit market that
Speaker 3: my sister was running and it had to install bakery.
Speaker 3: And then I started going there to work because I
Speaker 3: was something different, and I started enjoying it. You know.
Speaker 3: It was that or stacking shelves my two favorite jobs
Speaker 3: as being young and I played a lot of footy
Speaker 3: and stuff. Stacking shelves was great fitness. So it was
Speaker 3: those two jobs that really gave me enjoyment. And then,
Speaker 3: you know, it came to the point when I was fifteen,
Speaker 3: I wanted to leave school. I wasn't enjoying I wasn't
Speaker 3: enjoying school. I wasn't academic. I was more like I
Speaker 3: was more hands on sort of a learner, And yeah,
Speaker 3: I just put two or two together. I ended up
Speaker 3: going to Sydney for a school formal for a friend
Speaker 3: who was at boarding school. I partnered one of her
Speaker 3: friends and I found a job while I was there.
Speaker 3: So then that was kind of the start of it all,
Speaker 3: you know. I went back home and had to explain
Speaker 3: to my parents.
Speaker 4: That I didn't want to take over there their supermarket
Speaker 4: that they wanted me to take over, and I wanted
Speaker 4: to go to Sydney and I started inship at fifteen,
Speaker 4: So that's how it all kicked off.
Speaker 1: How soon into that apprenticeship did you think I'm good
Speaker 1: at Well, clearly you're really fucking good at it, right,
Speaker 1: But how soon did you realize I've got talent for this,
Speaker 1: I'm good at this because I feel like a lot
Speaker 1: of people start things and they just kind of endure
Speaker 1: them rather than enjoy them. You know, it's like, ah,
Speaker 1: this is a means to an end, this is a
Speaker 1: way that I can make Gough, did you have an
Speaker 1: epiphany moment where you went, I actually like this and
Speaker 1: I'm really fucking good at it, or did you just
Speaker 1: kind of survive your apprenticeship.
Speaker 3: Well, six months I knew that was I made a
Speaker 3: right choice. I had that feeling that it was like,
Speaker 3: I'm really enjoying this. I love this. It's a good challenge.
Speaker 3: I'm pushing myself. And then probably i'd say probably a
Speaker 3: couple of years into it, I'd say that, yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: good at this and I'm pushing hard. You know, I
Speaker 3: was always competing against other apprentices and you know, trying
Speaker 3: to beat them, and you had that competitive spirit. So
Speaker 3: it was good energy and I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: In the world that I come from originally, which is
Speaker 1: just working in gyms, you couldn't find two more kind
Speaker 1: of divergent areas. Like you're making cakes and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get people in shape, which we should have set
Speaker 1: up a business next to each other. You could sell
Speaker 1: them pastries and then I'd fucking get them in the gym.
Speaker 5: But it's like there were some people that even seems silly,
Speaker 5: but even working in a gym where you're working with
Speaker 5: bodies and humans and anatomy and physiology and trying to
Speaker 5: understand how bodies adapt to different stresses and some.
Speaker 1: People it's really natural. Like to me it was I
Speaker 1: don't know, like I'm bad at most things, but I
Speaker 1: was naturally good at that. I naturally understood the body,
Speaker 1: and I naturally understood how bodies would adapt to different
Speaker 1: kinds of stress to build fitness, strength or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: I feel like with I mean, for me, it's like
Speaker 1: what you do is it's a bit of science, it's
Speaker 1: a bit of cree activity. Obviously, it's about you've got
Speaker 1: to make stuff that tastes good. But I feel like
Speaker 1: that there would be some people who would do it
Speaker 1: that no matter how hard they work, they might never
Speaker 1: be great at it. Is that true?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So true. Yeah, I've had I've had so many
Speaker 3: people come through the kitchens over the years, you know,
Speaker 3: when I had the business in Sydney and Melbourne, and
Speaker 3: you know, this is just some people that just they
Speaker 3: have so much ambition and want to be something and
Speaker 3: they just don't have it. You know, there's just something missing.
Speaker 3: They really don't click with it. They don't have the skill,
Speaker 3: the understanding, they don't really know food that well. You know,
Speaker 3: they obviously see things and want to be that, and
Speaker 3: but you know, you try hard and give them the chance,
Speaker 3: and you push and push them, but you know they
Speaker 3: just they just don't have it, you know. And you
Speaker 3: see those people that have it, you know, they just click.
Speaker 3: You have a in a piece one understanding with the
Speaker 3: food that you're cooking, the taste, the texture, the way
Speaker 3: things work, the way things react. And you know, a
Speaker 3: massive difference in those those two types of people.
Speaker 1: I feel like with people that make cakes and pastries
Speaker 1: and people in your wheelhouse. I could be wrong. This
Speaker 1: is just I know nothing about this stuff, but for me,
Speaker 1: it feels like it's a huge amount of it is
Speaker 1: appearance and presentation and creativity. It's almost like art. Like
Speaker 1: if you make something that tastes fucking amazing but looks terrible,
Speaker 1: it's hard to sell, right.
Speaker 3: It is, Yeah, totally, but it is. It's a fine edge,
Speaker 3: right because a lot of things these days now, with
Speaker 3: social media and that, they're very focused on appearance, right,
Speaker 3: and you know, may lack taste and texture, right. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are some things I have both, which is amazing.
Speaker 3: It's an amazing a lot of amazing chefs out there
Speaker 3: that are really captured both really well these days. But
Speaker 3: there's obviously some people that just focused on appearance because
Speaker 3: they want to look great for their photo or whatnot,
Speaker 3: and then when you go and taste or whatever, it
Speaker 3: lacks the taste, the texture, the balance and all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. So for me, it's always been about
Speaker 3: you know, you're going to leave with the taste in
Speaker 3: your mouth. You know you'll see it and you're going
Speaker 3: to go yeah, But once you taste it, at the
Speaker 3: last moment you're going to leave with and the last
Speaker 3: thing you're going to remember it's the flavor. So for me,
Speaker 3: that's always got to be number one. It can't look
Speaker 3: like it can't look like dog shit or a heap
Speaker 3: of crapp you know what I mean, it's going to
Speaker 3: look it's going to look at least okay. So you know, yes,
Speaker 3: appearance is very important, but if you can keep it
Speaker 3: at least okay and have it tasting amazing, then you're
Speaker 3: still going to get great, great rewards and people with
Speaker 3: great memories. But if you can hit both on the head,
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, you've got a million dollar winter
Speaker 3: that yeah.
Speaker 1: Is there is there a particular dishal, pastry or cake
Speaker 1: that that typically doesn't look great but tastes amazing, like
Speaker 1: something that you've made where you've gone you know, this
Speaker 1: is this is hard to make a beautiful picture for
Speaker 1: the gram, but it tastes like heaven.
Speaker 3: I think sometimes I fund if I'm just playing around
Speaker 3: with flavors and textures, a lot of my stuff don't
Speaker 3: look great, you know, just like piling on top of
Speaker 3: each other in a plate and eating it. Right, A
Speaker 3: lot of it's covered in crumble and little dots of
Speaker 3: jelly and damn, and you just put it all on
Speaker 3: top of each other because in hindsight, that's the best
Speaker 3: way to eat it, you know, when it's all in
Speaker 3: one one spoon and you can get it all in
Speaker 3: one here. That's the ultimate dessert eating experience. Yeah, you
Speaker 3: know when it's all like oh, here's this, and then
Speaker 3: this is spooned over here, and that's put here, and
Speaker 3: it looks beautiful on the plate when it comes to
Speaker 3: your table, but then you've got to like grab this
Speaker 3: and then grab that, and then grab this, you know,
Speaker 3: and move yourself around and navigate the plate. Then it
Speaker 3: experiences a little bit lackluster already. So I mean, for me,
Speaker 3: those kind of deconstructed I'd say deconstructedy kind of piles
Speaker 3: on a plate would be the say the olys, but
Speaker 3: a lot of time could be the most tasty.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What My main job in inverted Commas is speaking,
Speaker 1: corporate speaking and working with teams and groups. And I'm
Speaker 1: always thinking about how I can share an idea or
Speaker 1: a lesson or a question or some kind of insight
Speaker 1: with you know, the group the world, whether or not
Speaker 1: it's on a podcast or on a social media post
Speaker 1: or a bunch of humans in a room. But I
Speaker 1: feel like, to an extent, I'm always really reinventing the wheel,
Speaker 1: like I'm sharing, you know, how do we make great decisions?
Speaker 1: How do we be resilient? How do we self regulate?
Speaker 1: How do we be the carm and the chaos? These
Speaker 1: are not new concepts, but I'm kind of trying to
Speaker 1: deliver them in in ways that resonate and are unique
Speaker 1: and maybe a bit entertaining and amusing. But I feel
Speaker 1: like with what you do that you can actually create
Speaker 1: new things that nobody's created or a variation like I mean,
Speaker 1: this is not the right word, but you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Do you ever invent things where people are
Speaker 1: like fuck, I've never seen this, Like rather than going
Speaker 1: I'm going to do another chocolate to Claire, but this
Speaker 1: is better. I'm going to do another. Like do you
Speaker 1: ever bring something new into the world, Like, what was
Speaker 1: that thing that came out ten years ago?
Speaker 3: Was it the Cronatron? Yeah? Yeah, yes, I mean yeah,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't Yeah, I'd probably say you probably have over
Speaker 3: time more reinvent something. I wouldn't say like completely. Everything
Speaker 3: kind of has a base in a sense. I'm it
Speaker 3: goes back to classics. I mean, even with the cronut,
Speaker 3: it's a combination of a doughnut. In the croissant, it's
Speaker 3: it's a mixture. So it's a reinvention of those two
Speaker 3: things that he played around with and got a great
Speaker 3: result in in his creation. So and we're always tinkering
Speaker 3: with those things to create a different experience and a
Speaker 3: different a different journey. So for people to eat. For myself,
Speaker 3: I'm probably more on the texture side. I've probably reinvented textures,
Speaker 3: you know, to create less sugar, less fat in some textures,
Speaker 3: to create a cleaner taste. For me, fat and sugar
Speaker 3: mask flavor. But we need them. We need them because
Speaker 3: they give something to the flavor, but too much of
Speaker 3: it damages the flavor. So most commonly in most pastry
Speaker 3: you see in Australia and around the world, United States
Speaker 3: and all those kind of places, it's heavily masked and sugar.
Speaker 3: So everyone's eating sweetness. It's just sweet sweet, and it'll
Speaker 3: have a little fragrance of something because it's it's there
Speaker 3: and it's sort of the flavor roof. But if you
Speaker 3: pull that back, you can really punch out the flavor.
Speaker 3: Right if you want a strawberry. You know, if I
Speaker 3: made you a strawberry cupcake and we went and bought
Speaker 3: a strawberry cupcake from one's shop, you'll taste the difference
Speaker 3: because I'll pull back all of the fat from the
Speaker 3: sugar and just have only the amount that I really
Speaker 3: need to make it stable. I mean, I'm only using
Speaker 3: the fat to make the icing stable and create a
Speaker 3: little bit of mouthfeel, and the sugar is just there
Speaker 3: to give the pop, you know, enough sweetness, enough sweetness
Speaker 3: to make that flavor pop, because that strawberry without any sugar,
Speaker 3: it's just doesn't really it just takes like eating a
Speaker 3: piece of fruit, which doesn't make why it was gone
Speaker 3: by a piece of fruit, So you've got to give
Speaker 3: it something that at least gives you a little bit
Speaker 3: of a different experience, but you don't want it to
Speaker 3: be like eating sugar out of a bag when you
Speaker 3: put in your mouth, Like a lot of things aren't.
Speaker 3: So it's like delving into those things. For me, was
Speaker 3: the most interesting in reinventing textures in my inside of
Speaker 3: my cakes when I make them to make my cakes
Speaker 3: taste better.
Speaker 1: So did you ever like my background or part of
Speaker 1: my background is in science, right, and so what you're
Speaker 1: doing is very scientific, Like it's literally research. It's literally
Speaker 1: R and D, research and development. Like it's a very
Speaker 1: scientific process that you're doing. You does that dawn on you?
Speaker 3: Now? You just do it when you're in the moment.
Speaker 3: You know, you know what you want to do, and
Speaker 3: you just sort of work you work it out. But
Speaker 3: you learn along the way, you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Like I said, I dropped down in uten I'm not
Speaker 3: really okay. I failed science, I failed English and all
Speaker 3: those things at school. So it wasn't because I wasn't
Speaker 3: smart enough. It was the way they teach you. It
Speaker 3: wasn't for me. It wasn't for me, do you know
Speaker 3: what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, completely try and teach you with textbooks and I
Speaker 3: can't focus on textbooks. I need to focus on hands
Speaker 3: on and then yeah.
Speaker 1: Sorry, you're an experiential You're an experiential learner, like a
Speaker 1: lot of people are that. And it's like, the funny
Speaker 1: thing is, we're digressing from pastries by the moment, but
Speaker 1: there are a lot of brilliant, talented, highly intelligent people
Speaker 1: who aren't suited for traditional school you know. And I
Speaker 1: mean it's clearly you're intelligent and creative, and you've clearly
Speaker 1: been successful despite the fact that and again this is
Speaker 1: not hanging shit on schools, but the truth is when
Speaker 1: when there's thirty students in one class and there's one
Speaker 1: teaching model in that class, and there's one style of
Speaker 1: learning and one style of communication coming from the same teacher,
Speaker 1: which is not their fault, that's just the system. And
Speaker 1: there's always going to be people like you who that
Speaker 1: doesn't that doesn't work for you because you don't learn
Speaker 1: that way. And then you could get me, who maybe
Speaker 1: would do slightly better in some settings, and then put
Speaker 1: me in the kitchen next to you, and I'm a
Speaker 1: fucking idiot and I don't understand what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Like I think intelligence is context dependent, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do. Yeah, I totally believe that, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1: Depends on what what we're doing. And so if you
Speaker 1: had to, like if we went to do what you
Speaker 1: do and correct me if there's another thing I should
Speaker 1: add in, Like there's fork, Like I feel like you're
Speaker 1: part artist, part chef, part performer, almost like I've watched
Speaker 1: something ships, and then part businessman. So if we go
Speaker 1: artist or creative, chef, performer, businessman, where how would you
Speaker 1: rate yourself? What? What's one? And then what's the least?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 1: Artist, chef, artist, chef, performer.
Speaker 3: I think I'm a chef and then artists, performer and businessman?
Speaker 3: Yeah right, yeah, I do. You're wrong. I like the
Speaker 3: business is it. I've done a lot of it, but
Speaker 3: it's probably like the thing I enjoy the least. That's
Speaker 3: why I put it at the end, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think you kind of got a we think like
Speaker 3: business in their everyday life. So it's definitely it probably
Speaker 3: cuts across all of it in some sense because as
Speaker 3: we grow older and we learn and we develop and
Speaker 3: we change our pathway in how we earn or work.
Speaker 3: You know, there's obviously more business focus in a lot
Speaker 3: of the things that we do, because you know, we
Speaker 3: have a different mindset. So but yeah, definitely, it's probably
Speaker 3: like not something that I focus on as much, but
Speaker 3: it is part of I think all those elements in
Speaker 3: some way.
Speaker 1: I know that over the years, you've owned lots of businesses,
Speaker 1: You've done lots of telly, You've been on lots of things.
Speaker 1: And you know you're still young. What are you forty
Speaker 1: two or something?
Speaker 3: Now forty two, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Forty two, you're just a baby. But you'd started working
Speaker 1: at fifteen, so that's twenty seven years, so you've been
Speaker 1: working more than half your life for me. For me,
Speaker 1: I started working in gyms when I was eighteen. Then
Speaker 1: I owned my own gymsmultiple gyms, and and I feel
Speaker 1: like that for me, I got to the point where
Speaker 1: that kind of where I'm owning gyms and I'm running
Speaker 1: lots of staff and I've got one hundred moving parts
Speaker 1: and lawyers and accountants and marketing and branding and fucking
Speaker 1: business meetings, and it's not bad. But for me, it
Speaker 1: almost had it used by date where I went, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to that's not me anymore. It's not
Speaker 1: that it's bad. It's just not what I want to
Speaker 1: be doing. Have you kind of did that? Is that
Speaker 1: a version of what happened for you?
Speaker 3: Or yeah? I get that, Yeah, I think, And I
Speaker 3: think that last little business I had for two years
Speaker 3: just that I just posed last year was just a
Speaker 3: nail it. And you know, I think I just did
Speaker 3: it because after my first business kind of collapsed there
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen, I still had it in me. You know,
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think COVID
Speaker 3: here and it probably wasn't the best time to probably
Speaker 3: open a new business coming out of COVID, but I thought, well,
Speaker 3: it's coming back. I thought people must be might be
Speaker 3: want to getting into it. And you know, online businesses
Speaker 3: kind of like pick up or like those kind of
Speaker 3: business were like really populus I throw stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't too bad, but it was a grind,
Speaker 3: you know, it was a tough grind. And then you know,
Speaker 3: it was just pushing all the time, and a few
Speaker 3: other things came to play, like there was other work
Speaker 3: coming in and I was like I was having to
Speaker 3: close my business to go and do this other work,
Speaker 3: which which was better, which was actually making me money
Speaker 3: to do the other work, whereas you know, at the
Speaker 3: business and you know, you're just paying bills. So you know,
Speaker 3: all those things kind of came into play. And then
Speaker 3: my wife got pregnant and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 3: and she was running the front and then I said, look,
Speaker 3: I don't want to run the back in the front
Speaker 3: and everything and plus doing this and doing that, and
Speaker 3: I just know, it all just came in to play
Speaker 3: and I went, you know what, I'm just going to
Speaker 3: get out for now. You know, I think it's not
Speaker 3: my sort of place that I want to be, and
Speaker 3: I want to kind of focus on doing what I
Speaker 3: really enjoy. And it's like, you know, creativity, teaching, you know,
Speaker 3: you just stuff like that, creating and being able to
Speaker 3: network with other people and do fun things. I guess,
Speaker 3: so that's what I've kind of chosen that oft for now.
Speaker 3: Not to say that maybe something might come up, but
Speaker 3: I don't think I would run it. If we got
Speaker 3: back in the business, in a sense, maybe it would
Speaker 3: be more of O, but that won't never ever happen.
Speaker 3: So you know, it's all depends what happens in life.
Speaker 3: You just don't know, you know, Journeys change and come
Speaker 3: and go and see what happens again.
Speaker 1: So you've been on Mastership a million times. There was
Speaker 1: a six part doco on you on SBS. You've been
Speaker 1: on like, there's a Netflix series that you're in that
Speaker 1: you host, what else stuff on channel like Channel seven? Like,
Speaker 1: you've done lots and lots of tally what's the unique
Speaker 1: challenges that we sitting at home on our bums watching you?
Speaker 1: What are the unique challenges of cooking if that's the
Speaker 1: right word on TV like because it obviously it's not
Speaker 1: the natural habit attat, so there must be a lot
Speaker 1: of restrictions that you know, lights, camera, action, producers and mate,
Speaker 1: you've got to be in and out in four minutes.
Speaker 1: Then we go into an ad and all of that.
Speaker 1: What how did you find working in that environment?
Speaker 3: Yeah, look I enjoyed it. I think it's too me
Speaker 3: is great, you know in a sense, you know it fun.
Speaker 3: It's definitely the early days. It was early days. He
Speaker 3: has like just been guest chefs and that coming in
Speaker 3: for a day, you know, throwing down a challenge, you know,
Speaker 3: creating a bit of shaking everyone up, creating a little
Speaker 3: bit of fear in the in the kitchen and then
Speaker 3: going home, so it was easy. You know, it was
Speaker 3: a great way to enter the TV scene, and you know,
Speaker 3: it built built a great name for myself, made me
Speaker 3: pretty much a national name and an international name, so
Speaker 3: you know, I owe a lot to that. And then
Speaker 3: having my own show and being a more major part
Speaker 3: of the show was good as well. You know, it
Speaker 3: was a great experience and you can't falter in a sense,
Speaker 3: but like it definitely is what we don't see. It's
Speaker 3: a long day. It's very boring. You know, you're kind
Speaker 3: of sitting around most of the day, you know, just
Speaker 3: kind of waiting to taste dishes and at the end
Speaker 3: of the day. And the hard thing is, I think
Speaker 3: for me being more hands on and wanting to be
Speaker 3: keep active, sitting around, like I just get I get
Speaker 3: really tired, and really it takes all energy out of me.
Speaker 3: So like I just want to at least even just
Speaker 3: get in there and like give them a ask me
Speaker 3: a question, help you know what I mean something like that.
Speaker 3: But you know, you're allowed to. So it's a competition
Speaker 3: and they have to. They have to, you know, find
Speaker 3: their feet themselves and grind it out. But you know,
Speaker 3: other than that, it's it's a great experience. It's a
Speaker 3: great moment. And I think from what I've found after
Speaker 3: the shows, what you do for their lives is bigger
Speaker 3: than anything. So you know, when they come back to
Speaker 3: you and say how you've changed your lives, you know,
Speaker 3: just them being on the show and that, which is
Speaker 3: something you don't think about when you start it, but
Speaker 3: learning about it after it's Yeah, I think it's a
Speaker 3: it's a great feeling.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, amazing. What did I read somewhere that you
Speaker 1: grew up in Italy or you spent I know your parents,
Speaker 1: I know you're born here, but did you go back
Speaker 1: and live in Italy for a while.
Speaker 3: I used to go back every year Italy with my parents.
Speaker 3: My parents come back every year. When I was younger,
Speaker 3: I used to stay there, you know, about six months
Speaker 3: at a time, like my mom and my dad would
Speaker 3: do things like that. And then and then as I've
Speaker 3: gotten older, you know, we used to go every year
Speaker 3: for a month or so. And then you know, throughout
Speaker 3: my late teens and that when I was doing my apprenticeship,
Speaker 3: I'd travel to France and Italy just to do some
Speaker 3: training and stuff, you know, do courses or stars just
Speaker 3: like work for free in places that I could find, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, just to get more experience, so to better
Speaker 3: my skills, because back when I was coming through my apprenticeship,
Speaker 3: food wasn't big in Australia, like in the sense it
Speaker 3: was it was here, but I didn't have the presence
Speaker 3: it does now. Or you know, there were restaurants and
Speaker 3: people went to restaurants, but the masses didn't really I
Speaker 3: didn't really see food as they see it now. Yeah,
Speaker 3: pastry shops were very few, you know, there were very
Speaker 3: few pastry shops. Most of them were just su stand
Speaker 3: at Aussie Bakery selling cream buns and marine frogs and
Speaker 3: all those kind of you know, fun Leavington, old School, Lamington's,
Speaker 3: you know, all those things, and you know, and then yeah,
Speaker 3: so there wasn't much a rounde so I had to
Speaker 3: go looking overseas to get those extra skills that I
Speaker 3: kind of was that i'd seen, you know, through books
Speaker 3: and stuff like that in my younger years, and that
Speaker 3: was a great experience for me and they helped me
Speaker 3: when I was coming through the ranks at a young
Speaker 3: age to deal bit different and and be a little
Speaker 3: bitead of the game.
Speaker 1: Who's the best in the world Adriano. I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: there's not, but in terms of if you had side,
Speaker 1: there's one one country that does it great. I'm guessing
Speaker 1: at the European country. It's like who does pastries and
Speaker 1: cakes and sweets better maybe than anyone in the world.
Speaker 3: I think everyone has its own sort of like culture
Speaker 3: and own sort of presence. But there's probably i'd say
Speaker 3: three or four countries that i'd probably name as the
Speaker 3: top I'd probably say Spain.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, Spain, Japan, Japan, I would not have I
Speaker 1: don't know why, but I know fuck all, but I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have Japan.
Speaker 6: Okay, Yeah, France and then Italy what okay, four countries
Speaker 6: will be on the top list if I was to
Speaker 6: cut it in my vision.
Speaker 3: And this is only my vision. Everyone else is going
Speaker 3: to be different. The top two for me is Spain
Speaker 3: and Japan. Wow, it's Spain at least, just a different
Speaker 3: set of creativity. They're just for me in in ground
Speaker 3: breaking sort of development in pastry. They're ahead of the game,
Speaker 3: you know, They've just got a beautiful vision for artistry
Speaker 3: and a different mindset on cakes and desserts. I really enjoy.
Speaker 3: They're a little bit more adventurous and then for me,
Speaker 3: Japan you can get a bit of everything. Right, Japan
Speaker 3: has everything that France has because they Japanese love the
Speaker 3: French and all the major major pastry shops out of
Speaker 3: France are in Japan because of that. But plus, Japan
Speaker 3: has its own pastry culture which is very very unique,
Speaker 3: you know, in a sense, like they have stores where
Speaker 3: it's only one product and that's all they sell, or
Speaker 3: one fruit. You can go to a shop that just
Speaker 3: sell strawberries. Every cake in there's made with strawberries. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so there's not many, and they have a lot of
Speaker 3: this kind of pastry. So you know, doing a pastry
Speaker 3: tour of Tokyo or you know, Kyoto, any of those
Speaker 3: places and just delving deep into all of it, it's
Speaker 3: just amazing, you know, and you get such a great experience.
Speaker 3: Plus all the kitchen they have so many kitchen kind
Speaker 3: of fun things as well that kind of come out
Speaker 3: of there that you know, they make their way over
Speaker 3: here a little bit too with all these trends and stuff,
Speaker 3: but you know, you get all that kind of fun
Speaker 3: stuff as well in Japan, so it's very exciting. But
Speaker 3: the Japanese are known for recreating everything even better than
Speaker 3: the people who invented it. So they just have that
Speaker 3: mindset and that dedication to do things great. I think
Speaker 3: it's just part of their culture.
Speaker 1: So that's amazing, That's fascinating, is it like in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four more than ever? You know, there's lots of
Speaker 1: understandably talk about health, wellness, fitness, nutrition, you know, sugar
Speaker 1: fat as you were talking about, is there any and
Speaker 1: I know that pastry and health don't necessarily go together,
Speaker 1: of course, no disrespect, but is there any pressure on
Speaker 1: you people who work in that space to create healthier
Speaker 1: options or is that just like fuck it, we just
Speaker 1: care that it tastes great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think there's any pressure. I think there's
Speaker 3: I think there's a bunch of like pastry chefs and
Speaker 3: definitely a bunch of companies who sell products kind of
Speaker 3: trying to get that message out there to chefs to
Speaker 3: use these boats because they make things healthier. There are
Speaker 3: a few chefs trying to create what they're pitching as
Speaker 3: healthier recipes. But I think when someone is the cake,
Speaker 3: they ain't looking for health exactly. People, if you're going
Speaker 3: to eat a cake, right, I always believe this like
Speaker 3: you're going to if you eat sugar and fat, eating moderation.
Speaker 3: You know, the body needs it in a sense right
Speaker 3: in some way. Don't overreat it, don't overindulge, don't go stupid.
Speaker 3: Have it as a treat, and that's what we're there for,
Speaker 3: for a beautiful little treat. Now, as a chef myself,
Speaker 3: I reduce it not so much totally for the health reason,
Speaker 3: but also for the like I said before, the flavor.
Speaker 3: But yes, it has a better health benefit as well
Speaker 3: because I've reduced all that sugar and fat so coming
Speaker 3: into play. I think there's a market there in that
Speaker 3: sense where it's better for you. Not so much. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to ever say it's healthy because it's you know,
Speaker 3: I don't think any indulgence shouldn't be healthy. I don't think.
Speaker 3: And most of the time most of the things that
Speaker 3: I eat or try that are are targeted at health
Speaker 3: or you know, those kinds of things. It tastes okay,
Speaker 3: but just don't give you the same result, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. And I think if you're in you
Speaker 3: might eat it once or twice and okay, fit the
Speaker 3: fit the void for a moment. But if you're eating
Speaker 3: that all the time, you get sick of it. So
Speaker 3: I think it's all about moderation. I don't feel there's
Speaker 3: a lot of pressure in that sense. I think people
Speaker 3: when they want to have a treat, they should have
Speaker 3: a treat and you know, and just balance out their
Speaker 3: macros and their diet and you know, just work it
Speaker 3: into their schedule. You know. I know heaps of people
Speaker 3: that do that. And I see them smash and you know,
Speaker 3: croissants and all those kind of things, and there they look.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're fitter than me. Anyway, mate, I agree
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 1: I think the idea of deprivation forever and never having
Speaker 1: a cake or never having something that you love, I
Speaker 1: actually don't think it's a good plan. And I think
Speaker 1: being able to everything in moderation. There is one person
Speaker 1: in this conversation that hasn't spoken much, who may or
Speaker 1: may not be a chocoholic, who may or may not,
Speaker 1: who may like sixty percent of a diet, may or
Speaker 1: may not be chocolate other than if other than chocolate,
Speaker 1: and your addiction to chocolate, which is well documented, what's
Speaker 1: your next favorite suite? Like if you had to something
Speaker 1: from a bakery or something that Adriano might make.
Speaker 2: Well, it's anything I'm less. I'm not croissanti or pastry,
Speaker 2: ishe unless it's got n atilla in it?
Speaker 3: Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm team chocolate.
Speaker 3: Chocolate a chocolate every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 3: I'm on it. Chocolate. It's good for chocolates, good for
Speaker 3: the mindset, you know what I mean. I think it's
Speaker 3: you know, like I say, with certain sweets and certain things,
Speaker 3: it gives you a certain joint us and it brings
Speaker 3: something For me that brings something right. I mean, I
Speaker 3: eat dark chocolate, so you know, it's kind of like
Speaker 3: has a lot of benefits as well. And you know,
Speaker 3: I think people are going to look at those things.
Speaker 3: So if it brings you a little bit of joy,
Speaker 3: then for me, that's part of a healthy diet, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. Like, as long as you don't
Speaker 3: over indulge it, there's nothing wrong with it. I agree.
Speaker 2: And I'm really good in all like I'm extra good
Speaker 2: in all the other areas. And I put all my
Speaker 2: my indulgence into that, into something that I love the
Speaker 2: very most, and then I get to have it what
Speaker 2: feels like all the time.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 1: That's, isn't it? Funny when there's something that you love
Speaker 1: of like I eat almost the same dinner every night,
Speaker 1: which is just doesn't matter what it is. But it's like,
Speaker 1: it's just rice, veggies, and there's kind of almost minced
Speaker 1: beef concoction that I have that tastes fucking amazing. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I have chicken, but my dinners are almost the same
Speaker 1: every night. But every night it's like, this is the
Speaker 1: best thing I've ever had. When did this get invented?
Speaker 1: Every night my taste buds are just as excited. It's
Speaker 1: when you love something like tif when you have chocolate,
Speaker 1: if you have it one hundred days in a row,
Speaker 1: on the one hundred and first day, it's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: your receptors have shut down, you don't enjoy it anymore.
Speaker 2: Noah, I love it every day.
Speaker 1: What's the if I was, which I'm not gonna but
Speaker 1: if I went, you know what, I'm going to start
Speaker 1: to try to make a couple of desserts. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to open the door on developing. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of our listeners now are thinking, fuck,
Speaker 1: I want to try and make something, but I'm not
Speaker 1: great in that space. Yeah, what's something like a getting
Speaker 1: started Project Adriana, where a sweet or something that people
Speaker 1: could have a go at that doesn't require your skills.
Speaker 3: O man, like you know, anything like like a Freni
Speaker 3: pan tire. You know, it's pretty simple. It's just a
Speaker 3: tart based almond cream. You know, put some put your
Speaker 3: favorite fruit in it, and bake it off, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. It's so simple, you know, and almond
Speaker 3: cream is equal parts pretty much of everything. And then
Speaker 3: I mean, if you don't want to make tartas tree,
Speaker 3: you can just buy a short cross out of the
Speaker 3: freezer and line a cardshell. I mean, there's many simple
Speaker 3: ways to navigate desserts. You can make a putting, a
Speaker 3: sticky date pudding, chocolate lava cake. I mean there's so
Speaker 3: that's there's no skill needed in that, right, It's any
Speaker 3: skill needed is in the baking.
Speaker 2: Really, I do love sticky date pudding. I do love
Speaker 2: sticky date putting.
Speaker 1: Your eyes just lit up like a Christmas tree when
Speaker 1: he said sticky date pudding.
Speaker 3: Shout out.
Speaker 2: Shout out to tigl Winery that have. When you order
Speaker 2: a sticky Day pudding, it's actually an enormous slab big
Speaker 2: enough for people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's crazy table share now.
Speaker 1: Uh, And I will say that when I was a
Speaker 1: fat little fucker, probably thirty percent of my diet was cheesecake,
Speaker 1: which which may which may or may not have had
Speaker 1: something to do with the state I was in. But
Speaker 1: I fucking and not not that I don't mind the
Speaker 1: normal cheesecake, but I love baked cheesecake.
Speaker 3: Baked cheesecake. Yeah, it's good, Like it's so good, so creamy.
Speaker 1: Mate, I could I could literally have, I reckon, I
Speaker 1: could eat three meals a day of cheesecake and nothing
Speaker 1: else and eventually I'd get sick of it, but I'd
Speaker 1: give that a good crack for about a month. I
Speaker 1: love che cheese. That kind of cheesecake to me is
Speaker 1: almost like a meal because it's quite dense.
Speaker 3: It's very dense. Yeah, very very dense. Yeah that's good.
Speaker 1: Well, mate, We appreciate you. We appreciate you. It's been
Speaker 1: fun getting to know you a little bit and chat
Speaker 1: to you. Do you what's next on the horizon? Is
Speaker 1: there anything coming up? Any projects? Any TV stuff for you?
Speaker 1: Kicking back being a dad and a husband and just
Speaker 1: fucking life in the hammock at.
Speaker 3: The moment, a bit of everything, you know, just taking
Speaker 3: as it comes. But yeah, I'm a master chef. A
Speaker 3: few episodes of Master Chef this.
Speaker 7: Season TV wise, a few classes overseas, a few eventsy locally,
Speaker 7: there's bits and pieces.
Speaker 3: Really keep doing my I t at the QT hotels,
Speaker 3: you know, things like that. So just keep that keeps
Speaker 3: me busy, busy enough and now and flexible, so which
Speaker 3: is good with the with the baby in that. So yeah,
Speaker 3: just keep plugging away until something more thought comes, if
Speaker 3: it does.
Speaker 1: You know, has parenthood has been a dad mate?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's man, it's good. You know, it's you know,
Speaker 3: like it's different tiring and it's look, I mean I
Speaker 3: travel before work, so I can't say overly tiring for
Speaker 3: me all the time because I'm not not here all
Speaker 3: the time. But yeah, when I'm here, it's definitely. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a different moment. But you know when when he
Speaker 3: smiles all the time, actually, you know, it's it's just
Speaker 3: I don't know, you can't take something away. So it's
Speaker 3: one of those moments. Yeah, you've got to enjoy it.
Speaker 1: But I feel like having a baby is both chaos
Speaker 1: and therapy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the therapy. That's a good word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we appreciate you. How do people find you, follow you,
Speaker 1: connect with you, get involved in some capacity? How do
Speaker 1: they do that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook or
Speaker 3: I'm at the Sweet Assassin or Adrian Zumbo on those
Speaker 3: all those channels LinkedIn X but I don't really use
Speaker 3: X anymore. But but all I see yeah, mainly mainly Instagram, TikTok,
Speaker 3: Facebook LinkedIn. I do have a website, but it's under
Speaker 3: construction at the moment, so when it comes back on
Speaker 3: and it's just adronizmore dot com. So other than that,
Speaker 3: all good man, it's been fun. Yeah, it's been great shading.
Speaker 1: Thank you. We'll say goodbye off fair back for the moment.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being on the You project.
Speaker 3: It was nice to meet you, absolutely amazing. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Boom