Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, March eighteen, twenty twenty six. Don't subsidize petrol
Speaker 1: or inflation will take off again. That's the warning to
Speaker 1: government from Reserve Bank Governor Michelle Bullock. It's d day
Speaker 1: for Carl Sanderlands. Can the controversial radio host keep his
Speaker 1: gig despite breaking up with his co host Jackie O Henderson.
Speaker 1: Our subscribers will be the first to know, and you
Speaker 1: can join us right now at the Australian dot com
Speaker 1: dot au. Neil Perry is Australia's most acclaimed chef. His
Speaker 1: restaurants have withstood recessions, lockdowns and now even the ozempic craze.
Speaker 1: He's a passionate defender of the farmers, fishes and graziers
Speaker 1: who give Neil great food to cook for us. Neil's
Speaker 1: speaking today at the Australians Global Food Forum, but first
Speaker 1: I caught up with him at one of his beautiful restaurants.
Speaker 1: Our chat in just a moment. Neil Perry is one
Speaker 1: of Australia's most acclaimed restaurantors and we're sitting in one
Speaker 1: of his beautiful Venues Grand Tarino in Double Bay in Sydney,
Speaker 1: Neil I was last year when this was a beautiful
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurant. I absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2: I thought it was wonderful.
Speaker 1: And what I also thought was incredibly impressive was the
Speaker 1: way you changed it overnight when you realized it wasn't working.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the decision making there.
Speaker 2: You know, I knew it was a beautiful restaurant.
Speaker 3: I loved it in my family and I ate here
Speaker 3: every week, and I had so many great customers, but
Speaker 3: we didn't have enough, and it was important for me
Speaker 3: to kind of pivot very quickly rather than go down
Speaker 3: the road of losing money, losing money, losing money, and
Speaker 3: then by the time you get a chance to turn
Speaker 3: it around, you know you're really under.
Speaker 2: Incredible financial stress.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't a great year for me last year,
Speaker 3: but I kind of repositioned a lot of my ducks,
Speaker 3: and because there was lots of tarazo and lots of
Speaker 3: marble and lots of dark timber, it kind of almost
Speaker 3: felt more Italian than it did Chinese. So the turn
Speaker 3: to making it feel more Italian was simpler than trying
Speaker 3: to make it feel more Chinese, and that was part
Speaker 3: of the thinking behind it. So with all the amazing
Speaker 3: seafood and all the incredible beef and so forth that
Speaker 3: we do, you know, we just put an Italian lens
Speaker 3: over it. And Italian cooking, of course, is really just
Speaker 3: seasonal cooking of the moment. It's all about produce and
Speaker 3: it's all about the taste of what's great now. That's
Speaker 3: what great Italian cooking is about. And so it seemed
Speaker 3: like a better fit for us.
Speaker 1: There's so much dreaming in your business, and you see
Speaker 1: restaurateurs all the time who've had a dream to do
Speaker 1: something and maybe can't quite let that dream go when
Speaker 1: it's not working out the way they thought.
Speaker 2: How have you kind of.
Speaker 1: Controlled that, desiring yourself to bring a dream to life
Speaker 1: and not let go when it's not working.
Speaker 2: Well, Look, I think it's simple.
Speaker 3: It's like, if you have a dream and it's starting
Speaker 3: to turn into a nightmare, it's time to get a
Speaker 3: new dream. And it's as simple as that. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think it's deciding whether time will fix it. Because
Speaker 3: if you're like me, if you're in it for the
Speaker 3: long term, like we open a restaurant, we only think
Speaker 3: in terms of ten years twenty years, thirty years with
Speaker 3: that's how we think. You know, my relationship with Quannas
Speaker 3: is coming up thirty years next year. So everything I do,
Speaker 3: I think about the long term. So I kind of
Speaker 3: put that lens over it and go, all right, what's
Speaker 3: this looking like? You know, is it going to be
Speaker 3: able to get off the ground and is it just
Speaker 3: needing some love or is it need to pivot?
Speaker 2: And is there an opportunity to do that?
Speaker 3: And in this environment, just as I explained, you know,
Speaker 3: it looked more Italian than Chinese.
Speaker 2: I had at my dispose of some brilliant chefs.
Speaker 3: I love Italian cooking, you know, our produce scenario that
Speaker 3: we have it at Margaret and I always had it
Speaker 3: all my restaur with fishermen and farmers.
Speaker 2: Just lent itself to Italian.
Speaker 3: So it seemed to me that that was the right
Speaker 3: step and the right turn because my wife and I
Speaker 3: we just look at it and we never think how
Speaker 3: much more money can we make out of this restaurant.
Speaker 2: We you think about how much joy does this give us?
Speaker 2: Do we love doing it?
Speaker 3: And yes we make some money out of them, that's great,
Speaker 3: that's kind of the bonus really for us.
Speaker 2: And wearing it for the long term. So you know,
Speaker 2: we have great people.
Speaker 3: We're at the three hundred and fifty staff and I
Speaker 3: never thought I'd get myself back into that situation again,
Speaker 3: but I did. And there are lots and lots of
Speaker 3: young people with massive amounts of energy.
Speaker 2: I tell people, I'm kind of like a vampire.
Speaker 3: I live off the enthusiasm of all these brilliant young kids,
Speaker 3: and I drain that and bring it to myself and
Speaker 3: that keeps me kind of young and focused. And come
Speaker 3: down here and have my first coffee with my team
Speaker 3: at Cafe Margaret and then start to work through the
Speaker 3: precinct through the day.
Speaker 1: You've got a lot of people relying on you, not
Speaker 1: just the staff who work in the rest staurants, not
Speaker 1: just the chefs, but the suppliers out there in regional
Speaker 1: Australia who right now are dealing with diesel shortages, fuel
Speaker 1: prices going up razy, everything's tough. What are you seeing
Speaker 1: from your suppliers right now.
Speaker 3: Well, I have a great relationship with a great group
Speaker 3: of people, and of course they're doing it tough. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like they've just got some rains down in Victoria.
Speaker 3: It has been very dry. It's quite dry out in
Speaker 3: midwest New South Wales where we're getting some beautiful speckled
Speaker 3: park from Minnamura. You know, they're they're waiting for rain
Speaker 3: at the moment, so you know, and then it rains
Speaker 3: and it floods. Poor Ben Collis someone beautiful fishermen who
Speaker 3: does all our coral trout.
Speaker 2: He hasn't been able to get out for three and
Speaker 2: a half weeks. Now.
Speaker 3: I ring him every week because I want to talk
Speaker 3: to him about fish and I miss his fish, but
Speaker 3: mostly I want to make sure he's okay, because you know,
Speaker 3: you take livelihood away from these guys, and they're young guys,
Speaker 3: they're buying quota, they've got their boats, they've got their crew.
Speaker 3: You take livelihood away for three or four weeks, it
Speaker 3: really has a massive impact. So I'm always doing that,
Speaker 3: like what can I do, How can I help? How
Speaker 3: can my voice make difference? Or you know, at least
Speaker 3: support you and most chefs are going how much cheaper
Speaker 3: can I get this? And my view is if they're
Speaker 3: not in business, I'm not in business. So I have
Speaker 3: to look after those guys and make sure they're nurtured
Speaker 3: because they they they don't send us produce, they send
Speaker 3: us a gift. You know, these guys, we just have
Speaker 3: to really make sure that we're looking after them and
Speaker 3: keeping them viable. And I think it's going to be
Speaker 3: interesting because a lot of this pressure that's going to
Speaker 3: come on is going to be about the cost of
Speaker 3: producing food. I've been in businesses nineteen eighty three in
Speaker 3: my own restaurants in partnership, and I was there opening
Speaker 3: rock Pool and borrowing one point eight million dollars when
Speaker 3: we had the recession we had to have. We were
Speaker 3: paying eighteen percent interests, so you know, three hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty thousand dollars in interest the first year.
Speaker 2: It was a scramble to just survive.
Speaker 3: And then you know, the Asian financial crisis and then
Speaker 3: opening what poul bar and grew Sydney and Spice Temple
Speaker 3: in the middle of the financial crisis. We were opening
Speaker 3: Margaret the day that Gladys put us into lockdown in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one for that long extended four month one
Speaker 3: when I was kind of out for about two weeks
Speaker 3: feeling sorry for myself, and then when hey, you better
Speaker 3: get yourself together because a lot of people rely on you,
Speaker 3: and you've got to make this work. So we did
Speaker 3: everything we possibly could for four months to kind of
Speaker 3: scrape and break even and keep the team together, and
Speaker 3: then you.
Speaker 2: Know, obviously opened.
Speaker 3: So you know, this is a really interesting time in
Speaker 3: the world where there's just some crazy stuff going on
Speaker 3: that could have a mega financial impact.
Speaker 1: Tax and monetary policy and things like lockdown are one
Speaker 1: way in which government can make life difficult for business
Speaker 1: people and for rest returs. The other is probably well
Speaker 1: meaning attempts to manage the environment.
Speaker 2: Sustainability.
Speaker 1: You really did go into bat for anthony. You're suppling
Speaker 1: WWA over the wa government span on the.
Speaker 2: Tell me about that.
Speaker 1: Why was that decision kind of roll headed as far
Speaker 1: as you're concerned.
Speaker 3: You know, there are a couple of species under threat,
Speaker 3: and these guys have their licenses counsel. But I would
Speaker 3: have thought to keep a commercial fishery going that was
Speaker 3: important for tourism, for locals, for the young fishermen themselves,
Speaker 3: that all of these things would be. That's a very
Speaker 3: acceptable loss on the biomass. He wasn't catching one and
Speaker 3: a half tons and getting seven tons. He was catching
Speaker 3: one hundred and forty of those fish over twelve months.
Speaker 3: There's evidence that with some of those species, you know,
Speaker 3: just six nautical miles further out, the federal government of
Speaker 3: increased trawl quotas. Now, that's the worst way of catching
Speaker 3: a fish. That's really unsustainable for oceans. It's really unsustainable
Speaker 3: for byproduct catch. It's really bad way of treating fish.
Speaker 3: It's a really terrible product that ends up in the market.
Speaker 3: And that kind of industrial fishering we should be saying
Speaker 3: no to. And this more bespoke handlining. You know, young
Speaker 3: guys who should be held up as really the best
Speaker 3: example of incredible sustainable fishermen.
Speaker 2: They're the guys who should be champion.
Speaker 1: Coming up what an acclaimed restroateur makes of the ozembic craze.
Speaker 1: Your career has coincided and you've been a big part
Speaker 1: of this as well, with a revolution in animal welfare.
Speaker 1: Kind of expectations from the customer as well as the farmer.
Speaker 1: Do you feel as though, you know, once free range
Speaker 1: eggs was kind of a niche, you know far out.
Speaker 1: Now it's absolutely mainstream and across the board. What do
Speaker 1: you see from customers? What are their expectations now?
Speaker 3: Well, I think they're overjoy when they see people who
Speaker 3: care about what's going on the plate, because providence is
Speaker 3: really everything. And you know, I've championed sort of farmers
Speaker 3: for a really long time, grass fed cattle as well
Speaker 3: as you know ration feeding the way that David Blackmore
Speaker 3: does it. It's all about great rumination, it's all about
Speaker 3: the animal being in really good shape.
Speaker 2: It's about not being antibiotics and growth hormones.
Speaker 3: And you know, the poster child of bad environmental food
Speaker 3: production is basically corn in America and corn fed beef,
Speaker 3: and that's a far cry from what our grass fed
Speaker 3: beef here is in Australia. And we know that it's incredibly sustainable.
Speaker 3: We know that it's a great way of creating a
Speaker 3: kilo of protein from the rain and the grass, and
Speaker 3: we know that the animals have a lower impact on
Speaker 3: the environment because they're in good shape. They're supposed to
Speaker 3: eat that, they ruminate properly, they're not belching and farting,
Speaker 3: and they're not getting sick. In most importantly, we talk
Speaker 3: a lot about longevity now, and I know I do
Speaker 3: because I'm getting old, and the most important thing when
Speaker 3: you get old is muscle mass, balance and flexibility. They're
Speaker 3: the three things if you can take into old age
Speaker 3: and keep your mind.
Speaker 2: Then you're going to be in really good shape. And
Speaker 2: we know that eating beef is really good for that.
Speaker 2: And we know that eating high quality grass fed beef.
Speaker 3: You know, once upon a time they were running around
Speaker 3: trying to get people to eat margarine. Like, I'm so
Speaker 3: happy that my father was a butcher and my three
Speaker 3: brothers were butchers, because butter is just me so close
Speaker 3: to my heart and extramrgin olivel and all the really
Speaker 3: good fats, and we now know a grass fed butter
Speaker 3: is so good for us, and we know that frying
Speaker 3: chips in tallow it's so much better than all the
Speaker 3: transpat and seed oils and all the things that were
Speaker 3: like fifteen years ago people were telling you this was
Speaker 3: really good for you.
Speaker 2: And luckily, I've always just been of.
Speaker 3: The mind that if you eat fresh produce, then you
Speaker 3: are going to be in good shape for the vast
Speaker 3: majority of your life. And most you're stricken down with
Speaker 3: some illness that comes from you.
Speaker 2: Know, the side.
Speaker 3: But if you're eating fresh, non processed foods, you know,
Speaker 3: for me, it's like probably my only great sinner is
Speaker 3: drinking too much beautiful wine. But for me because I
Speaker 3: do eat great food, and I work and I love
Speaker 3: this business, and I walk and exercise and stretch. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm able to maintain my ideal weight and I'm healthy,
Speaker 3: and I still get to eat whatever I want to
Speaker 3: a certain extent, but I'm not eating chips and chocolate
Speaker 3: and ice cream.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: If I do eat a hamburger, it's a beautiful one
Speaker 3: from Cafe Margaret, where it's ground be fresh every day,
Speaker 3: with a beautiful Australian bun, not something frozen and brought
Speaker 3: out of the States, which all these guys are using.
Speaker 3: And you know with you know, lettuce and tomato and
Speaker 3: a fantastic sauce that we make. So you know, I
Speaker 3: do eat those things, but I don't eat the worst
Speaker 3: version of them. So good health is really about about
Speaker 3: eating well and having a proper lifestyle that revolves around,
Speaker 3: you know, daily doing the right thing by your body
Speaker 3: and the environment.
Speaker 1: And just finally, we're in Sydney's beautiful Eastern suburbs, so
Speaker 1: I can't resist asking you about a zempic. Some of
Speaker 1: your customers are shrinking very visibly. Have you reduced your
Speaker 1: portion sizes or are you Are you just doing what you.
Speaker 3: Do no, No, we just do what we do and
Speaker 3: we've got lots of great customers who love eating. I
Speaker 3: mean when you see something like Demi Moore the other day,
Speaker 3: which I had to look at, and I just you know,
Speaker 3: I've got one of the world's most beautiful women. In
Speaker 3: all my life, I've just thought you were so bored,
Speaker 3: and I just see that, like the Zebek doesn't just
Speaker 3: waste fat, at waste muscle, and that's one of the
Speaker 3: really bad things. And you see somebody like almost biaffa
Speaker 3: and kind of like thin. But you also know how
Speaker 3: important that muscle mass is for you as you get older.
Speaker 3: And when I say muscle mass, so I mean having good,
Speaker 3: good tone muscle on your bones and eating well so
Speaker 3: that your bones are in good health as well. And
Speaker 3: you see what that stuff does and then you think, wow,
Speaker 3: what else is it doing to people's like liver and heart?
Speaker 3: And I think it's like the tobacco industry in twenty
Speaker 3: five years time, everybody would be doing the shit out
Speaker 3: of them.
Speaker 2: I mean they're already doing it now.
Speaker 3: So my view is most of the customers who come
Speaker 3: to us really love what we do and come to it,
Speaker 3: and my whole life I've just cooked in my restaurant
Speaker 3: what I love eating, and I've been really lucky because
Speaker 3: what I love to eat scenes that a lot of
Speaker 3: other people do love to eat as well. So I
Speaker 3: don't really see any reason to deviate from that. And
Speaker 3: I'd never want to walk into one of my restaurants
Speaker 3: and sit and look at the menu and think I
Speaker 3: wouldn't really like to eat that.
Speaker 2: And I sit in a lot of restaurants and I
Speaker 2: actually have that feeling.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I love what we do, and I'm very
Speaker 3: very blessed and lucky that other people love what we
Speaker 3: do too.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. It's a great photo.
Speaker 1: Neil Perry is speaking today at the Global Food Forum
Speaker 1: along with all the biggest names in food, agriculture, farming
Speaker 1: and more. Check it out live today at the Australian,
Speaker 1: dot com, dot Au and Skynews Australia.