Star chef Matt Moran reveals his dinner party secrets – and pet hates

Do you do the wetsuit thing in winter or are you just straight in there?

I’m straight in there. Even if it’s only for 30 seconds, a minute, it makes a hell of a difference. Clears your head.

How long do you go to the gym for?

Around an hour. In my profession, you’re eating all the time and, and could quite easily blow out. You have to have some structure, which I’ve always had. But I also don’t drink during the week unless I’m away. So I’m very clearheaded from Monday to Friday. But then comes the weekend, and all bets are off.

Would you say that you’re a routine person?

I’m not just sitting in an office every day, or I’m not just in one restaurant – every day is different. I have a farm, so I’m at the farm a little bit. We breed cattle. We breed sheep – or fat lambs, I should I say – and some pigs, which we use in the restaurants. A lot of the produce comes straight into my restaurants. There’s not one day alike, and even the guys that work for me always say that every day is different.

Has there been a pivotal moment in your career that changed the trajectory of what you were doing, or changed the way you lead people?

There have been lots of pivotal moments. When I first left school as a young boy, 15 years of age living out at Blacktown, in the western suburbs. And then cooking – that was pivotal, because young boys from Blacktown didn’t become cooks. That was the biggest turning point. I suppose when I bought my first restaurant, that was a big turning point. All of a sudden, I had the responsibility of being a business owner. And I was only 22 when I did that.

How scary was that?

At the time it wasn’t that scary, to be honest, because I had no idea what I was doing! It was just a little bit of fun. And I always thought that I’m young enough, if something goes wrong, I can always start again. But I’d been cooking for seven years, and I was head chef at a couple of big high-profile restaurants, and I just really wanted to do something for myself.

At the time I had a business partner, Pete Sullivan, who was a little bit older than me. He ran the floor and I ran the kitchen, and we really didn’t know anything about the finance side of it. I remember months into it, we thought ‘Oh, we’re doing so well, we’ve got so much money, but we haven’t been paying anyone.’ Well, staff, obviously, but not the suppliers. So we decided to bring someone in who knew a little bit more about the finance side of it. But in saying that, I basically was sponging off people that knew more about business than I did.

What did you learn from that first experience of running a restaurant?

There’s more to it than just the kitchen and the floor. More than a chef and a waiter. I knew that, but I just didn’t really comprehend it.

The restaurant industry is pretty hard. I’ve always surrounded myself with people that knew more about it than I did and that’s how I learnt to be a businessman, I suppose.

So what’s the hardest thing about the hospitality business?

Being in hospitality … It’s a big ship, and you’ve sometimes got to turn that ship around pretty quickly, whether it’s weather related, or whether it’s COVID related, you’ve just got to be really nimble. A great example is Opera Bar. Coming in on a Friday night, there’s the opera happening, and there are people around and tourists in the middle of summer, it’s an incredibly busy place. And then you get a massive storm that will come over top. That could mean that your revenue that night is 60-65 per cent less than what you thought it would be. So you’ve still got all those staff, you’ve got to move very quickly and be very nimble,

Does that mean you’ve got to ask the staff to go home early, or you’ve just got to find savings from somewhere else in the business?

Exactly. The full-time staff, obviously, you have to be there, and then you’re going to do other things where there’s prep for the next day or cleaning. But those casual staff … you try to get rid of as many as you possibly can. And you know you’re losing money that day. There’s no question, you just are.

So I guess you’ve also just got to be prepared for that financially.

Yeah, absolutely. And cut costs when you can and try to make that margin. It’s all about margin in our business. But at the same time, you’ve got to be careful because if you try and cut things too much – food quality or service – they’ll come back and bite you.

What’s the best piece of career advice you’ve ever been given?

I always say to people, if they want to come into hospitality, you’ve got to love it. Because it’s damn too bloody hard to make money. I’m just very lucky that I fell into it and I have a real passion for it. The famous saying is ‘Do what you love in life, and you never have to work another day’. Don’t get me wrong, I have the odd bad day, but I can honestly say that I love what I do. And that’s something that I’ve tried to instil in my kids. Do it for love. And if you’re not happy doing it, change.

When you talk about putting people in around you who have got skills that perhaps you don’t have, what are your core skills, besides the fact that you can cook extremely well?

I’ll be really honest with you – I surround myself with people now who are probably better cooks than I am. I think what I’m good at these days is managing people.

Is there a secret to managing people?

Yeah, absolutely. You’ve got to give them some sort of ownership. If they don’t, they won’t stay if you’re dictating to them all the time. You’ve got to let them be creative. Otherwise, they will leave and go somewhere else. I’ve had probably 20 or 30 chefs who have been with me for over 15 years. It’s not just paying them properly and looking after them – it’s giving them a say in what we’re doing and letting them feel as though that they’ve got a say at the table.

What’s your pet hate in the office, or perhaps in your case, in the restaurant?

I do have an office but let’s go back to the kitchen. There’s always a lot of people around you in the kitchen. Obviously, there’s the heat in the kitchen and there’s a lot of stress. I always said back in the day when I was in there full time – if things get a little bit heated, don’t take it personally and just move on, because it’s just a quick blip in what we do.

But also pet hates used to be plates that were dirty and going out to the restaurant, or the waiter running to one side or not looking tidy enough. There’s a million things in restaurants, I suppose. When you are a perfectionist in the kitchen, you want everything to be perfect. When they pick up a plate and sauce runs off a little bit or the plate has fingerprints on it, that’s a pet hate.

It’s really good advice. Don’t take something personally, just move on. We all have our moments, that’s probably something that we could all use a little bit in our lives.

Yeah, look, kitchens, they’re highly stressful. You’ve got a certain amount of time to get a dish out, and they’ve all got to come out together. And it’s like an orchestra, you’re the conductor at the front, I suppose. It’s all down to seconds. If someone comes in and says, ‘I had a bad entree,’ they don’t go, ‘I had a bad entree by Bob in the larder section.’ It’s like, ‘I went to Aria and I had a bad meal by Matt Moran.’ So back in the day, I was probably a little bit more full-on than what I am these days.

But you’ve learnt to calm down a bit.

No questions I have. I think the kids started that many, many years ago.

Speaking of stress in the kitchen, have you seen The Bear?

Yeah, look, I have. It wasn’t really for me because they were just sort of running around the kitchen, making out that they’re busy, but they actually weren’t doing anything. And if any of my staff spoke to me like that in the kitchen, there would be fireworks, let’s put it that way.

So they weren’t actually working that hard?

They were making it look incredibly busy, but they actually weren’t really doing anything. Knowing kitchens inside out, you just know straight away that they’re not real shifts.

Tell me about a time when you failed at something. How did you recover? And what did you learn?

I have failed – there have been some businesses that haven’t gone well. I started a big pub up in Brisbane called the Little Big House and sort of misread the location and had it for a couple of years and struggled on it. It was in a precinct where there were other tenants that were meant to be leased out. And they never did. So the area was kind of doomed.

The thing that I learned out of it is to make sure that you know that there’s going to be other businesses around you, and location. If you look at a lot of my businesses, they’re all in iconic locations, whether it’s Bondi Beach or Chiswick Gardens in Woollahra, or North Bondi Fish or Opera Bar right in front of the Opera House and looking straight at the Harbour Bridge. So locations are a key part of having a great business.

Is that advice that you give to other restaurateurs?

Look, the advice I’d give to other restaurateurs is, obviously, it’s not always going to be on the water – I’ve got things like Chop House in the art gallery. Try not to be one thing. It’s a lot more competitive these days. And you need to be lots of things.

You don’t just need to have good food, you need to have good service, you need to have good wine lists, you need to have good acoustics, you need to have a nice padded seat. You need to have great ambience, there’s a multitude of other things that you need for a successful restaurant these days. You don’t have to be the best in one category. But if you can sort of be average in all of them, you’re going to do all right.

What’s your favourite meal to cook for a dinner party?

When I cook for people for dinner parties, I always think about, do I want to be stuck in the kitchen the whole night? Or do I want to have everything prepared earlier? I can put some salads in the cool room, and they’re all ready to go, they’ll just need to be dressed.

I tend to always have a potato galette or some sort of baked potato thing that I could do, and it’s just reheating and then all I’m really doing at the end is finishing the protein, which could be a couple of steaks on the barbecue, or it could be a rack of lamb and that’s probably already done, and I can just reheat it. And a dessert tends to be something that’s out of a bowl or a tart or some sort of cake thing that I’ve made. Tiramisu is quite common.

So at the time of the dinner party, you’re really trying to spend maximum time with whoever you’ve got around rather than being in the kitchen.

No one wants to be in the kitchen all night, and I don’t want them looking at me, I might give away too many secrets.

I was going to ask you for a salad secret because salads are my favourite thing.

I always go into a fruit and veg shop with no preconceived idea. And generally, what is in season is in abundance and also a lot cheaper because there’s a lot of it. And then I just make it up in my head from there. For instance, now you go in, and it’s still tomato season, so tomatoes are going to be fantastic.

You get some heirloom ones and you go right, well, what’s gonna go great with a tomato? So olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. So there’s the basis of your dressing. And then you think right, so what else is good? So you might go to the dairy section, you might see some burrata, or you might see some feta cheese, and then you go and get your basil.

And then you might get some beans if they’re in season and a little baby spinach, which we are growing at the moment. And you might sprinkle them over the top and then add basil on top, and then you’ve got a salad.

If you had 12 months off, unencumbered, and you could do anything you liked, what would you do?

I’d still work to a certain degree. I love the farm and I love how much I’m learning about farming, even though I grew up on a farm. My father obviously ran it for a long period of time, but it’s my happy place and I love being there. Even though it might mean that I’m working a little bit, I think if I had a year off, I’d love to do that.

Then again, I wouldn’t mind travelling for a year or so. I was that kid that left school at 15 and got straight into work and doing 100 hours a week, and I never really stopped. A lot of people that I knew were doing the backpacking thing and going around Europe. I don’t know whether I could backpack any more – maybe five-star backpacking for a year? That’d be nice, or even live somewhere for six months to learn a little bit more about the language and the culture would be nice.

So your five-star backpacking would be pretty much anywhere? Or is there somewhere that you haven’t explored that you really want to see?

I like the idea of basing myself somewhere in the south of France or Italy, and just going to the markets every day and getting fresh produce and whatever they’ve got, bringing it back and cooking it. I’ve done that on holidays prior with other people. I go to the local village and I become friends with the butcher, friends with the fruit and veg guy, and become friends with the baker.

I was in Hakuba [Japan] skiing, someone told me about a wagyu wholesaler and all of a sudden, I’m in his factory, trying to communicate with him, with no Japanese at all, and his broken English. All I was doing was buying Wagyu beef off him. And that year, he’d paid the most amount of money for a carcass of wagyu. There was a record for that year in Japan.

So six months travelling around Europe, making friends with all the bakers and the butchers and the fruit and vegetable sellers, and then you can have six months on the farm. It’ll be perfect.

Yeah. And then I’ll try to grow their fruit and veg.