Page 8 - foodservice news - July 2018

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PROFILE
EVERYTHING YOU SEE, HE OWES TO SPAGHETTI
ANDREAS PAPADAKIS IS CHEF AND CO-OWNER OF TWO OF MELBOURNE’S MOST SUCCESSFUL AND AWARD-WINNING ITALIAN RESTAURANTS – PASTA BAR, TIPO 00, AND MODERN ITALIAN, OSTERIA ILARIA. YET HE STILL SCRUBS DOWN HIS OWN STOVE EVERY NIGHT (AND RECKONS HE DOES A BETTER JOB OF IT THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE KITCHEN). IT’S THAT SIMPLE PRIDE IN A JOB WELL DONE THAT IS THE SECRET OF HIS SUCCESS, SAYS JILL DUPLEIX.
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PROFILE CHEF
How does an Athens-born, Paris- trained chef end up cooking Italian pasta in Melbourne, Australia?
“That’s the million-dollar question,” laughs Andreas Papadakis.
The answer is a story of ambition, adventure and love - of pasta, mainly. Papadakis grew up eating pasta six times
a week. “The boys in the kitchen say I eat more pasta than an Italian.” As a teenager, he worked part-time kitchen jobs, and found he was good at it. By the time he embarked on an architecture degree at
started the next day. Five years later,
“pretty burnt out”, he started doing theatrical pop-up dinners with sommelier Raul Moreno Yague. The gypsy life suited him. “In one way it’s very unsettled, but for me,
it was very creative,” he explains. “By being forced to do something different every week, I got to develop my own style very quickly.”
But inside, the need grew for a place of his own. Together with fellow Vue du Monder Luke Skidmore and chef Alberto Fava, he opened Tipo 00 (Doppio Zero) in Little Bourke Street in 2014, bucking the trend towards generalisation with a strong focus on pasta. “You need to have your own identity,” he says. “I wanted to bring my skill as a modern chef to pasta, without it ending up as $40 a plate.” In Tipo’s tiny kitchen, they make up to six different pasta doughs, some with egg, others with squid ink, chestnut flour or charcoal.
Business grew and in 2017, they leased the space next door and launched the 90-seater Osteria Ilaria. “Now we have staff changing rooms downstairs, a massive cellar, and a back-of-house kitchen,” he says with relish.
There’s precious little time these days to be with his partner and eighteen month old twins, Paris and Eva, or take his BMW R NineT 1200cc Scrambler for a spin; but still, he itches to spend 80 hours in the kitchen. “It makes me happy to do service, interact with my staff, and clean my own stove at the end of the night”
he says. “It keeps me grounded.”
Moving to Paris at the age of 22 – without knowing a word of French – he worked his way up to a job at L’Espadon, the two Michelin star, haute cuisine restaurant of The Ritz. “It was very intense, with 90 chefs in the kitchen,” he recalls. “But I wanted to learn as much as possible.”
Tipo 00 361 Little Bourke Street Melbourne VIC 3000 tipo00.com.au
Osteria Ilaria 367 Little Bourke Street Melbourne VIC 3000 osteriailaria.com
university, he was working in restaurants on weekends, then mid-week, then... “It took over,” he says. “I became a chef instead.”
Moving to Paris at the age of 22 – without knowing a word of French –
he worked his way up to a job at L’Espadon, the two Michelin star, haute cuisine restaurant of The Ritz. “It was very intense, with 90 chefs in the kitchen,” he recalls. “But I wanted to learn as much as possible.”
After two years, he and his American- born partner landed in Melbourne, via New Zealand. He walked into Shannon Bennett’s Vue de Monde one morning with his CV and