Kylie Kwong
Restaurateur, TV Star, green advocate - just some of the hats this Sydney chef wears. But as she tells Myffy Rigby, life is about much more than building empires.
So let’s talk about Live Green. So you’re the ambassador for the entire thing – what’s the story behind it, what’s your involvement with it? This is the second year this event’s run and it’s put on by the Sydney of City – it’s an event to show we urban dwellers how easy it is to live green within the city. Last year’s was highly successful – we got over 10,000 people in Victoria Park, Clover Moore come and gave an address, I gave an address. It was the first carbon neutral public event ever done and which will be done again this year. We had all walks of life coming. There are workshops – work shed workshops, showing people how to set up a worm farm in the city and so on, there’s activities for children, stage performances, a whole lot of organic local and organic growers around so you can buy your fresh ingredients – so it’s like a market. There’s also a hot food stand, several cooking demonstrations – I’m going to be doing one, Alex Kers from Glebe Point is going to be doing one. There are several panels, one on sustainable seafood, green investment, cars, but at the same time, we wanted it to be a market/outdoor festival atmosphere. They have these great organic events over at the UK – and that was the genesis.
So it’s all focusing around sustainability, living local, acting local, shopping local? That’s right – they’ve got stalls there about fashion design, sustainability in fashion design. Clover Moore’s message is that the more people we can get on board, and learn how to live green, the more likely we are to reach the goal for the City of Sydney’s Green Sydney by 2030. It’s a great event, it’s a lovely day out and most importantly, it’s showing people how easy it is to do, you don’t have to change your whole world.
Tell me what you guys do in this restaurant specifically, based around carbon neutrality? We’re the first carbon neutral restaurant in NSW. I’m a Fair Trade ambassador for Australia and New Zealand, we use a lot of their products as well, the sugar, the tea, the chocolates. I’m the spokesperson for the Australian Marine Conservation society so all the seafood we use here is sustainable it’s all line caught. It’s not your usual Chinese restaurant – I guess it’s one of the only Chinese restaurants around that serves organic and biodynamic products. So we draw all of the recipes up, most of the recipes are drawn from classical traditional Chinese recipes but I guess they’re modern because we use modern sustainable produce.
Have you ever found it’s hard to sort of translate these kinds of Chinese recipes using Australian ingredients, do you ever find that a challenge? Not at all. I’ve been to China 15 times in the last three years, just because of the projects I’ve been working on and I always of course, find, come home with lots of recipe ideas and inspiration. What I get from over there are new cooking techniques, new ingredient combinations and then I bring them back here. For example, I was in my home village in Guang Zhou – same technique, same ingredient combination, the same philosophy behind it but with high quality ingredients.
Do you think organic products taste better? Yeah they do, definitely. They are things that are grown in season, so no artificial preservatives, chemicals, no hormones, they are allowed to be as they were always meant to be. I mean mother nature doing, I mean I have a holistic view on the world and I’m one of those people who believe anything we need to learn in this lifetime we can learn from mother nature. Always eat things that are in season that just makes so much sense, go with the flow don’t go against it and of course they taste better because of those reasons – you’re not eating them out of context they haven’t been injected with these artificial things, they are allowed to grow in their natural cycle, they have a lot more flavour – colour is a lot more vibrant, the texture is a lot more intense. I’m talking about everyday ingredients, carrots, beetroot, potatoes, apples and bananas.
What’s your view on organic food being better for you – do you think there’s anything in that? I think of it every night. I also taught Chinese classes, I think it’s actually in you in your blood.
And your first job was with Neil Perry right? My first very good, notable job was at Rockpool when I was 26. I was a mature age apprentice, and I was with him for six years, working at Rockpool and then the head chef at Rockpool for four years so six years altogether.
Did you find that it was difficult being an older apprentice in an environment where everyone was 16? Yes I did, the first day I walked in there, when you start in there you start at the cold larder section which is not in the least sophisticated, it’s a very sophisticated section and I remember walking in, I’m 26 – I’ve already been in the workforce for six years as a graphic designer. I was a grown up and I was put in the cold larder section with three girls who were all 15 and 16 and that was hard but after six weeks, I sort of broke into that and just put my head down. The thing I had going for me was that I had that maturity to learn quicker and I knew I wanted to be a chef because I’ve done that and I knew what I wanted I was a lot more focused so that’s why I moved up quicker whereas the 15-year- olds still haven’t done that partying and going around the world sort of thing. I was around food more regularly, in particular Chinese food is something we can eat three or four times a week – it’s healthy, it’s interesting, it’s tasty, it’s inexpensive, highly accessible, but also fits in with our climate so you’ll see it in all the food magazines and all the recipe books and also too of course there’s a lot of awareness and mindfulness of the fact that we can vote for our corks you know being mindful of what we purchase understanding the importance of farmer’s markets and knowing that we’re only as good as our primary producers. There’s a lot more awareness about that, we’re certainly a long way behind the UK and the US but at least we’re starting and I think that’s the most important contribution my staff and I can make to our restaurant. This restaurant means not just a little Chinese restaurant that makes a profit, I think its having that, I think it’s very important for people to have that bigger picture on the world and life and as a high profile restaurateur and food person I feel a great responsibility to send out those right message you know what’s the best thing I can do for the community and build a business that has a social awareness like that. So everyone wins this situation plus customers get to eat this really yummy food.
Have you ever had plans to expand on this restaurant? No! Nooo! I’m just the one-off sort of gal. I like one-off things. I have here 21 staff, my mum does all the accounts, and then there’s just me, me and mum. I like it that way – it’s manageable, I haven’t cooked here for four years, it sort of just runs itself, gives me time to do all the other things which fulfil me – TV, books, travel. But I’m not so much of an empire builder and this place works, so the discipline for me is just to not touch it, it works.
I guess that can be difficult for a restaurateur when you’ve got this business and it’s working perfectly. Well, everyone thinks you’ve got this queue you know why don’t you get bigger and bigger and I’m thinking well just because it’s getting bigger and expands doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll always have that.
Is there a way of getting into this restaurant? Ever? I mean, seriously! Is there a time you can come where you think you might be able to get a seat? If you can bear it, it’s OK on a Saturday night –we are open seven nights a week, we open at 6pm on a Saturday and people start queuing up at 5.30pm. I mean, it’s boring but you’ll actually get in.
So queuing is the key. People count this table which is for groups of 6 to 8, so we do two seatings at 6.30pm and 8.30pm, so you actually can book this table for bigger groups but the rest is just first in, best dressed. If I take bookings it means I would only do two seatings per night. I leave it for economic reasons – I don’t take bookings, it’s the type of place people don’t linger here for hours. People usually come before they go to a show or before they go out or after, and Chinese food’s very quickly executed in the kitchen, the time is actually the labour, for the preparation the cutting, the actually cooking of it is quite quick so even though you might have to wait an hour and a half but once you get onto the table it’s right there in minutes.
So what does food actually mean to you, what does cooking mean to you? I know you’re not working actually in the restaurant doing service but I mean spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally… Well spiritually – let’s start with that. I think if one has got their spiritual life in tune then I think all of the other part with a conventional to organic, it’s not only for all of the reasons that we know but it’s also in line with my spiritual practice. I guess it’s also that growing in the Chinese household where my mother and father absolutely always celebrated food, loved food, food was a happy experience for me. Every night mum would cook some wonderful simple Cantonese food – six out of seven nights we had Cantonese. We’d sit down in the evening as family… we had to none of this TV business… and had a beautiful meal. And then every fortnight my parents used to have these wonderful big dinner parties for about 12 people. That’s where my brothers and I really learned how to cook. We’d go to Chinatown on Saturday with her, we’d go to Sydney fish markets, we learned how to choose the best fish – why it’s the best fish, we learned how to choose the best bok choy, ginger and so on. So she really taught us everything from market to table. Not just the importance of fresh ingredients, the importance of looking after your proditors she was really good friends with the Italian green grocer, Michael the Greek fisherman, the butcher guy, so she had this relationship with them that’s very important. So there’s all of that, then we would serve it to the guest and see the glare on their face, and I would see the glare on her face, the fulfilment and its sort of weird you know. I’ve grown up to be a restaurateur and that’s what we do, we put that lovely connection that brings you gives you the natural environment, the soil the corrects it’s this whole thing, it means everything to me. When I was in China, I did not speak Cantonese or Mandarin – the way I communicate with the Chinese people who do not communicate English, we speak cook to one another so to me it’s a very strong form of expression.
Tell me, where do you eat good Chinese food in Sydney where do you go? Well to be honest I don’t go to Chinese restaurants here in Sydney. I eat here three or four nights a week when I’m in town, a) because I want to be here, b) because it’s my business and it’s a good quality control. I know where all the produce is coming from. I’ve total organic devout whatever but Sea Treasure in Crow’s Nest, Ying’s, that new dumpling place…
Din Tai Fung. Yep. Yes I’m hearing very good things about that.
It’s good. I guess it’s with my lifestyle too, because I travel so much to Asia like five times to China last year – Hong Kong, Taiwan and the rest.
How do you get the good food? Well you go in with a few plastic dishes up your sleeve that Kylie Kwong’s told you you about. Go in there and say, ‘I don’t want the chilli sauce and the chop suey and the sweet and sour sort of thing. Could you please feed me the traditional Chinese family style steamed fish with ginger and shallot…’. I love the white chicken, you know like the stir fried eggplant with chilli and garlic, I think if you just wrap up a few things, they’ll go, ‘oh right she knows what she’s talking about’. But this assumption that Australian Chinese waiters make about what they think you Aussies wants is very annoying, and Australian people are very discerning about food these days and I think that’s another thing we’ve always tried to do at Billy Kwong, is to really help raise the profile of Chinese cuisine in Australia. It’s not all about number 14, chicken with lychees out of the tin and all that kind of stuff, it’s actually about the beautiful art of poaching a whole chicken, it’s actually about steaming a sustainable, live caught snapper from Wollongong, chilli salt squid that’s a wonderful classic dish as we all know, but have it without the MSG, have it when it’s cooked in oil have it with the best calamari in Australia with fresh organic tomatoes.
Do you think we have given ourselves a bad name, because of the big Canto places in Chinatown filled until three in the morning with drunks who want to get something to eat? Well every major city in the world, Paris, London, Florence, Sydney, New York, I’ve been to all of those and I’ve been to all of the Chinatowns there, they’re all the same. It’s just Chinese people in NYC, cooking what they think the New Yorkers want, which is all the yuppie stuff we get here. Same with London and Paris and whatever. If only they would cook what they would eat at home, so yes – we have given ourselves a bad but I think that syndrome happens all over the world in terms of Chinese food. You know I want what you have at home for dinner. I want what you have at the staff dinner, it would be like me thinking all the Italians have is spag bol and lasagne. Well, no – I want the shaved artichoke salad with the pickle… do you know what I mean? So to understand that you need to understand the Chinese psyche, I completely get it. I don’t agree with it and that’s why Billy Kwong’s different – because we have Western style service which is elegant, the lights aren’t bright, you don’t get minus 10 air con and you don’t get chipped plates – you know those classic sort of things you get in Chinese restaurants.
Where do you get a good Peking duck in this town? I’m always on a mission. That’s a good question. I know where to get a good Peking duck in Melbourne– Jiajia, you know I’ve got no idea! Sydney’s a funny place, because I know where you can get some really great roast duck the Peking duck but then again it’s about the pancakes the thinness of the pancakes, it’s all about the pancakes as well, there’s no point having the best roast duck but you get these tough, horrible cold pancakes. I don’t know, it’s funny I get asked so many times which Chinese restaurants I eat at and I don’t actually don’t actually eat at any in Sydney because of all the reasons I just said, and I don’t want free range chickens from the Barossa Valley but there’s lot of great free range/organic chickens available now it’s beautiful.
Yeah it’s really happening now, especially with dudes like Hugh Wennerbom and cutting out the middle man I think has become a big thing too and then Grant Hellier are doing it as well. Yeah that’s right, we’re getting roast duck and pigs from [unclear] as well, we buy our seafood in whole, the fish we have here is always whole [unclear]
Do you do all the dry fillet thing and all that kind of thing here? Yes we do, we do that here, Have we got any large scallops there Panando? We get these beautiful large scallops here. Well, see if you buy them at the fish market, they’ve cut them out and they’ve washed them and washed all the yumminess out, and this is just, that’s what I mean you keep them as rustic as possible.
And do you do anything with the roe? We cut that out – you don’t eat that little black bit, because it’s gritty and we wrap the whole scallop up with no sauce anyway because it’s so tasty anyway wrap it up in one of my uncle’s organic wonton wrappers, my uncle makes wonton wrappers and noodles for Chinatown and Chinese restaurants, and I give him the organic flour to make our organic pasta, so we wrap it up in one of his wonton wrappers and just boil it like ravioli with a lime chilli oil and dressing, one of the signatures.
How long have you been doing that? We’ve had that for about four years.
What are the golden rules about Chinese cooking? Always use the freshest produce, being organised before you begin the stir fry, steaming or deep frying, so having your ingredients chopped up ready to go, you do not need a wok to be able to cook your Chinese food successfully, what you do need is a really good stove, so whether it’s electric or gas, it’s about the heat, you need a high heat to do a good stir fry, electric wok – I mean I use my electric wok a lot. Always try what Chinese cooks try to do is, when I’m creating a dish and menu, he’s trying to find a balance and harmony between the flavour, the texture, the ingredients. Thai food for an example, you go to a Thai restaurant, you have dishes that are one’s really hot, one’s really sweet, one’s really sour, one’s really salty, so when you order in a Thai restaurant it’s really important what you order the combination. Now the difference between Thai and Chinese food is we try to obtain all those flavours in one dish, so it’s not extreme you could say and I think that’s why we can eat Chinese food three or four times a week but some of us can’t eat Thai food, it’s so strong but that’s why I love it as well. So it’s really about trying to obtain a balance between flavour, texture and colour.
And there’s some interesting things in texture in Chinese – I was reading the other day there are levels of texture which you don’t find at all. Sichuan cooking, which is on the south western corner of China, is very big on that texture thing, texture is very big in Chinese cuisine and of course texture is [unclear] and that’s where you get a complexity of texture, you’re eating the duck – it’s piping hot and steamy, velvet inside but really crunchy on the outside, texture is really important to the Chinese and that’s why Chinese cuisine like the French cuisine is such a sophisticated, it’s really sophisticated in the cooking methods in why they do things. We put a whole chicken in a stock for 15 minutes, we take it off the heat for 15mins and we let it cool off in that stock for three hours and that three hours is only part of the cooking process and that’s to get this velvety, silky texture of the chicken. Texture is very big and interesting in Chinese cooking.
I think that might be everything I need to know right now, except if you wanted to get good quality Chinese produce where would you buy it? From my point of view, I get organic stuff from Wholefoods House, which is my favourite organic grocery store in Date St, there’s also one in Woollahra. For all of the Chinese sauces, you know Tai Ki supermarket down in Sussex St, or the big one in Market City. You can get Chinese groceries everywhere in terms of all the sauces the condiments as you know, but in terms of all the fresh ingredients the bok choy or whatever – that’s where I go.
Billy Kwong Surry Hills
