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My
Career Path - right place, right time, right
parents
My early interest in flavour and conviviality was
of paramount importance to my subsequent career.
My mother an outstanding and a curious cook. She
had no formal training but she prepared and served
lovely food every day at a lively family table. I
still believe that the luckiest children are those
encouraged to take a broad and active interest in
the table from their earliest years.
I feel that my working life has turned a full
circle.
I started out training as a librarian,
specializing in working in schools, and being part
of the special excitement in schools after the
election of the Whitlam Government when resources
flowed and there was energy and new thinking about
curriculum content. An ideal time to be a school
librarian.
In the 60's one also noticed the first glimmerings
of general interest in "creative" cooking in
Australia. Picked up first of all in magazines and
daily newspapers. The first signs of a food media.
Existing restaurants were expensive, formal,
exclusive and rigidly European. Interested young
cooks needed the advent of the BYO legislation to
have a go.
Lessons of Jamaica House - My First Step 1966
* Enthusiasm and popularity are not enough.
* Physical burnout often the result of a
personal vision that cannot be delegated
* There is a critical size for success -
below this and one can never make it
* Pressure on relationship when the
business pressure is equally intense. Babies and
restaurants don't mix
* This job is HARD
I retreated back to libraries for a few years but
the itch did not go away.
Stephanie's Restaurant 1976 - 1997
* Heightened community interest by now
(mid-70's)
* Staff management issues for first time;
staff benefits, training issues(I didn't. know
much more than they did),
* Dealing with the multitude of hidden
responsibilities from rubbish removal to
maintenance, to daily quality control and storage
of food
* Financial realities - I was a rank
amateur who loved to cook; overdrafts, interest
rates, insurance premiums, utility costs, not to
mention accurate costing of food that included
allowance for wastage- I left a lot of this to my
husband/partner who worried constantly.
* Importance of peer support - small group
of restaurateurs who met together on an informal
basis (The Staleys, The Schneiders, The Rogalskys,
Mietta and Tony, Ian Hewitson, Ray Tsindos -hot
arguments but useful information exchanged)
* Importance of travel and tasting and
learning how others solved problems.
The 21 years of Stephanie's Restaurant were
demanding, challenging, physically exhausting,
exciting, and influential. Much of the personal
pleasure lay in inspiring others - my apprentices
and younger people around me, and as always, the
pleasure of actually creating, the chopping, the
simmering, the alchemy and the satisfaction -
nothing like it. And of course there was nothing
like the adrenalin rush after a night on the
stoves and a good service and happy customers.
By this time I had also felt the need to
communicate what I was finding out, and to allow
my musings to be heard. I had after all been
initially inspired by great food writing as much
as by the experience gained at my mother knee.
Increasingly I have been convinced that an
appreciation of good food is centrally important
to a good life and to a healthy planet. I was also
very concerned that so many young people seemed to
be culinarily impoverished. And I wanted to record
my pleasure in moments shared and places visited
where good food, friendship and tolerance met
around a table.
My first book was published in 1985, and in 2007
my twelfth book will appear. In 1996 I published
The Cook's Companion, an attempt to address the
ignorance I found all around me. This book was
reissued in a completely revised and expanded
version in 2004. People from all walks of life, of
both sexes, of all ages (but especially those
under the age of 30) were tentative at best,
unable at worst, to prepare simple great-tasting
food for themselves without anxiety. The
vindication of my belief that they simply need the
right help is the sales of that book - more than
350,000 and still selling. I am very proud to have
made a measurable difference to so many lives.
Lessons of Stephanie's Restaurant
* Necessity to stand back from the stove
and take in the bigger picture
* Ongoing difficulty of delegating a
personal vision
* Accepting that a compromised vision might
be the only way to retain physical and mental
health
* Appreciating value of key staff members
and the importance of accurate job descriptions,
and even more important, regular staff appraisals
of performance
* Accepting that financial systems are of
major importance but need to be handled
professionally for maximum efficiency and
effective time-management
* More and more pressure for good
management, both within the kitchen and the front
of house and the office
* Need for speedy turnaround of figures so
that can quickly see whether all the effort is
working
* The challenge to work "on the business"
rather than only " in the business" - this is
still a problem for me as I am a practical
hands-on person
* The importance of effective marketing - a
very vague concept- profile has to be kept in
public mind somehow
* Importance of friendship
* Importance of building confidence never
destroying it
Richmond Hill Cafe & Larder 1997 2005
In 1997 with 3 other partners I opened a more
accessible food outlet, the Richmond Hill Cafe &
Larder. A great cafe with the best cheese rooms in
the country, probably in the Southern Hemisphere,
and a small food store attached. This enterprise
has given me enormous pleasure and satisfaction. I
can interact with the young cooks, cheese room
specialists and waiting staff and the public and I
only have to advise and taste rather than chop and
peel.
Lessons of 4th venture
* Love of good food is still the NUMBER ONE
quality
* Being a chef is a young person's job.
Need energy to dash up and down stairs, to poke
into cupboards, to bend and twist and lift boxes,
and pull cool rooms apart on a daily basis, before
one even starts on the boxes of artichokes or the
fillets of beef.
* Accept the reality that each generation
will re-invent the wheel to various degrees.
* An executive chef can be less hands-on,
but to be effective still needs to know precisely
what is going on in the kitchen and to taste the
food CONSTANTLY.
* Management skills essential.
* Staff training skills essential.
* Ability to be assertive without being
aggressive.
* Ability to accurately cost food and to
interpret financial data.
* Enthusiasm for the product and knowledge
of how it is prepared.
* Personal organisation, maintain files,
records, menus, supplier details.
* Ability to create a team that works well
together.
There is always more than one way to do things.
I am now consulting for the time being and have
handed the reins to my former business manager
Luisa Lucchesi and I find it delightful to watch
the next generation take charge.
Kitchen Garden at Collingwood College - July 2001
And most recently I have just returned to the
classroom although in a purely advisory capacity
-helping to establish a comprehensive gardening
and cooking program for primary school students at
Collingwood College, an inner-city Melbourne
school whose students represent 36 nationalities,
most of whom come from low-income families. Here I
want to test my theory that if one catches them
young it may be possible to broaden food
experiences and change food habits.
Persistence, passion and a great team keep the
project and the dream alive.
Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation -
Feb 2004
I feel that I am completing the circle handing
back to other young people some of the experiences
that influenced me so profoundly.
My Foundation has just been granted Deductible
Gift Recipient Status and we will now move into
serious fund-raising to enable more primary
schools to consider joining this movement.
This project will take as much energy as I am able
to give.
It is as far into the future as I want to look
There has to be still plenty of time for reading,
for traveling, for being with friends and family,
and for eating and drinking good things. |
