When chips are down, fine dining delivers for celebrity chefs

In dire straights and with no end in sight, top chefs like Neil Perry are increasingly turning to what was once the reserve of suburban Chinese restaurants and pizza shops.

Neil Perry at his new restaurant Margaret in Sydney’s Double Bay, which has been transformed into a hub for home delivery. Picture: Nikki Short

Fine dining takeaway. It’s a concept that would have been hard to fathom just a few short years ago.

Instead, the experience of dining at one of the country’s best restaurants would always require an often hard-to-come-by booking.

But 18 months of pandemic has changed the landscape entirely.

Facing dire circumstances, and with no end in sight for lockdowns plaguing Sydney and Melbourne, top chefs are increasingly turning to terrain that was once the reserve of suburban Chinese restaurants and pizza shops.

Neil Perry, best known for his institutional Rockpool Bar & Grill, had only just put the finishing touches on his first new restaurant Margaret, in Sydney’s Double Bay, when the city went into a strict lockdown in June.

The restaurant’s luxe interior, however, has now been converted into a makeshift warehouse from where Perry sends out a phenomenally successful line of dine-at-home meals. “It’s taken me 64 years to realise that I just wanted to have one restaurant and to be here everyday cooking, working with my team and to be with my customers and that’s been taken away from me,“ Perry says of the pandemic.

“I personally struggle a lot with what’s going on. I’ve had some ­really dark thoughts and emotions because I’ve got so much on the line and I worked so hard all my life to be in the position that I’m in. I have this beautiful restaurant and there’s boxes and tarps everywhere. It’s pretty soul destroying, but we’re staying alive.”

Perry’s daughter, Josephine, was to have run front-of-house at Margaret. She says finding out they couldn’t open was “gut wrenching”

“From a family’s perspective, we were heartbroken for the staff. We were all geared up ready to go and with the snap of the fingers everyone was out of a job again.”

Unfortunately, this is a feeling felt collectively by chefs across the entire industry, including Josephine’s husband Michael Clift. He is one of the team behind Bistrot 916, a newly opened French diner hitting its stride when the Sydney lockdown began.

Bistrot 916 had to move quickly to come up with a survival plan.

Both Perry and Bistrot 916 can now be found, along with other fine-dining institutions like Golden Century, Cirrus and Monopole, delivering meals at home. The biggest success is Providoor, a food delivery service catering to the top of the market. Its creator? Melbourne chef Shane Delia.

Chef Perry Chow prepares steak at Sydney’s Rockpool Bar & Grill, ready for delivery to Neil Perry At Home customers. Picture: Nikki Short

Perry said his decision to pivot towards home-delivery – with a range called Neil Perry At Home – was “twofold” as the Covid-19 situation worsened. “One was just absolutely survival. The other was keeping my team together and staying in contact,” Perry says.

“We didn’t want the first experience of Margaret to be taken away so I started Neil Perry At Home and put together a really lovely menu that can be reheated and cooked simply, but still creates a super delicious meal. It’s keeping everybody busy and, importantly, it’s keeping everybody working together.”

Delia, who owns Melbourne restaurants Maha, Maha Bar and Maha East, says he had been looking for new ways to connect with customers for 20 years before launching Providoor.

“When the whole world was thrown into turmoil, the hospitality industry was scrambling,” Delia says. “We spoke to our customers and asked them if they would be interested in getting a premium product at home that could be finished at home in 10 or 15 minutes and we were overwhelmed with yesses. I worked out pretty quickly that I could do it with a cold delivery model.”

For Rockpool Bar & Grill, the focus on home meals remains recreating the restaurant’s signature meals, a challenge when that happens to be a wood-fired steak.

“I knew there would be an appetite for Rockpool’s finish-at-home meals, but I’m surprised at how many orders we have received, and how far away many customers live – right across NSW and as far as Canberra,” says Corey Costelloe, Rockpool’s culinary director. “We ensure they have the same flavour as they would for our in-venue guests, then they are chilled, packed and sent to the customer with cooking instructions that will deliver almost the same as they would get if they were here.”

Other chefs have had to think of new ways of recreating the food they’d usually serve diners.

At Pyrmont’s Sokyo restaurant, chef Chase Kojima says delivery is “a whole different game”.

“There’s the packaging to think about, how the food will look visually, how it’s going to be delivered, and how the experience will be like for the guest,” ­Kojima says. “A lot of thinking was involved. A lot of tests. But we were able to do it.”

Curating a menu that is “still Sokyo” in terms of its beautiful flavours and ingredients, Kojima had to reimagine the entire menu so it was suitable for delivery.

“We had to reinvent the menu at Sokyo and tweak the preparations and flavours to ensure that it lasts. Everything from flavours and seasoning was geared towards delivery,” Kojima says.

And while Kojima’s dishes are 90 per cent complete, he says the experience lies with its presentation. “We wanted our guests to experience restaurant-quality food at home. I wanted to make it so it’s ready to go. A lot of thought went into it.”