Why Neil Perry is back in the kitchen
Less than a year ago, Neil Perry hung up his chef’s apron after 40 years in the industry. But he has some very good reasons for making a comeback.
Neil Perry was retired for what felt like five minutes. The legend of the Australian food scene announced his shock exit from the Rockpool Dining Group last July after 40 years working in restaurants. Six months later he had signed a 10-year lease for a new eatery in Sydney’s Double Bay, hired architects, come up with a concept and was back in business.
“I think it’s kind of like vampires needing blood. I always think I need the vibrancy and input of young people to stay young myself; it keeps me focused and driven,” he tells WISH over coffee just up the road from where his new venue will open. “I really missed the day-to-day interaction with my team, supporting them and growing them.
“A lot of people have said ‘hey, you are 64 this year – what are you doing? Are you nuts, signing leases and hiring people?’ But I just love the business so much I find it hard to see myself out of it now. I did take a break but I hated it.”
The project has particular personal significance for Perry: it is the first restaurant he will open and operate solo and he has chosen to name it after his late mother, Margaret.
He says his approach to food came from both his parents, but his father’s input has been known about for years. “If you know anything about me you will know that my father basically created the whole platform for the way I think about food and how I interact with it,” he says. “My father was a butcher and a mad-keen fisher and a gardener, and he taught me all about the seasons. We had an aviary and we had chickens, and we used to get the eggs and eat them a few days later. That was fundamentally where my whole philosophy came from.” What is not so well known, he says, is the impact his mother has had on his career and the influence she had on the way he runs his restaurants.
“I have a thing call the care philosophy, and that came from my mother’s nurturing and caring and sense of generosity that she created with her house,” he says. “We had a big extended family; there were always people staying. I grew up in this big Brady Bunch situation [with stepsisters and brothers] and she was always creating a focal point for the family. So that sense of generosity and community comes from Mum.”
After spending most of his career in fine dining and looking after corporate types in the city, with Rockpool Bar & Grill, Spice Temple and Rosetta, Perry is also going in a new direction with this restaurant: it will be a local bistro that caters for all at any time of day.
“I want it to be a really fantastic neighbourhood place,” he explains. “You might want to drop in at lunchtime and grab a sandwich at the bar; it might be 5pm in the afternoon and you feel like a glass of wine and a dozen oysters. Or you just want to grab a drink with friends and you know the best cocktails in Sydney are here, or you decide to take the family to celebrate your birthday. You know my restaurant can provide all of those things because it is accessible.”
The chef says Margaret’s focus will be on the quality of the ingredients and the craft of cooking that showcases them. There will be a wood-fired oven and charcoal grill. It will be dishes that Perry both loves to cook and loves to eat. “You will be able to spend as little or as much on the food,” he says. “The same as the wine list. It will be very affordable, but if you have some business guys come in who want to drink some Burgundy or Bordeaux, then those wines will be available.”
Perry says this new direction – what brought him out of retirement – was in part influenced by the impact of COVID-19 on the restaurant scene. “The suburbs are definitely feeling more vibrant than they ever have because I think people feel comfortable staying local,” he says. “The city will come back, of course, but a lot of small, dynamic firms have decided to take up residence around here. So Double Bay has that true village atmosphere, where you have commercial and corporates, residential, retail and restaurants. You have a community that is self-sustaining.”
It was also about the space that the new restaurant will occupy. As soon as Perry walked into the Pallas House Sydney redevelopment on the corner of Bay Street and Guilfoyle Avenue, then still a building site, he was taken with it. “I thought, wow, there isn’t a better site in the eastern suburbs,” he recalls. “I just had a really good feeling about it; it is north-facing, beautiful frontage and two of the best streets in Double Bay, and one of them faces Guilfoyle Park.” The $13.5 million refurbishment is being run by Pallas Capital and development group Fortis (the building will be house its new offices) and involves refitting the existing building and adding two floors. Perry has brought on famed Australian industrial designer David Caon and architecture firm ACME & Co to do the interiors of Margaret. “It has been a terrific collaboration,” he says.
Perry has known Caon for a while, having worked with him at Qantas. The chef did the food for business class and first class, and Caon did the interiors of the planes and the lounges in Perth and Singapore. Having not done a huge number of restaurants during his career, Caon is teaming up with husband-and-wife creative duo Vince Alafaci and Caroline Choker from ACME, who are responsible for such eateries as Fred’s in Paddington, Watsons Bay Hotel and the Grounds of Alexandria.
Caon says the design brief was focused both on the style of food – where great produce is key – and the slight personal touch, the 128-seater restaurant being named after Neil’s mother. “It is not a fine dining restaurant,” he tells WISH. “It is nothing like Rockpool and is a contemporary neighbourhood place that is a great daytime venue as well as having ambience in the evening.”
The industrial designer says he and Alafaci and Choker – who are also close friends – focused on using natural materials such as Oregon timber, terracotta bricks, limestone and bronze. He also created some special design elements that are on show throughout the space, from the bespoke lighting to the waiter stations. Caon, who often designs for projects overseas, says he was enjoying actually living in the same state as the restaurant. “I have learnt a lot because I very rarely get to visit a site so just being able to walk though it has been fantastic,” he says.
Is he at all nervous about designing the restaurant Perry is coming out of retirement for and is dedicating to his mother? “There is an element of pressure,” laughs Caon. “But people come to Neil’s restaurants for the food not the fitout, so I would say there is more pressure on him.”
The venue is due to open in June and Perry cannot wait to get back into the kitchen after being out of it for so long. “I did some cooking at Rockpool when it opened in June and July after the lockdown, but it will be well over a year by the time we get back and I am on the grill again and calling service,” he says. “Cooking for people again and being completely responsible for everything again will be just great.”
Indeed it has been a while since Perry has been in charge of his restaurants. In 2016, he sold his Rockpool Bar & Grill, Spice Temple and Rosetta restaurants to Quadrant Private Equity for $60 million and they became the Rockpool Dining Group. Perry was culinary director, ambassador and shareholder, and over the next few years RDG expanded to include 85 venues, including mid-tier restaurants such as The Bavarian and Fratelli Fresh. Then there was the Fair Work Ombudsman investigation into RDG underpaying staff [one of many such investigations in the industry] that led to underpayments being back-paid, and the group revamping its payroll systems and implementing compliance training.
In March last year, it was announced that Perry was going to buy back Rockpool Bar & Grill, Spice Temple and Rosetta. However the pandemic hit and the plan collapsed as neither side could agree on the restaurants’ valuation given lockdowns and restrictions. In July, Perry announced he was leaving RDG as culinary director and ambassador. He is still a shareholder and a consultant.
The chef spent much of his brief retirement making and delivering 300,000 meals to those struggling under pandemic lockdowns – visa workers, international students and hospitality staff who had lost their jobs. He started Hope Delivery in March 2020 in the midst of the first lockdown, and it has grown into a broader initiative that will feed several different vulnerable groups as well as having a commercial kitchen and a city café at Piccadilly Shopping Centre on Pitt Street.
“We hope to start a program where city workers can come and buy a meal for lunch and know they are feeding potentially three other people,” he says. “There is not going to be a shortage of vulnerable people in Australia. We know that COVID-19 has certainly pushed people below the poverty line. We know that it has pushed people into a situation, where even though they are not homeless, they are potentially thinking ‘do I pay the electricity bill this week or do I feed the family?’”
Perry says Hope Delivery was the highlight of his 2020, as was the way we handled the pandemic in this country. “Australians deserve a massive pat on the back for putting up with everything we did and responding properly,” he says. “I have felt proud of our leadership and amazingly proud of the leadership in NSW; I think Gladys should be made a saint – forget about being knighted!”
He says the industry still faces significant challenges – including a staff shortage, with the international borders still being closed – but he believes people now value being able to go out for a meal or a drink with their loved ones so much more after the past 12 months.
“What we have learned is that it is actually a privilege, not a right, to catch up with friends and family,” Perry says. “Every time we are allowed to get together we should actually take a really good run at getting the most out of it.”