0:00 [Music]
0:07 [Music]
0:20 It's a very basic and humble beginning.
0:22 I answered an advert in the newspaper
0:25 for a head chef job here. M it had been
0:28 running for 1 and a half years before I
0:30 started. And so my inspiration for the
0:32 place was really u kind of more out of a
0:35 survival instinct, you know, had a
0:38 6-month old child. We couldn't pay the
0:40 bills and I was 27 years old and had to
0:43 become a head chef because of those
0:44 circumstance, you know, and um I'm sure
0:47 a lot of people can relate to that early
0:49 struggle raising kids and and trying to
0:52 manage finances. And so realistically,
0:54 it wasn't not a romantic start here.
0:56 It's just literally out of life's
0:59 necessity. When I did start, um, the
1:03 business was not doing very well at all.
1:05 It had been going for one and a half
1:07 years and it wasn't a restaurant that
1:09 people liked very much, um, in
1:11 particular
1:13 and I felt quite a lot of pressure to do
1:17 something about it and to really change
1:19 that mindset. I also Julie had a really
1:25 strong creative urge that I didn't fully
1:28 understand because I was a 27 year old
1:30 and and that was probably the thing that
1:34 helped us stick around in those early
1:36 years. Um yeah, when I was an employee a
1:39 lot of the early years are kind of a
1:40 blur. So there was this is our 20th year
1:42 and in August Adacru would have been
1:45 under my tenure ship um for 20 years the
1:49 first decade as an employee and the last
1:51 decade as the owner and I suppose like
1:54 that first five to 10 years really just
1:57 really felt like a total blur like I was
2:00 in a tunnel uh like we're just trying to
2:03 do anything we could to survive and
2:04 we're using creativity as the main
2:07 answer to all the problems. Um, and
2:10 we're just trying to develop our own
2:12 personal style and culture here and and
2:15 that takes time for a cook. Um, as they
2:18 shed their significant mentors. I mean,
2:20 the the restaurant um is vastly
2:22 different than it was 15 years ago, 10
2:26 years ago, 5 years ago, even 2 years
2:29 ago. Uh, this place is kind of has a
2:32 forward momentum of constant evolution.
2:35 We kill our darlings every day in terms
2:38 of the dishes that we create. They have
2:40 a life of course. And when they're done,
2:44 they come off the menu and they never
2:46 come back on again. And and because of
2:48 that, it always kind of keeps us looking
2:52 forward to what we want to be and what
2:55 we want to say on the plate and what we
2:56 think is delicious and what we think
2:58 people would like. But certainly
3:00 creatively um whatever our inspirations
3:03 are it it's easy to look back on it and
3:05 go you know what we had no supporters in
3:07 the early years um which is only partly
3:09 true. There was some really amazing
3:11 people who came in and said things that
3:14 were so kind and so helpful and without
3:17 those thoughtful words we probably
3:20 wouldn't have made it. But I would say
3:23 it was a pretty solid five years before
3:26 before the bulk of people started to
3:29 change their perceptions or found out
3:30 about the restaurant. And I would say
3:33 sort of probably 10 years it it it was
3:37 sort of solidifying itself
3:39 as as a restaurant with a serious
3:41 intentions. I suppose during the
3:43 lockdowns and co up until that point you
3:46 know we always had felt tremendous sense
3:48 of community support
3:50 but then we had to close down and it was
3:53 it felt certain that we would lose
3:55 everything. I was pretty sure that the
3:57 company would go broke and I don't come
4:00 from money and I don't have a backup
4:02 plan. This is it. And so it was
4:05 terrifying. And the community of
4:09 Melbourne supported the restaurant in
4:11 that 2 years like solely. Adica had
4:14 always had a reasonably big
4:15 international
4:17 um clientele and and so that went
4:21 overnight of course and so did
4:22 interstate support and then we were just
4:24 in Melbourne and the people of Melbourne
4:27 really turned up for us and I I think
4:29 that's because we'd always been
4:31 community-minded and engaged with our
4:33 community. But there was certainly many
4:35 moments of self-doubt and in every every
4:38 moment of doubt, you know, people
4:40 ordered lasagna, people wrote to us
4:43 expressing gratitude. We met people in
4:45 our bake shop, we met people in our in
4:47 our pop-up restaurant in the valley, you
4:49 know, so the so there was just an
4:52 incredible sort of sense of
4:55 um goodwill and it was something that
4:58 I've told myself that I'm never going to
5:00 forget. You know, it changed me forever.
5:04 I think Ripenley is like a very unique
5:06 community. It's obviously like more like
5:09 a small village where most people know
5:12 each other. It's super interconnected. I
5:14 think people are super respectful of one
5:16 another here. Um I feel like um that
5:20 I've always got friends here and and
5:23 that's been a very cool thing. Like
5:25 certainly back in 2005 when we started
5:28 it wasn't as bustling as it is now. you
5:31 know, it was kind of joke that was kind
5:32 of tumble weeds coming down the street a
5:34 little bit. U there weren't I think
5:36 there was one cafe maybe and now there's
5:39 three or four. I've always liked that um
5:41 that people are respectful but they'll
5:43 also let you do your work and don't get
5:45 involved too much if that makes sense.
5:48 Um and that's important and and I've
5:50 just always felt very welcome here I
5:52 guess. Um and you know I've chosen to
5:54 live here and and run this company here
5:55 for so long.
5:59 Well, that was just an answer to a
6:00 problem. And the problem was we were
6:02 going to go broke and we had to do
6:03 something. We were coming out of a
6:05 lockdown and the public was going to be
6:08 allowed to return to outdoor dining. And
6:10 Adica has almost no outdoor dining
6:13 options. The footpath wasn't going to
6:15 cut it.
6:17 And we were in Chadston and I saw an
6:22 enormous line of people lining up for
6:25 Kmart, like hundreds. And we walked past
6:29 Gucci and Gucci had nobody in it and no
6:32 line. Both businesses were open. It was
6:33 this kind of weird little moment. And
6:36 and just by seeing both of those scenes,
6:39 I knew kind of where we sat and I knew
6:41 where we needed to be. And we made the
6:44 plan to in the summer to open a a
6:47 restaurant that was much larger, a much
6:50 lower price and was almost completely
6:52 outdoors and and that was like a wild
6:56 and super fun time. So, it's just a it's
6:59 just a solution to a problem. I tend to
7:02 think that problems should be normalized
7:04 and seen um as things to just overcome
7:08 rather than insurmountable. and and so
7:10 yeah, our problem was we couldn't really
7:11 do any numbers here because of the
7:13 restrictions. We need to find a
7:17 solution. When we talk about native
7:19 foods, this these are ingredients that
7:22 kind of belong to people and there's
7:24 culture and story and cooking that's
7:26 attached to them. And so that's really
7:29 interesting as a cook and really a
7:32 massive source of inspiration because we
7:34 are living in a country with the old
7:36 world's oldest food and and that's a
7:38 beautiful thing and so I've had a small
7:40 window into that through relationships
7:42 and community. Um but we tread carefully
7:45 and I feel like you know there's around
7:49 5 to 6 thousand native foods in
7:52 Australia. We have really barely eaten
7:55 any of them. Uh even even Adica and our
7:58 our team who are heavily involved in
8:00 this industry, most people have probably
8:03 only tried five or six. Um we've
8:05 probably only tried 500 of those of
8:08 those foods. And so really the potential
8:11 for inspiration is endless. Um but we
8:14 try to do it responsibly. I I don't
8:16 really have favorite dishes. Um probably
8:19 my favorite dish is the dish that's not
8:21 on the menu that's in development. So at
8:23 any one time there might be up to six
8:26 different dishes being developed and
8:28 created behind the scenes. You know,
8:30 we've had my in my whole life I've had a
8:32 real love affair with lasagna. And it's
8:34 something that came into my family as a
8:36 small child and it became our family's
8:38 culture and the way that we celebrated
8:40 every special occasion from birthdays to
8:41 Christmas day. No matter how hot it was,
8:43 we'd make lasagna. My mother started
8:46 that. I
8:48 um I took that on and evolved it. We
8:52 made lasagna to survive during the
8:54 pandemic. We sold 17 and a half thousand
8:56 lasagnas. And I wrote 10,000 words on
8:59 lasagna in Bolognese in my new book,
9:01 Uses for Obsession. We put lasagna on
9:04 the menu after having a rule that is no
9:07 pasta here. Um, and so recently after
9:11 taking the Adica lasagna dish off the
9:13 menu and having some space from it, I've
9:16 come back and and created another
9:18 version of lasagna which is really just
9:20 about the crispy top of the lasagna. And
9:24 so that was what I was working on
9:25 yesterday. So that's probably like if I
9:27 had a favorite dish that would be it
9:28 that it would be this thing that I'm
9:29 working on that I'm excited to share
9:30 with people that I think is going to
9:33 bring joy to them.
9:36 [Music]
9:37 Well, that's actually a New Zealand
9:39 painting. Um, yeah. Yeah, that's by
9:41 Ruben Patterson, Tero Maui, artist.
9:43 Incredible, incredible artist. Um Um,
9:47 and so there's a variety of art. It's
9:50 not dogmatically Australian. Sometimes
9:52 there right now there's two New Zealand
9:54 paintings in the restaurant. There's a
9:56 there's a painting behind you from a
9:57 painter um in Ocean Grove. Um there's a
10:00 painter from New York City to your left.
10:02 So, it's really like a a wide variety of
10:05 art, but art is crucial in not only in
10:09 the experience of experiencing Adekica
10:11 as a customer, but certainly as as the
10:14 co-owner of the restaurant and as
10:17 somebody who's creative because the art
10:20 you see is generally linked to the
10:21 restaurant in some more meaningful way
10:23 than just a painting on the wall. Often
10:26 these people are personal friends and we
10:29 have collaborated on projects and so
10:31 there's an entire experience out the
10:34 back a whole installation built by very
10:36 very famous artists from from um Los
10:39 Angeles called Dabs Miler. Art informs
10:41 everything here you know art is is the
10:44 restaurant is part of the restaurant
10:46 that restaurant is creating art. Um
10:49 we're heavily involved in the art
10:50 community and the restaurant has a
10:51 collection of art that changes annually
10:53 as well in the dining room. So, it's
10:55 it's important that I think that the
10:58 art, you know, speaks to something about
11:00 the restaurant and informs the work of
11:03 the restaurant. Um, but also that it's a
11:06 place for our staff to enjoy as well and
11:08 for our guests to come in and, you know,
11:11 feel like um on some level that you're
11:13 in a small
11:16 gallery. Probably the number one thing
11:18 that I think of here when I think of
11:21 Adica in mid-century are the cheers. The
11:24 chairs are designed by Grant Featherston
11:26 1961. They're escape dining chair.
11:28 They're they're they're a Australian
11:30 chair. Um and they were remade under
11:33 license um from the Featherston's by
11:36 Gratzia Materia and by Gratzia and Co.
11:40 for the restaurant at a great cost and
11:42 and they're very very special. They're a
11:44 forever chair. Um, so specifically
11:47 re-engineered
11:49 uh for the customer to be able to sit 3
11:51 hours in and also because they're a
11:53 really important part of our culture and
11:56 history in Melbourne. Um, this is a
11:58 design from here that we of which we
12:00 should be so proud. Mhm. It I feel like
12:04 in terms of our home, I very much Connie
12:06 and I very much feel like we're the
12:08 custodians of this special house and
12:10 this this very special thing which is
12:13 like a work of art and it's our
12:15 responsibility to protect this home for
12:17 future generations so that this home
12:19 will always be around. Um and and so you
12:23 know that's a cool that's a cool thing
12:25 to live in. You live in a you know a
12:27 living and breathing work of art. And
12:29 you know, in terms of houses, you know,
12:33 the mid-century architects were
12:35 incredible at bringing kind of the
12:36 outside in. So, the way that the light
12:38 passes through our home, the way that
12:41 you sit on the sofa and view the four
12:44 seasons, um, and the way that the house
12:47 makes people who visit feel. And, and
12:49 you don't have to be an architecture
12:51 buff to to be affected by our house. You
12:54 know, it could be an Amazon delivery
12:57 driver just coming in and going, "Oh,
13:00 wow. This house makes me feel good." You
13:03 know, sadly, we don't see as much of
13:04 that these days. You know, we in the '
13:07 50s and 60s was kind of like the peak of
13:09 people engaging with architects to build
13:11 homes and not always at high costs. Many
13:14 of these architects were working to to
13:17 keep costs down and to and to solve
13:19 problems. and and and today we find
13:23 ourselves in a different situation where
13:24 not of enough of us are actually
13:26 choosing great architects to design our
13:28 homes. And I think that's you know
13:30 something that we've lost a little bit
13:32 and hopefully we can find back. We
13:34 should support architects. We should
13:35 engage architects if we can afford to.
13:40 Well, I I guess you know from the little
13:43 that I know about Dr. Ernest Fuks, he is
13:47 just this really hyper intelligent man
13:51 who's like a scholar and and who did a
13:53 variety of things from, you know,
13:56 qualifying very early as an architect in
13:59 Vienna and as a town planner to moving
14:02 here in 1939 and facing anti
14:05 anti-semitism and having to overcome
14:08 that and then building his own
14:09 successful architecture practice to
14:12 becoming really the preminent, you know,
14:15 Jewish architect or architect architect
14:17 of our time. I still don't think he gets
14:19 his just desserts. You know, I think
14:20 he's still to this day very underrated
14:22 and yet he bought built about and
14:25 designed about 400 buildings. Um, so
14:27 he's a really really significant
14:29 Australian architect. I think he he was
14:32 just a really deep thinker and I I
14:34 understand this because of my my study
14:37 on on on the guy and my admiration for
14:40 the houses that he built in our area and
14:43 they just um have a sense of a person
14:47 who knows themsel creatively like
14:48 there's a maturity about them and um
14:52 they are inherently beautiful. They have
14:55 unique features. the use of um timber
14:59 and natural materials and influences
15:02 from Japan is evident in these houses.
15:04 He was a person who traveled um and and
15:08 so I guess like um in a sense they were
15:10 some of the best well-rounded and but
15:13 certainly one thing that that um people
15:17 coming out of Europe in the 19 uh 30s
15:20 and 40s brought was this really knowing
15:24 sense of quality and what quality is.
15:28 And so when you when you go into a house
15:30 that was designed by Erns Fuks, you're
15:32 not only looking at the design, but
15:34 you're looking at the attention to
15:35 detail that he paid to making sure that
15:37 every single person that worked on that
15:39 job, from the builder to the to the
15:41 cabinet maker to the person installing
15:42 the toilet was on a high level. And I so
15:45 I think that's really the definition of
15:48 of an artist or a great architect is
15:51 that not only do they design something,
15:53 but they also have the context, the
15:55 friends and the collaborators to see it
15:57 be fully realized.
16:02 How do you find living in Southeast
16:04 Melbourne? Well, clearly I think it's
16:06 the greatest. You know, that's pretty
16:07 obvious. Um, and I and I've always lived
16:10 here from the time that I moved to
16:11 Australia in 2002 as a 25year-old. Um, I
16:15 think the green spaces, the proximity to
16:17 the beach. Uh, I also love my
16:20 neighborhood. I've got the best
16:21 neighbors imaginable. I've never lived
16:24 in such a tremendously kind and engaged
16:31 neighborhood. I just think that
16:32 everything is connected. You know, that
16:34 that that all creative endeavors are
16:36 connected. They all have
16:38 similarities. And often people, you
16:40 know, even people in business who don't
16:42 see themselves as creative are highly
16:45 creative. And I think there's a little
16:47 bit of a a disconnect between people who
16:49 see themselves creating art, somebody
16:51 like me, and somebody who, you know, is
16:54 is working at an accountancy firm and
16:56 thinks that they don't they don't have a
16:58 lot of creativity. But I I would I would
17:00 say that some of the greatest creativity
17:01 that I've seen, you know, could be in
17:03 accountancy, could be in problem
17:05 solving. And and so I think creative
17:07 creativity is just a a mechanism to
17:10 overcome things and to solve problems
17:12 and and so I think that that that that
17:15 creativity is fascinating in all walks
17:17 of life and that all humans have that
17:18 ability to create and and make things
17:20 and and and we shouldn't lose sight of
17:23 that.
17:24 [Music]
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