Royal Mail Hotel – molecular gastronomy with an Australian accent

Meet Dan Hunter, Executive Chef of the Royal Mail Hotel’s restaurant and bistro.
A hotel with a name reflecting the past, and a restaurant whose chef combines old-fashioned values with the latest gastronomic trends, the Royal Mail has taken out the 2009 AHA Award for Best Restaurant, (Country).

Nestling in the foothills of the Southern Grampians, Victoria, in the little town of Dunkeld, it is set among native gardens and fruit orchards with stunning views of the Ranges. The hotel has positioned itself at the high end of the visitor experience, with an award winning restaurant and wine cellar, bistro, meeting and conference facilities and the historic Mt Sturgeon Estate for guests to explore and enjoy.
Executive chef and manager Dan Hunter has been cooking for about 12 years, and is strongly influenced by his time in Spain. He joined the Royal Mail in 2007 after a career at the two-Michelin-starred Mugaritz in Spain’s Basque Country.
After work experience at Mugaritz, he took on the position of Chef de Partie and then worked his way up to Sous Chef. In 2006 he took on the role of Head Chef, which he held for one year before returning to Australia and joining the Royal Mail.
Here he has his own kitchen gardens with free-range chickens, fruit orchards and a greenhouse for herb production. He works closely with his dedicated garden and kitchen teams to produce food reflecting his natural surrounds and the seasons.

Diners are offered a creative cuisine linked to nature, the hotel’s location and the seasons. Each day the kitchen prepares two tasting menus based on organic and heirloom produce selected from the kitchen gardens.
These ‘menu omnivore’ and ‘menu vegetarian’ are a progression of small, refined dishes focusing on purity of flavour inspired by the natural surroundings. Dan employs a variety of techniques to enhance these values. Cooking at low temperatures, extended cooking in temperature-controlled water baths are combined with non-traditional ingredients to achieve unique textures and balance of flavours.
BISTRO spoke to Dan Hunter and asked him about his style of cooking.

The produce from the hotel gardens and greenhouse is what is cooked in the kitchen. What inspired you to create this ultimately seasonal and regional model?
Cooking seasonally and regionally is not only an idea that has been in fashion since the dawn of time but is an obvious and necessary choice when you live in a rural community without daily access to capital city markets. I want to produce a menu that speaks of a time and a place that demonstrates the nuance of season and celebrates diversity.

What are the advantages of being ‘local and seasonal’?
The advantages are always centred around the final result – flavour. Fruit, vegetables and to some degree, proteins, all have an undoubtedly better flavour when they are in season, grown organically and eaten close to where they were grown or raised.

What are the challenges of this approach?
To be true to our ethos and to use produce relative to the seasons. Often, there are discrepancies between what the magazines say are in season and what we have in our garden. Someone asked recently ‘why do you have artichokes on the menu when they’re out of season?’ We’ve had artichokes producing for about eight months solid. So sometimes the public perception of seasonality is driven by what they see on supermarket shelves in Sydney or Melbourne.
It’s also very demanding running a restaurant and a garden at the same time – although I believe that restaurants should have gardens.

How much work is involved in growing and sourcing local produce?
Every day of the week for at least three hours, part of the kitchen team is in the garden. Aside from that, there is the annual planning and evaluation of the needs and wants of the kitchen. It’s a very involved process and hard to break down into hours.
Of course there are physical hours worked in the garden, but there are also many hours spent in the garden or in Dunkeld thinking about our production needs and also future dishes.

Where do you source your recipes?
We are involved in a creative cuisine, that is to say that we have influences, but ultimately when it comes to designing dishes we hope to be individuals and come up with our own ideas.
What amount of research and testing do you do to produce a menu of your standard?
Again, this separation of physical working hours spent at the restaurant and time talking on the phone to a farmer is really difficult. I think most people would be shocked at the hours we work and the commitment needed to produce two 10-course menus each night.

How do you keep your skills and ideas current?
I’m not sure some days if our skills and ideas are current! We are aware that people find what we do to be not only interesting but of an extremely high standard. I just try to continually refine our style and improve our execution. There will always be people who don’t enjoy our food on a style basis, but I hope they would at least acknowledge the obvious effort that goes in and that what we do is of a good quality.

On the Royal Mail Hotel website you mention using ‘non-traditional ingredients’– please give us a few examples. What do you achieve by doing this?
Tradition is generally based on the past or things that have always been done a certain way. In cooking terms this relates to not only methods but also ingredients. We currently live in a very creative period where advancements in professional cooking are taking place quite rapidly. I am all for the genuine advancement of our profession, and so when a new method or ingredient gives a superior result over a traditional technique, we will use it.
Often a new ingredient or technique may simply be the result of sharing ideas or the interaction between cultures. A good example is Kuzu, a plant starch from Japan. It has amazing thickening qualities and gives a very stable clean flavoured result. Traditional western methods for thickening have been rouxbased, egg-based, bread-based or simple reduction. All of these methods have some negative effect on the modern palate, so in this instance kuzu may be a better option. Xanthan gum is also something that, when used correctly, can provide body to liquids that could not previously be thickened without changing its flavour, such as olive oil.

What are your plans/visions for future?
To improve.

Your favourite dish?
It’s hard to beat really fresh raw fish prepared by Japanese chefs.

Your favourite restaurant?
I’ve been lucky to have some really great experiences in a number of restaurants. In no order: Extaberri and Mugaritz in the Basque country, and l’Astrance in Paris are standouts.

Who was the chef who you inspired you? Why?
Any chef who is at their restaurant every day trying to be better at what they do inspires me. I think there will always be standouts from every generation, but there are many chefs who are not particularly interesting to the media and probably go unnoticed.
Michel Bras, Andoni Luis Aduriz, Ferran Adria have all had, or are having, a significant impact on people cooking at the highest level today. This could simply be because of the number of chefs that pass through their kitchens on work experience.

BISTRO, March 2010

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