cooking up a storm

Nice to meet you Luke! Where did it all start?  

Being involved in kitchens is all I’ve ever done! My very first job was washing dishes in a 20-seat Italian near where my parents live in my hometown of Sydney called Restaurant 16. It was just me, the Japanese head chef Toru Ryu and a sous chef. Just watching these guys cook was incredible. With such a small team they didn’t have a staff meal, but they just sat me down and said you can eat one thing off the menu. I was so lucky to have that and was totally inspired. Eventually I asked to work as a chef there , I took a pay cut so I could get in the kitchen and ended up helping prep during the day. From there I started to train as a chef and get jobs cooking in the kitchen. I didn’t want to be anywhere else.  

How did you find yourself head chef of the new Palomar Sydney?  

n 2016 I moved to London. My sister has lived there for a very long time and in my first week she took me out to her favourite restaurant—The Palomar in Soho. I was sitting at the bar, and she’s giving me this big speech about how I can’t just move over to London and think I can walk into these great restaurants and get a job without at least sending out my resumé, when I leaned over the kitchen bar to the head chef and said hey, you guys looking for chefs, and he said, sure, come in tomorrow for a trial! I worked there for a while, then went to The Ledbury—a Michelin star restaurant which was my goal in moving to London. It had two stars at the time, now it has three! 

A lot of my background is in fine dining and The Ledbury. Brett Graham the chef patron there is the hardest working person I’ve ever encountered in my entire life. He was an inspiration for me to get things done and helping me learn how to work fast, work clean, and work organised. 

After about a year there, I got an email from Zoe Paskin [of Studio Paskin, founders of The Palomar], who said come and have a chat about something we’ve got going on! I’ve always loved the Paskins—the way they create happening venues. I was part of the opening team of Evelyn’s Table, a 12-seat counter diner below The Blue Posts in London’s China Town. Here everything was done fresh every day. Produce was the best we could possibly get. We were constantly pushing. From there, I went to Toronto under Patrick Kriss at AloBar. The food scene in Toronto is a great one that outside of Canada doesn’t get as much recognition as I think it deserves. The Michelin Guide wasn’t in Canada when I worked there, but they were awarded a Michelin star after I left. 

What’s your culinary vision for The Palomar Sydney?  

The Palomar is all about taste. I’m not worried about tweezering micro herbs onto anything. All the focus is on the flavour. Bringing spice and acid, and heat and vinegar and excitement to the food is my focus for this exciting new venture at 25hours Hotel The Olympia. I think that’s something that I always liked at The Palomar in London—the room itself was so energetic and vibrant, and everyone was always having fun, and the music was loud and the lights were dim—the atmosphere was just insane. I’m almost trying to mirror that in the food. Things should be spicy and colourful, not boring and clinical. We’re really trying to push boundaries with flavour and not hold back. I’ve been cooking French food for a long time which can be very buttoned up. Now I’m getting out there and being bold.  

What is your favourite dish on the menu?

There’s a cucumber salad that’s set to be a firm favourite. It’s baby cucumber which we dress in herb tahini sauce, lots of fresh herbs, thinly sliced fennel for freshness, topped with a chilli crisp which we make in house, and some candied almonds.  

Another one that took a long time to get right is a tahini custard tart. Very classic, but we’ve put quite a bit of tahini and infused some roasted sesame into it as well to give it a bit more of an interesting savoury flavour. Dishes will change with the seasons. We work with a lot of small farms and single-boat fishermen and small suppliers. I might get a call from someone one day saying, ‘Hey mate, I’ve caught beautiful bonito today,” so we’ll just swap one of our fish dishes out. Or one of the farms will say we’ve got these beautiful tomatoes coming in and we’ll find a way to work them into the menu.  

I think the way we’re doing things is a little outside the box for what people would consider a traditional hotel restaurant. I have no experience in hotels which is part of the reason I was drawn to this project. 25hours does things a little bit different. They are not copy paste, every hotel has its own personality.  

How would you like diners to feel in your restaurant? 

I want it to be a fun night out and for guests to interact with the staff. Our kitchen bar is going to be a lot of fun. You’ll be able to chat with the chefs while we’re working. They have the same setup in London and I always enjoyed that. I hope people will pick up The Palomar Sydney and run with it. I’m not necessarily tyring to preach to a certain audience. We’re just cooking the food we like to eat. You can’t please everyone. If you’re happy with what you’re doing, hopefully other people will be too. 

The Sydney culinary scene is up there with some of the best in the world. It’s gone through a lot recently. At one point everyone was opening French bistros, then it seemed to be Greek Restaurant, then Chinese restaurants. What we’re doing isn’t tied to any one cuisine. We have our own style with so many influences. My house is filled from floor to ceiling with cookbooks and I love taking from everywhere. We’ll have Mediterranean, the Levant, North Africa and more, so long as it fits the Palomar DNA.