Remember a few months ago, how the fish we ordered at the Main Bar tended to be overcooked? Not anymore. That fish now comes out tender and freshly cooked, although it may take more time for it to come to our table. “It doesn’t hurt to wait a couple of minutes for something better. I don’t think the members mind,” says the FCCJ’s new Executive Chef Paul Dodd.

Paul Dodd has been around. Besides experience in his native Australia, his resume includes work with world-renowned chefs Gordon Ramsay (in London and Tokyo) and Joel Robuchon (in Paris). But it all started in his native Adelaide, when Paul was around 9 or 10 years old when he learned to bake cheesecakes and cookies in his school’s home economics classes. Both his parents worked – his father as a mechanic and his mother doing clerical work in a bank – so he would wind up baking dessert for the family on school holidays. That progressed to supper, on a fairly simple level initially. His parents are from England, so he started cooking up what he calls “rustic British food” like lamb chops and steak-and-kidney pie. “My parents loved that. Being both working people, they encouraged that from the start,” he told the Number 1 Shimbun.

While still in school, Paul was sent on civil work experiences in various kitchens and volunteered to work in restaurants. He also excelled in home economics. He eventually got a part-time job in a restaurant washing dishes, and when the chefs saw how enthusiastic he was, they started to give him food-oriented tasks. “At this point in time, I was thinking cooking could be a viable career option. I wanted to be certain of it, so I spent my spare time working for free in local restuarants,” he recalls.

After graduating from high school, Paul enrolled at Adelaide Technical and Further Education, taking a six-month pre-vocational course that prepares aspiring cooks for the basics, before they actually take on an apprenticeship. “The way it works in Australia, to become a chef you have to do an apprenticeship, which you spend with an employer. You also go away and do compulsory trade schooling at a trade college, and you must meet all the requirements and pass certain levels of exams,” he explains. From there, Paul went into an apprenticeship with a group-training scheme, a new concept in Australia at the time. The scheme takes apprentices on board for four years, and dispatches them to different restaurants and hotels.
“It gives you a good mix,” Paul said.

With his apprenticeship completed in 1999 and his certificate in hand, Paul found a job in an Adelaide hotel, before moving around the city to work in a variety of hotels and Italian-style cafes. “There is a big Mediterranean influence in Australian cuisine,”he notes. South Australia is a big wine-growing state, and Paul had easy access to wine and great produce all year round. During this time, he also did an advanced certificate in patisserie, and spent about 18 months running the pastry section of one of the most famous restaurants in Adelaide. He then felt the need to move and did a few months’ stint in a restaurant in Brisbane, but that wasn’t enough. The time had come for Paul to go overseas. But where to go?
England was the answer. Eric Chavot, a French chef with his own 2-star restaurant in London, happened to come to Brisbane and told Paul the British capital would be the right place for him. “As an Australian with a British passport, it kind of made sense to go to London,” he said.

Unfortunately, Paul arrived in London to find that Chavot already had a full staff, so he sought out another employer. One name that was getting known outside the British Isles came to mind: Gordon Ramsay. When Paul told his new London friends he was going to a job interview with chef Ramsay’s HR department, they were horrified. “You’re crazy, he’s a madman,” they told him. Yet off he went, and he was given a one-day trial in the kitchen. “It was a huge kitchen, with a tremendous amounts of equipment, very crowded, very tight, and it was crazy,” Paul said. Crazy indeed. They would do 100 covers for lunch and 120 for dinner. Everything on the plate was perfect, everything that went out was exceptional quality. Second-best didn’t cut it. If something wasn’t right, one had to do it again. The cooks would shout and swear at each other in the kitchen. Paul somehow fit in, and the head chef told him, “Come back on Monday, cut your hair, get some shoes, and iron your jacket.”

At Gordon Ramsay’s, the atmosphere was very serious. In the beginning, something funny happened and Paul laughed. He got shouted down. “You don’t laugh here. You’re here to work; you’re not here to enjoy yourself!” Focus is the name of the game, because if you’re having a good time, all of a sudden you’ve forgotten that piece of meat in the oven and it’s overcooked. And the cooks were busy all day. Starting at 7 or 7:30 am, they would get 20 minutes for dinner… if they were lucky. The pay was terrible and staff turnover high, but cooks would leave with a prestigious name on their resume.

After 20 months, Paul was ready to go back to Australia, when the head chef told him Ramsay was opening a restaurant in the new Conrad Hotel in Tokyo and offered him a position there. But there was a hitch The restaurant was supposed to open in March 2005 and kitchen practice was meant to start in January, but because of a delay nothing would happen before April. To keep busy, Paul found a three-month job cooking at an exclusive Swiss Alps resort. Then, with three other chefs from Ramsay’s in London, he arrived in Tokyo. Nothing had prepared them for this new experience. They thought they would go in and run things as in London, but that’s not how things happen in Japan. Screaming, shouting and swearing was a no-go from the start. “The Japanese staff would not tolerate that,” Paul points out.

After two years at the Conrad Hotel, Paul thought about what he would really like to do. And what does any chef with great aspirations want to do in his life? Work in Paris, of course. So off he went, finding a job at Joel Robuchon’s. Paul was quite surprised. Coming out of the intense work culture at Gordon Ramsay’s, he expected more of the same, only to find the French much more relaxed. “It was still challenging, the language barrier and everything,” he said. But he learned a lot more about cooking, and even picked up some French, as French-speaking members of the Club have noticed.

Then back to Tokyo, and back to Gordon Ramsay’s, and back to his Japanese girlfriend Chie, whom he soon married. And then what? Paul’s dream was to run his own little Michelin-star small restaurant. But in Tokyo, a restaurateur needs tremendous financial resources or backing, as the price of rent and real estate is astronomical, and competition is fierce. Also, he was wondering if he wanted to work all his life in restaurants or if he should broaden his experience. That’s when he got a call from former FCCJ General Manager Tom Kermabon. “I came and thought, yes, I could make an impact here,” Paul said.

For Paul, the immediate challenge is improving the service in the Main Bar. The kitchen produces 2,000 Correspondents’ Lunches a month, priced at ¥945 with tax, so all set lunches must cost no more than ¥330 each. Paul also finds the Main Bar kitchen poorly designed. “It’s good for simple food and small numbers, but we have a massive range of dishes on the menu, and a lot of people coming for lunch at the same time,” he said. Between 12 and 12:30, the kitchen gets hit with 60, 80, 100 orders all at once. “This is very challenging, especially when you have a choice of five options on the Correspondents’ Lunch, plus a big menu surrounding that,” he said.

Paul would like to focus the lunch operation around the Correspondents’ Lunch, which would mean paring back some items. Does a certain item sell only 10 times a month? Or does something sell only once in a while, and when it does, kitchen staff have to run around to get it together. Because of the large number of items on the menu, a lot of stock is kept on board. Those that don’t sell much end up either served not very fresh, or in the bin, which creates waste. But rest assured, nobody’s favorites will be gone forever. Paul simply plans to change the menu more frequently. “Maybe this month we take something off, but next month it’s back on and we keep updating, changing and improving.”

Perhaps that should be a mantra for the whole Club, but even if it’s only for the F&B side, there’s no doubt the Club will benefit from our new chef’s updates, changes and improvements. ❶