Cooking up a career

Andrew Mathieson
FOR someone who strives for perfection in the kitchen, the hands of real-life master chef Tyler Vakidis have taking a battering in just a few short years.
First they were wrinkled from washing hundreds of dishes each night, leaving them belying his teenage years and resembling prunes.
Then countless hours on food preparation left a series of calluses that would make a tradesman cringe.
Now, at the top of the restaurant game, burns are the 21-year-old’s biggest pain.
“I have never cut myself but I burn myself probably about 20 times a day,” Tyler grins.
“They’re just little burns, so they’re not really going to deter me – I’ve got used to the pain.”
While novice home cooks plonked in front of the bright lights and TV cameras make whipping up a meal look glamorous, Tyler tells of a story of peeling 6000 beetroots in one sitting. The process of making beetroot marinade left a deep, purple stain on his hands and uniform for days.
Worse still, the Queenscliff head chef says, is shucking live oysters – a necessary evil in the kitchens of fine dining experiences that thrive on freshness.
“So many times you miss and stab your hand,” Tyler regretfully tells.
“The oysters are also covered in little barnacles, so you always end up with these tiny cuts that you can’t see until you’d squeeze a lemon over a salad and it hurts.”
However, all these experiences were a breeze compared to his apprenticeship at the exclusive Melbourne Press Club, now owned by Master Chef judge George Calombaris.
Tyler recalls 16-hour shifts tempered by just a 10-minute break and then two more hours of preparation before heading home at 2am.
A new day would be greeted with another 80 odd jobs before even turning on a burner.
At other times, preparation was nothing more than picking herbs, cutting chips or dealing with those troublesome oysters.
Probably the worst task was peeling the skin off 100kg of octopus, he laughs.
“That’s the closest I’ve come to ever thinking this is not for me, just about two months after I started my apprenticeship,” Tyler says.
That was when the head chef got the sack, the kitchen staff walked out with their boss and Tyler was the most experienced hand left.
Leading a kitchen is what Tyler now does best since Athelstane House poached him from a rival on the other side of Geelong.
Last year he was declared “the find of the decade” and the runner-up in awards for the best chef in the Geelong region.
“I’d never ever heard of the awards until they rang us up to say we were in the finals,” Tyler admits.
The triumph was a long way from the four-year-old boy baking biscuits with his mum.
By 12, he was cooking meals for the family and two years later was washing dishes at the Drysdale Hotel for pocket money.
“I really wanted to go to uni and study music but I ended up falling into cooking,” Tyler reveals.
The acclaimed chef can now boast exquisite signature dishes such as ocean trout tartare, salt and vinegar chocolate with wasabi tobico and a vegetarian baklava with roasted beetroot.
He looks over a series of 16 reserved reds that all fetch more than a $1000 a bottle.
At his restaurant, diners talk up high figures without a thought.
Besides gobbling down greasy hamburgers late at night after shifts, Tyler’s palate – and wallet – also shows a maturity beyond his years.
“I have spent over $500 on dinner for two a couple of times, that’s for sure,” he says.
“I think it’s worth it. People will argue that but you have to waste your money somehow.”