JG I’ve always thought of you being the flavour queen — you can get flavour into dishes without adding 20 more ingredients.
KM It’s a really easy stepping stone for me. In my book Cook I worked out that it’s about crystallising ideas for people to understand how you take it from here to there and develop those steps. I’m constantly hungry and that has never left me, so there’s always curiosity to learn something else. After eight years at the Melbourne Wine Room, I went to Sydney with Maurice Terzini and we did Icebergs.
JG One of the most beautiful restaurant rooms in the world, isn’t it?
KM That room has a sense of occasion and pride. A wave of relaxation automatically rolls over you because you’re looking at Bondi. It was a fabulous space to showcase Australian produce at its best.
JG It went off, didn’t it?
KM Yeah. It was best new restaurant and we won a hat within 10 months. While I was at Icebergs for two years working extraordinary hours, I was overseeing Melbourne Wine Room at the same time. It was very demanding and challenging, but it did put me smack bang in the middle of the culinary industry in Sydney, and also in Melbourne.
JG And then you come back from Icebergs and it was Mr Wolf after that?
KM I was working very hard, long hours in Icebergs, up to 100-hour weeks when we first opened. That’s what a restaurant needs. It’s like a baby: it needs you the whole time. And then towards the end of two years, I was pretty tired. I wanted to come home to [husband] Michael and open a pizza restaurant, Mr Wolf, in St Kilda, which we had for 16 years.
JG It’s important to mention your partnership with Michael Sapountsis, because he’s very much there with you making all this happen, isn’t he?
KM Very grounding. A devil’s advocate at times. He keeps me anchored, but also he is the inspiration for all things beautiful and he loves a fine life and good food and loves the hospitality industry. So it really does flow in our veins. We have this beautiful balance. It’s been 28 years together now. The conviviality of food is something that’s really important to me and how food is connected to nurturing, the socialisation of your family, but also them enjoying good food is something that you will think about the next day and then work on your next meal.
JG You have that classic, rigorous, high-end restaurant training, but you really understand the domestic kitchen and how to get maximum flavour. The other strand to your career is writing books, being on television, in the newspaper, in magazines.
KM Yes. I started writing and I was approached to present those fresh flavour-driven ideas on TV. For a test to camera, I did a crab spaghettini with fresh crab, snipped herbs and oil scented with lemon, garlic, herbs and chilli. It’s simple, but it’s all about the finesse of what goes in and the timing of warm pasta and the quality of the crabmeat. If I managed to get one person off the couch and they actually cooked something, my job was done.
