** Disclaimer: The contents of this blog post belongs to Aphra Magazine. **
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Stepping into Small Fry is like
rocking up to your best mate’s house. Enter without knocking, help yourself to a
seat at the kitchen bench, then chat away to the chef as he manoeuvres his way around
the kitchen impressively- chopping, frying, assembling whatever meal you fancy
from his inventive menu. Only in this case, your best mate is Rhys Hannen. The
cruisy foodie artisan whose love and passion for cooking is contagious.
After he greets me with a “Hey what’s crackin’?” and we
small talk our way through the events of our day, I sit down, order a soy
latte, and ask Rhys how it all began.
“I
realised pretty early on in my apprenticeship that the guys who were cooking
were always working really, really hard for what seemed like not a justifiable
amount of money. I realised if I was going to be working that hard I wanted to
be right at the top, reaping the most benefit- be that monetary or non
monetary.” He laughs, “I can assure you I’m not in this for the fucking money”.
Small Fry is the
super popular, super trendy result of fifteen years in the making. After
wrapping up his apprenticeship under Don Cameron at Stillwater- a contemporary
fusion-style restaurant with the accolades “Best Tasmanian Restaurant” and “Best
Contemporary Australian Restaurant”, Rhys ventured out of the country…
“I promptly
buggered off overseas. I worked in the U.S., Canada, England, France and
Scotland over a couple of years. I worked as broadly as I could. ”
With chef whites
in hand, an array of new skills, and a whole lot of passion, Rhys returned to
Tasmania to complete a business degree and gain further experience in some of
the state’s top-notch restaurants, including The Mudbar and The Agrarian
Kitchen. Then one day the opportunity for him to turn the vision in his head
into a real-life vision in Hobart was staring him right in the face.
Small Fry’s
layout is genius, with every nook of space cleverly fulfilling its potential. Smack
bang in the centre is a massive charcoal grey, marble bench. One side is Rhys’s
workspace; the other is where the guests sit, eat, and watch. It is also a
showcase for scrumptiously baked treats, including the incredible donuts this place is so famous for. Seeing Rhys at work
it like observing some kind of martial art. The waving around of knives,
ingredients, and frying pans as he proudly shares the knowledge, stories and
techniques behind his food is all part of the experience. I ask him where the brilliant
idea of a Chef’s Table came from.
“I was working
in London in a kitchen, and myself and the other chefs worked at a table that
was round the side and we had sections and all that stuff. I’d pull everything
off the stove and that’d be the start of the plate. Then it’d go to the next
chef and he’d put it on a bloody white tray and then a bow-tied, Polish waiter
would wonder five-hundred metres from the restaurant and blah, blah, blah. There was all this faff! And that’s all cool but
I was just standing there at one point and I’m like, Why don’t they just sit
right fucking there? Because people love it, and it would cut out a whole bunch
of stuff. So I’m just like yep, we should just have a bench and cook on one
side and have the customers eating on the other and it’ll be great!”
“I was really
lucky that the timing and cost etc. was right for this place, 'cause all of a
sudden this idea that I had was right there and really accessible. I didn’t
have to spend shitloads on a fit-out; I didn’t have to find joint metal
workers. I just had to walk in, move some stuff around and start cooking… so
that’s when I was like, Alright, I’m not gonna die wondering whether I can do
this. Now’s the time.”
After training
in a bunch of fusion-style restaurants, Rhys has always been exposed to
“something-something with a twist”. But he’s getting over that. When I ask him
to describe the concept behind his food he proudly explains,
“I really like
classic, technique-driven, simple food. But the thing I try to impress upon
anybody is that simple has to be perfect. It has to be perfect or at least as
close to bloody perfect as you can get. Because once ‘simple’ starts to become
like ‘rustic’ or ‘traditional’ or something like that I always read that as
code for lazy, or that they don’t know any better.”
He pulls out a
cardboard box and places a small lemon friand inside. As he artfully forms the
perfect quenelle of double cream to accompany it, he says,
“This is a classic
example. This is a friand- it’s like, almond meal and castor sugar. It’s really
nothing. But we always try to cook them properly; we try and get that balance
between the chewy outside and the soft exterior, and some crunch on top with
the toasted almonds. We always garnish it with some syrup that’ll soak through
and add dimension, and [add] some cream on the other side cause that’s texture
and flavour as well.
So that is so
simple. But it’s thinking about the details like that that 95% of people don’t
do, and that will set you apart.”
So we try to be simple, try to be technique
driven, and we try to pay attention to detail.”
This ethos of
“simple but perfect” is evident in every single one of his dishes- from the
humble little friand, to the more extravagant (but apparently still simple) earl
grey crème with mulled wine poached pears, gingerbread crumb, ganache and
candied violet dish I had ordered earlier that day. So I ask him what his best
seller is, secretly confident that I know what the answer will be…
He laughs, “The
doughnuts.” No surprises there.
I ask, “Was that
the plan?”
“No” he sighs, “They
were my girlfriend’s little grand child, that’s her business there.”
Simultaneous
with the recent opening of Small Fry came a flood of the most amazing looking
doughnuts in my Instagram feed- lemon meringue flavour, apple crumble, turkish
delight, dulce de leche, you name it. But getting your hands on one was another
story. To this day some are left wondering whether Small Fry’s so-called “amazing”
doughnuts actually exist. They are a consistent sell-out by early hours of the
day, so you’ve got to be quick. As a friend of mine put it, they’re the
Snuffleupagus of fast food.
But, if Small Fry’s reputation as the place to get awesome-as doughnuts draws people to Rhys’s restaurant, he’s not complaining.
But, if Small Fry’s reputation as the place to get awesome-as doughnuts draws people to Rhys’s restaurant, he’s not complaining.
Wrapping up my chat and my latte, I ask Rhys one final and important question: What is the best way to enjoy a doughnut?
He laughs, “Stuff it in your face, that’s my answer. Just eat it. Don’t analyse it. Just eat it and enjoy it. That’s the best way to do it.”
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