About a year ago, I gave up sweets. It was simply a decision that all men and women my age make as they cross into a world when they slowly become doughier and finally wake up one day middle-aged and paunchy. Like all diets, mine had both the element of logic (lose those calories healthily and cut down that sugar!) and the element of well... magic too (give up the thing you like best and you’ll appease the gods of ageing).
Then Bibelot happened. That little shop down at Coventry Street, Melbourne is nondescript but as soon as you step in through the entrance, the inside yawns into a delightful space where glistening bonbons of every shape and flavour, decadent biscuits, luscious chocolates, delightfully airy macaroons, melt-in-your-mouth pastries and a mind-boggling assortment of petits gateaux reign in a world Willy Wonka would approve.
“Dessert?” chef and owner Andrea Reiss asks me in that conspiratorial, perky way wily waiters do and for the first time in a long while, I can’t say no. Forget diet and the ever-present paunch I’ve been battling to lose, I’m glibly passing through the salted-caramel curtain of desserts past the point of no-return. And the bonbons do not disappoint.
It’s just as well that I’ve succumbed to yet another surprising treat during my trip to Melbourne at the height of the Victorian Food and Beverage Trade week. The city is full of delightful nooks and spaces like Bibelot where one can sit, contemplate life and tuck into some good food (or dessert) with the ubiquitous cuppa that’s prevalent of the cafe culture that’s quite the rage on this side of the universe. “You can’t observe coffee culture in Melbourne without reflecting on the culture of the city itself. It’s that desire to socialise, paired with the genuine appreciation of good food and great coffee,” explains Reiss with a smile.
It’s not just desserts that the 37-year-old Reiss is serving up. She’s also the owner of the Chez Dre, a cafe and bakery serving up French-inspired sweet and savoury delights including all-day brunch, take-away meals and fresh daily-baked pastries. The cafe is located at the back of the warehouse area while Bibelot takes up the front space. The idea of having a good meal and then moving over to the other side for some great desserts seems like a brilliant move. “It’s like having your cake and eating it too,” I comment and she laughingly agrees, saying: “Business had grown. The cakes and sweets have been getting lost among the coffee and breakfast offerings so it made sense to create a space where they could be showcased and appreciated!”
LEARNING THE ROPES
She’s an engaging presence: the perfect balance of infectious enthusiasm and down-to-earth approachability. She doesn’t talk lasciviously about warm freshly baked bread or wax lyrical about the crafting of artisanal chocolates. But Reiss’ face does light up when I sample her petit gateaux and roll my eyes heavenwards in bliss.
Picture-perfect patisserie and an abundance of chocolate aside, the pursuit of perfection surely requires some degree of sacrifice. “It has been a long road,” she admits of her experience in the culinary world. Even before completing her Certificate III in Commercial Cookery in 2003, Reiss joined a talented team of chefs, led by award-winning chef Daniel Wilson to open Jacques Reymond’s Arintji at Federation Square in Melbourne. It was her first taste of the culinary world and a commercial kitchen.
“I only completed three months of training before I was encouraged to work,” she reveals, adding that it was her tutor who got her first job with Wilson. “He asked me if I was ready to take it on but I wasn’t sure. I asked him back if he thought I was ready and he told me you’re never really ready for anything. ‘You just have to go for it!’ he urged. And so I did,” she recollects, smiling.
There’s a tried-and-true path in the restaurant industry, adds Reiss, namely you work your way up from the bottom, putting in the gruelling hours to complete menial grunt work, before you maybe reach the apex of the culinary vanguard.
“I started off my career peeling potatoes and washing the dishes!” she says with a laugh, before adding: “I always say to people now that it’s the best place to be. You see everything and you learn everything from the bottom up.”
She was young, determined and ready to take on the challenges in a heated volatile atmosphere like the kitchen. “I made myself useful, learnt the ropes and became indispensable in the kitchen. I received deliveries and did inventory. I knew where everything was. If someone wanted to know where they kept the eggs or whether the fresh produce had been delivered, I knew it all! So I soon became that go-to person everyone in the kitchen depended on.”
She attributes her ‘can-do’ spirit down to knowing what she wanted. Beneath the sunny disposition, lies the willpower and determination as sharp as a Sabatier chef’s knife. “I’ve just wanted to learn as much as I could and the biggest learning you’d gain is by being at the very bottom because no one has any expectations of you,” Reiss says, simply.
A PASTRY AFFAIR
She soon moved on to the Green House in Mayfair London. Chuckling, she tells me laugh about her ‘accidental’ encounter with pastry and desserts. “When I showed up, I was told there wasn’t any vacancy left at the hot kitchen which was what I’d applied for. I could, however, start in pastry!”
She said ‘yes’. Recalls Reiss: “I really wanted to work in the restaurant, and I’d only just moved to this new city. I didn’t think anyone else was going to hire me so I took it on!”
And once again, her determination kept her going. “My job was to prepare the petit fours — the small bite-sized confectionery or savoury appetiser. I put my head down and worked hard. I had to start from the bottom all over again and learn the ropes, but I stuck around until I got promoted. Slowly, they began giving me small opportunities to spread my wings and experiment with flavours. I didn’t have to go to pastry school. I learnt by researching, asking questions and putting my foot forward.”
Her determination and her ability to roll with the punches in the highly-charged kitchen environment paid off. Still a traditionalist at heart, Reiss sees cooking as a vocation, a set of craft skills that requires a single-minded determination to master. “Good chefs won’t mind pushing themselves to their absolute limits because that’s their nature — they want to achieve,” she explains, adding that she constantly pushed herself hard. “I’m the one that would be the first to come in and the last to leave.”
Reiss later went on to join the Michelin-starred Hakkasan/Yauatcha group and after a stint at the five-star St. Regis Hotel at The Lanesborough, she was headhunted by the esteemed, Michelin-starred Taillevant restaurant in Paris.
At the apex of her career in Paris, the gastronomical mecca of the world, Reiss began desiring something different. “I hit the glass ceiling,” she admits ruefully, pointing out that that the age-old concept, that of a male-only executive in the hierarchal and closely-ranked French kitchens had been difficult to overcome, “...especially if you’re both a woman and a foreigner.”
She began to do some soul-searching as to what she wanted to pursue next. Reiss recalls: “I had worked a minimum of 90 hours a week for the past seven to eight years. While that experience disciplines you for the kitchen — which was great — I started to want something more.”
STARTING OVER AGAIN
Returning to Melbourne, Reiss soon found her options limited once she decided against going for yet another restaurant stint. “I was offered to either run a canteen for a large factory or an age-care facility!” she shares.
So the chef turned to baking. “I wanted to get back to food and there weren’t really any jobs that were at the level I wanted. So it was a case of ‘ok there’s definitely a market for well... baking’!” she says with a laugh. She started “experimenting” in her kitchen at home and opted to do something different by using organic and gluten-free ingredients way before ‘organic’ became the decade’s biggest culinary buzzword.
“The trend was slowly picking up then, and I was curious to try it,” she explains, adding that she started selling her baked goods at local craft and farmers’ markets to test the waters. “They loved it!” she says gleefully. Eventually she needed to search for a bigger kitchen space large enough to support her growing business. Reiss and her business partner found that perfect spot in Coventry Street, Melbourne. “We decided however to turn it into a cafe rather than just a kitchen,” she recalls. Chez Dre was born, and the rest as they say, is history.
From a meagre staff of just three (“It was just me running the kitchen, my business partner and my manager at first!”), business has expanded and brought in scores of people (“We have around 60 to 70 staff at present,”) to help run both Chez Dre and Bibelot. “It’s been an amazing journey and one I don’t take for granted,” she remarks thoughtfully.
Refreshingly honest, Reiss confesses that in the culinary world “to be really good at it you really have to give up a lot of your life. I think I have done that. I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. But I don’t regret it.” The confidence it has given her and the opportunities to travel the world doing what she loves have made it all worthwhile for her. “When you enjoy something this much” she concludes, smiling, “...it doesn’t even feel like work.”