Chef’s Corner: Chef D

Family, gratitude and guts: how Chef D built one of Macau’s best-loved restaurants

Chef D, what started you on the road to being a chef?

Wow, that’s a long one. So, I was always good with my hands, and growing up I was a little bit of a rebellious kid, so my mom wanted to teach me a lesson. She said, okay, you have to do your own laundry, do your own cooking, and then I decided at that point that when I did cook something, it had to be edible. Of course, I had no experience, right?

I was just throwing stuff together. I remember one day using a whole bowl of vodka and cooking chicken. I was very young, just 13 or 14. And yes, I realized, okay, this you cannot do, but next time I used a little bit, and it was better.

And I knew I wanted to do something with my hands, and that led me to the point where I’m able to be a chef. It was either that or be a firefighter.

Did you go to culinary school for it?

I went to a culinary school in South Africa. It’s actually a very good one. It’s one of the top three culinary schools in South Africa, called Fusion Cooking School, in Durban.

Building Aria

How long has Aria by Chef D been open?

For over three years now.

Had you thought about owning your own restaurant for a long time?

Every chef aspires to have their own restaurant, right? Let’s be honest. The turning point for me was when my daughter, Aria, was born. Our first restaurant is named after her.

When she was born, I decided I needed to make some changes in my life. As a chef, you work long hours—12, 14 or 16 hours every day. I knew I had to make a change so I could better take care of my family.

I resigned before I had any idea what I was going to do. I gave my bosses six months’ notice, and I still talk to them today. But I had to take that step. Without it, I don’t think I would be where I am today.

Were you scared to set out on your own?

Yes, I was scared. But I have an amazing partner—my wife, Vanessa. She is my rock. She always supported me and never doubted me, even when the days were difficult. During the first three months, we were losing a lot of money. Trust me, when you’re losing a lot of money, it’s hard.

A South African identity

Is the food at Aria by Chef D South African food?

Yes. A lot of the original authentic ingredients and recipes are still kept the same. I haven’t changed a single thing. I like to do it as such.

What defines South African food?

South African history is very complicated, but it created an opportunity for many different cultures to come together.

The Cape Malay community, for example, gave us a dish called bobotie. It is baked minced meat cooked with apricot jam, with an egg mixture on top. We also have British, Dutch, Indian and African influences.

South Africa is very diverse in terms of food, and I think we are very proud of that. We have nine provinces, and as you travel between them, the food can be completely different.

You must respect the culture if you want to cook its food. My chef now is like my brother. He can cook South African food because he understands it and has a feeling and soul for it. I would not have opened a second restaurant without someone I trusted to take care of the first one. It isn’t possible for me to cook in both places.

Simplicity, ingredients and time

You’ve always kept your menu very small. Is there a reason for that?

To keep food fresh, you need to understand what we call a par level, right?

It’s our daily use of the items and how much we should keep. When the menu is too big, it’s very hard to control. And food can spoil a lot faster. So to keep it simple for customers it’s easier to choose when there’s just one rice option, or two pasta options, instead of ten different rice options, which can complicate life.

I like to keep it that way. Simplicity for me is elegant. It’s such a simple way of running a business.

How do you decide which dishes get on the menu? Is there a process to it?

So there’s something called R&D—research and development. Before I would do any single dish on the menu, it takes me a minimum of one or two months to finalize a single item.

But I also have been doing this for a long time, over 15 years professionally. So with time and experience, you develop an understanding of what can and cannot work. And it’s very important to understand that not everything you try will always be successful.

Now that I’m older and wiser, I know how to source the best product. It starts with the best product. Without the best product, you cannot get the outcome you want.

Do you mean the ingredients are the dishes?

Correct. Everything. Every single ingredient here, I will find the best quality. If it’s not the best, I make it by myself, if possible.

Has it also become more expensive to source those ingredients?

Yes. Due to the US-Iran war, we are paying an average of 20%, 25% more on the ingredients, but I haven’t increased my menu price. The prices are fair. There’s nobody doing what we are doing for our price. We have the Dry Age program, which we do in-house, which takes 30 days to 40 days.

I’m a person who believes time is one of the most important ingredients for the outcome of a dish. For example the marination, the dry aging, allowing fish to marinate with lemon, like we do with the sea bass. Time is an amazing factor for showcasing.

Guillaume Galliot was a chef here before at the Tasting Room. Now he’s running Caprice in Hong Kong. He told me it was so much easier to source high-quality ingredients there compared to Macau.

Yes, especially meat, lime, seafood, it’s very difficult. Especially if you’re looking for high-quality tomatoes or vegetables. You need to have the best supply and finding the best products is quite difficult to achieve.

The dishes that define Aria

What are the most popular dishes at Aria by Chef D?

The tuna salad for sure. That one is a must-order for most. You know, I don’t eat vegetables, right? I’m a person who loves meat.

So when I came up with that dish, I wanted to make sure that it was special. It took a lot of time and effort to get that dish right, about six months.

And with time, I’ve been able to keep it consistent because I do everything by scale and weight. Everything is weighed: the vegetables and the salad dressing. The reason I do it as such is that a scale is more accurate than a person.

The tuna salad is one. What else?

The pork ribs for sure, the sea bass, the clams.

These are special dishes. For example, the pork ribs, I was trying to utilize Macau products. That dish is very special because it uses the Macau beer in the marination, the cooking process, as well as the barbecue sauce. I feel I’ve been here long enough that if I don’t represent the city in some way, it will be a shame.

The sea bass I’ve had on a menu for seven, eight years. I haven’t changed it.

It’s very fresh.

It’s always fresh. All my seafood that comes to the restaurant, everything is fresh. I don’t use frozen.

I’m in love with the sauce on your clams. How do you make the sauce?

So all the offcuts of the vegetables, for example the garlic, the thyme, the rosemary, the celery, carrot, I save all the skins. And I would cook a stock of chicken broth with bones. And then I used to do it for 24 hours, once a week. But it’s quite dangerous to run it when nobody’s in the restaurant.

So I’m using a new method now. It’s scientific. I use an Instant Pot, a high-pressure device, to create the same broth. But the only problem is I cannot produce as much as I would like to. And then I make a spicy sauce and confit butter. And then I use the confit butter to cook the clams.

It’s important also the clams must be fresh. We cannot use them on the day they arrive. They are always used the following day. Because the clams on the first day has a lot of salt in it. So we soak it around two or three times to get rid of all the sand. Otherwise you cannot really enjoy it.

Do you have any recommendations from your pre-orders?

One dish that is very good that nobody else has is the blue lobster. I import from France directly and there is no small restaurant doing this. It’s amazing. If it’s not good it’s free of charge. I can guarantee you.

Once you eat that lobster you will not be able to eat lobster outside.

Do you have any strict rules you keep as a chef?

One of the things that I don’t do as a chef is smoke. I also don’t eat spicy food, and I don’t wear perfume. These three things are a no for chefs.

Because number one, the smoking kills your taste buds. Spicy food, if you eat it on a regular basis, your tolerance is too high for a regular person. And then number three is the perfume. There are only six flavours you can taste on your tongue. Everything else is experienced through the nose and eyes, right? Sensual. So if you have perfume on, the scent stops your nose from working to its full extent. Even my staff, I don’t allow them to use perfume.

You mentioned presentation. I think your dishes always look good.

I try my best, yeah. Because you eat with your eyes before you eat with your tongue, right? Sensual in a way that if it doesn’t look good, of course, it won’t be…… It can look very pretty on a plate, right? But it also must be equivalent to the taste. If the taste and the appearance don’t match, I don’t think it’s a success.

Vanessa & Chef D

We are sitting in your new restaurant now. It’s named after your wife, Vanessa, called Vanessa & Chef D. Will the food be different?

Yes, most of it will be new, like grilled chicken, six-pepper beef and tri-tip. There will be a lot of new appetizers.

Besides the food, will anything be different about it?

First, we’re going to have different music. There’s a genre of South African house music called deep house, and we’ll play that. The color scheme is totally different, more elegant. That’s what I tried to go for. I did all the designs myself.

In terms of the atmosphere, you know, the writing on the wall is canvas. We have a lot of sticky notes as a backdrop of Aria restaurant. And one of the reasons I designed this as such, number one is the typhoon because it’s the typhoon prone area. So, metal is good because it’s easier to clean.

Do you think the small size of your restaurants contributes to their atmosphere?

I think it creates a different experience. It can get crowded sometimes, but that gives it a different kind of atmosphere.

Cooking is all I know. I’ve never had another career. I’ve never worked in an office. I worked part-time when I was at school, but this is all I’ve ever done.

I don’t want to do anything else.

Word of mouth, kindness and community

You’re not overly aggressive on social media and Macau has a lot of restaurants. How do so many people find out about Aria by Chef D?

It’s word of mouth, sir. That’s it. Did you know why the restaurant is called Chef D?

When I used to work for smaller restaurants in Macau, people could not pronounce my name, which is Denver, especially the locals. They had a hard time pronouncing it, so they called me A Di. And then, with time, all of those customers are still my customers. And when I opened, I thought it seemed fitting to name the restaurant Chef D, because they still remember me from that. Even some of my customers, I know the kids, since they were one or two years old, now they are already 10 or 11 years old.

Kindness can take you places money cannot take you. And everything I have is because of kindness. You know, my wife’s family, my good friend, Oppa, they are on the wall in the new restaurant. You can see them. Nobody goes on the wall until you own your space there. These are the people who made it possible for us to be able to do it. I put every cent I had in the beginning into the business.

I didn’t have a plan B, just plan A, right?

When I look at my life and how fortunate I am, I also think about my staff. My old helper passed away from cancer just two or three days ago. I’m a person who believes in helping. When the bank account gets bigger, instead of building the fence higher, I make the table longer.

Everybody who works with me has some kind of relation to me. And I like to do it that way because they work as hard as I do to make what we do a success. My old helper’s son works with me. My new helper is her sister, and I also hired her son. You know, life is hard in the world. If we’re not here to help somebody, why are we here?

If we’re just selfish, of course, we will have more money in the bank. But do you have more? When you die, we take nothing with us.

I think this is very important, and my staff know it. When we do well, everyone benefits. We all go out together.

I’m a very simple and sensitive person. I don’t care much for drinking, smoking, partying or gambling. I try to be a role model for my staff. But just as much as they learn from me, I learn from them. Sometimes, when we reach the point of being called the boss, we stop listening to other people. But if you sit down together and have a decent conversation—with no titles—you can understand a lot about someone. I like people. I like being around people, and I think that shows in our restaurant as well.

Advice for the next generation

Do you have any advice for aspiring chefs?

I teach master classes at UTM. I always tell the students there, if you want to be good at what you’re doing, don’t work in Macau. Go away. Go outside and see how the real world works, and learn something. Learn something that you cannot find in Macau.

Because too many times in Macau, when people work, especially for the hotels and those kinds of places, they become too comfortable. They work there, they learn that, and that’s all they’ll ever know. But if you want to be successful, you have to do more than that. It’s not possible to learn everything without moving on to places.

If you don’t want to move to other places, work in a small restaurant. The reason is that small restaurants do everything. Everything we do, we make in-house, from the bread, the butters, the pickles, the sauces, everything’s homemade. You cannot learn that working at a big establishment.

If you work in a restaurant in a hotel, it’s very easy to achieve consistency, because most of the ingredients are bought. There are some hotels right now that you buy the breakfast already cooked. And they just warm it up and send it out. It’s crazy, right? Most people are too comfortable in that scenario.

People tend to get very comfortable in Macau, I think. I don’t know why that is.

I think because it’s a bubble, right? It’s a very nice city, don’t get me wrong. It’s amazing if you know how to utilize or how to do business, how to open your mind to something new. But the ability to understand how the world works is quite different. And I think you only can get that once you go out. You cannot learn that from here.

So they should go out, just anywhere?

Anywhere, sir. Anywhere. It could be Asia, it could be Europe, North America.

You were in North America for a time, right?

Yes, that’s where I met my wife. I used to work for Walt Disney. Best company I ever worked for, to be honest. And it’s amazing, the skill and the volume of work they handle, they are so organized. That’s why I am the way I am. I’m a very meticulous person. I have recipes that I’ve kept for 20 years.

How did you get these recipes at the start?

Just through working at different places. I’ve been a chef professionally for 15 years. My grandfather and uncles were chefs. I didn’t learn from them unfortunately, but yeah, I come from a line of cooks. At the beginning, when I didn’t know anything, my friends knew more than I did, and they educated me on how to cook. And with time you learn.

Recognition on his own terms

Do you think that you’ll ever get any kind of Michelin recognition?

I have no idea. It’s not my intent. I don’t care.

I have tried some Michelin restaurants in Macau. I’m very disappointed. Very disappointed.

It’s not the recognition I want. You know if you look on my wall, the backdrop to it is Marco Pierre White. Marco Pierre White was the youngest chef in history to obtain three Michelin stars. I think he was 21 years old when he achieved it. I think he’s been surpassed now.

And his philosophy is very simple. The best cooking technique, the best quality ingredient, to showcase exactly what you eat. If you are eating a beef dish but the potato becomes the star, is it really still a beef dish? So it’s important to work together cohesively but at the same time to allow the clam dish to be the clam dish. If you see some people plate clams they put ten pieces on a plate and they put the oils but does it work together? That’s the real question.

The most important thing is that my customers have an enjoyable experience when they dine with us. That is what I hope for and I always tell customers, if it’s not good it’s free of charge.

Are there any rules you have for your customers?

With meat I only cook medium rare. I will not cook medium, I will not cook medium well. The only exception is if you’re pregnant. If you’re not, I will not cook it for you. With the quality of ingredients I’m using it’s a sacrilege to make it into a one dollar steak. I’ve turned away many people.

Looking ahead

What does the future hold in store for Chef D?

I have a few things lined up. I read a lot of books about entrepreneurship, and I’m opening a clothing line called Aria.

I want it to showcase Macau. You can see Macau’s landmarks in the design, as well as the logos of my three places. You have to be inventive in this business.

If you look at my original restaurant, the backdrop is covered with sticky notes. When I built this restaurant, I saw the whole wall as a canvas. It is only one week old now, so it still looks empty. Give me one year and I’ll show you—it will be full.

You have to put time, effort and energy into something if you want to become good at it.

Thank you so much, Chef D!