Phil Howard at the centre of magic square

He is the chef with the greatest influence on Australian restaurant food. His restaurant has trained and nurtured dozens of the stars of Australian cuisine, and profoundly shaped the career of our finest export - Brett Graham of London's The Ledbury, the highest-ranked Aussie chef in the world.

And you probably have never have heard of him, or his gaff. But Phil Howard, the hands-on chef and co-owner of London's The Square, has taken in more young, green Australians, turning out notable future chefs, than any other.

Chef Philip Howard of The Square restaurant, London.

"Phil's an inspirational man," says Joe Grbac, who left The Press Club in Melbourne, where he was head chef, to pursue his cooking dream by founding hot restaurant St Crispin.

"He taught me you don't need to be an absolute arsehole in this game to get somewhere. A gentleman in a rather cut-throat industry."

"Gordon Ramsay told me, 'If there's any restaurant in London I recommend you go other than here, it's The Square,' " says Scott Pickett, who co-owns St Crispin and also owns The Estelle.

Through the years the Square, which opened in St James in 1991 before moving to Mayfair in 1995, somehow became an incubator for dozens of Australians, and also for overseas-born chefs who then brought something special Down Under with them, such as Britain's Matt Kemp, now in Sydney, or Pablo Tordesillas, a Spaniard, now in Brisbane.

Somehow, Howard became the unintentional godfather of Australian cooking.

Once it was the Ramsays, Conrans, Whites (or Blancs) and Roux brothers who took green Aussies and taught them to ballotine a pheasant.

Today, The Square stands tallest as the training ground for a new generation, people such as Pickett, Tordesillas of Brisbane's Ortiga or James Metcalfe of Sydney's The Bourbon.

Then there are the international stars of Aussie descent: Newcastle's Graham, at the two-Michelin-star Ledbury, without doubt the most accomplished and best known Australian chef anywhere, and Shane Osborn of St Betty's, Hong Kong, who was the first Australian to earn two Michelin stars. Both trained at The Square.

For some it was finishing school; for others, kindergarten. But it changed how most of these chefs approached their craft and careers.

"One of the great strengths of the vast majority of Australian recruits is their appetite for hard work and their low maintenance status as employees," says Howard, 46, whose modern French style and eye for talent has kept the restaurant with two Michelin stars for 15 years, a monumental achievement.

"They tend to come to places like The Square with a fixed agenda of learning as much as possible ... This tends to translate into ... hard work. (And) most chefs who have an appetite to work hard can then be trained into good cooks."

The Square's present senior sous chef, third in command, is Melburnian Josh Pelham, who has worked there a total of four years at two stages of his career. "The cooking at The Square is honest, relatively straightforward and the reputation it has earned is for its flavour-packing deliciousness rather than technical wizardry," says Howard.

"In a country such as Australia this direct delivery is important; I think it is fair to say your average Australian needs to be fed well and at The Square we feed people well. The other great thing about the style of cooking at The Square is that it can be left as it is, refined further or simply pared back so it can be successfully served at the highest level or in relatively modest surroundings."

In other words, there's something most can - and do - take away and apply.

Fresh out of school, a young Howard came out to Sydney from England and worked in a Rocks pizza shop for a couple of years in the late 1980s, surfing, partying and having a lot of fun. Clearly it made an impression.

Back home, Howard the pizza boy became Howard the chef with a chemistry degree, one of Britain's best and, with Nigel Platts-Martin, established The Square in 1991 which, for many years, has been one of London's most critically acclaimed.

Howard gets along with Aussies, and his workplace reflects this. "The very first Aussie employee was James Mussillon (now executive chef at Canberra's Courgette), a phenomenal cook who I guess was the catalyst for more to come," Howard says. "He had been working at Bilson's and I can only assume that it is through him that the message spread. "It is also only fair to say that 15 years ago if you wanted to come to London to train in a top kitchen, there were precious few to head to.

"Having said that, James walked into The Square during our first year, prior to any reputation being built."

Certain themes emerge when his proteges talk of their time there. Hard work. A collegiate environment for those willing to put in. Utter respect taught for produce and the importance of extracting maximum flavour from everything. The importance of working with the seasons. The abhorrence of wastage. And the skipper's willingness to dive in and help his team do whatever task is at hand, teaching along the way.

For Pickett, it was his only job in London. He worked there three years.

"That morning, my trial at The Square, sticks in my mind more than any other in my life," he says during a break at St Crispin.

"For me it was about the marriage of flavours, understanding flavours. The Square was everything that was beautiful about cooking, very romantic."

Both Pickett's restaurants, he says, "were born at The Square. I think that part of the beauty of The Square, and the Australians that have been through the kitchen, is the connection with the UK, with our English heritage."

No coincidence that his partner at St Crispin, Grbac, is another alumnus, having spent three years there, also rising to the position of junior sous after a year at the Ramsay signature restaurant in Royal Hospital Road.

For Jake Nicolson, who just left the position of executive chef at Circa, Melbourne, and is soon to open Blackbird in Brisbane, the pressure of his first stage (trial) was like a drug.

"There were no jobs ... So I just kept on coming back every day for about two weeks," he says.

"I was flat broke by then but had made a few friends in the kitchen, they pushed me into the chef office to ask Phil for a job. He asked, 'Have you looked anywhere else?' to which I replied: 'I only want to work here and I'll be here every day until I'm on that roster.' He smiled and leaned back on his chair, then added my initials to next week's roster. It was one of the most intense learning curves, both in cooking and kitchen life, of my career."

Adam Foster, now a Victorian winemaker and producer (Foster e Rocco, Syrahmi) , hasn't forgotten the lessons of the seasons. "Seagull eggs that were only available one week of the year ... that sort of thing," he says.

"Using whole animals and breaking them down and using every part, nothing was ever wasted.

"It was such an eye-opener after doing an apprenticeship in Australia with filleted fish, duck breast, loin of lambs all coming in prepped. Not at The Square. We'd see whole ducks that still had the foie gras intact."

Howard himself sees it as a two-way street.

"I am so incredibly aware," he says "that my success is entirely down to those that have helped make The Square what it is today.

"A huge team that has yielded an international family of ex-employees and to single out any would be disrespectful to the others. (But) I have many Aussie ex-employees who I hold as close and valued friends." 

Howard's way

I'M eating a tube of pasta; maccheroni, handmade by Melbourne chef Scott Pickett. It's in a parmesan cream, pumped out of an espuma gun (under gaseous pressure) with local (central highlands, Victoria) truffle grated on top. Not much to dislike, really.

But what gives this late-morning snack, part of a cooking demo at my local guesthouse cum restaurant (Hotel du Lac), a special meaning is the knowledge that this method (which Pickett whips off like you or I might crack an egg) is a link to something that has changed Australian dining.

It's one of the many things the chef perfected at London's famed The Square and has repeated almost daily for 15 years. Pickett guesses he has made maccheroni this way maybe 10,000 times.

As he makes a dough, then creates the little squares, rolled into tubes, the chef says he thinks of his time as a young Aussie abroad, working hard, living hard, every time he makes the pasta. Launching into a job at a two-Michelin star restaurant in London, despite having worked at Paul Bocuse in Melbourne, was like running a marathon every day instead of the 10,000m.

I really enjoyed researching today's story on the legacy and extraordinary Australian connection with Phil Howard's acclaimed London restaurant. I particularly enjoyed sitting down with Pickett and his business partner Joe Grbac - together they own one of Melbourne's hottest new restaurants, St Crispin - and listening to them reminisce about the days they spent in London working their bags off at The Square, and loving every minute.

It's a rite of passage they share with a surprising number of other Australians. Something about Howard's disposition, his soft spot for Australians, the kitchen culture he encouraged - plus the prospect of working for a master - made The Square a launch pad for a lot of careers.

As Gordon Ramsay told Pickett (or maybe Grbac): "There's only one other restaurant you should work at in London, and that's The Square."

Grbac and Pickett share a fraternity with other Australians, such as Melbourne's Jake Nicolson: strangers in a strange land, doing something that ultimately will redirect our lives.

Back to the pasta. I watched intently, for Pickett delivered an epiphany about the flour-egg ratio. I've made pasta to the Stephanie Alexander formula for years: 400g flour, four whole eggs. Pickett goes harder on the eggs, the result is superior: 550g, six yolks, four whole.

But eggs vary in size. Two of my girls are producing something to rival a quail. And so it was agreed that, by weight, we're talking about 60:40, with the same ratio of whole to yolk-only.

Second epiphany: let the dough rest overnight.

The resultant dough felt like something Grace Jones might have worn onstage in the day: it was beautiful to work with; it tasted brilliant.

But I don't have the nonna hands. I may not make the maccheroni 10,000 times. Frankly, mine looked like something you'd find under the bonnet of a knackered Fiat 500, but when I do make pasta, I'll think of Pickett. And, in turn, I'll owe something to The Square too. We all do.

Source: The Australian, 10 August 2013