Scarlett Restaurant prawn and lobster raviolo 0:06
Scarlett Restaurant executive chef, Joey Dela Victoria's prawn and lobster raviolo at the Harbour Rocks Hotel.
Gordon Ramsay has a beef as chef meets his waterloo over Wellington
JOEY Dela Victoria is a stocky sort of guy and was shocked in more ways than one when Gordon Ramsay picked him up by his chefs whites leaving his feet dangling from the ground. Ramsay was filming the pre-opening of his restaurant in Dubai and a beef wellington was in the oven. Delayed filming meant the dish came out not quite to Ramsay’s liking.
“I was the only one in the kitchen who was allowed to (cook) it but when he was carving the beef wellington, it was medium to well, so it was overcooked,” says Dela Victoria who has taken up residence at the Harbour Rocks Hotel’s 35-seater Scarlett restaurant.
“He picked me up by the jacket, lifted me up, legs dangling in the air. It was pretty scary. His passion and his love for food rubs off on people, he was very, very strict and it disciplines people a lot. ”
While Ramsay got over it, the discipline that Dela Victoria learnt under the chef is one of the building blocks of a career that has included Balzac with Matthew Kemp and Quay with Peter Gilmore in Sydney, plus Gordon Ramsay’s Maze restaurant and Brett Graham’s The Ledbury, both in London, and in Dubai to help open up the new Bread Street Kitchen.
At Scarlett he hopes to build a reputation quite quickly, built on word of mouth, which is likely given a showcase of dishes he presented to Sydney Taste on Friday. The menu ranged from the theatrical smoking prawn and lobster raviolo to a chocolate assiette which had to be accessed via a wooden hammer and a fruit salad dessert idea he has finally executed after seven years of trying.
“We want to have a high standard, but we can’t lose our s*** when something goes wrong. It just doesn’t work in Australia,” he says.
“When it’s Michelin star and working for Gordon, that’s all part of it.”
Dela Victoria is glad to be back in town, a one-hour flight from his family in Coffs Harbour, rather that 24 hours away, and away from the pressure.
“The way I want to get people in is through word of mouth, cos right now I’ve only just taken over. We’ll just keep on doing whatever we are doing, our style of food.
“We don’t want to follow the trends, we just wants to be true to our goal which is modern Australian and we are going to stick by it. Just stand out.”