Ciao Dec/Jan 2019 CIAO_Decjan2019_Digital | Page 32

inthekitchen merry morning Chef Chris Gama brings bold flavour to breakfast at Clementine. by Jessie Schmidtke Chef Chris Gama can finally exhale. “People were here the minute we opened the door,” he says, now coolly at ease. Ghostly exposed brick, rustic wood rafters and Moroccan touches radiate mystique in the space he endearingly refers to as his dungeon. It’s been three and a half years since Clementine, the trendy subterranean daytime nook, opened its doors and Gama and his team hit the ground running. When keeping up with the hollandaise sauce alone was nearly impossible, they quickly realized their projections were off and they needed to cook for double the people they had originally planned for. It took more than two years of sales data to realize they weren’t slowing down. Clementine salutes breakfast culture in cities like Melbourne and Los Angeles, where daytime eats are granted the same distinction as evening ones. Here, inventive chef-driven dishes are almost too stunning to cut your knife into, served alongside elegant cocktails such as the “morning helper,” a fresh take on a French 75 elevated with house-made thyme syrup and prosecco. Although Southern cuisine was the original plan, it didn’t quite feel right, and the team decided instead to take inspiration from a variety of cultures. The spicy syrup- drizzled fried chicken on toast, which an ever-compassionate Gama dedicates to all the hungover boyfriends dragged to brunch, serves as the only remnant of the original concept. Much like the menu, Gama’s trajectory as a chef was not clear cut. It started with a dishwashing job at Green Gates as a teenager. He laughs remembering the look on the hiring chef’s face when he showed up in his Sunday best with a makeshift resume listing babysitting as his experience. After climbing the ranks to line cook, Gama got a call from an old colleague and chef: Tristan Foucault. Foucault needed a sous chef to open Wow! Hospitality’s Oui Bistro (now Peasant Cookery), and Gama was his guy. After five years at 30 ciao! / dec/jan / two thousand nineteen