Becasse and Quarter Twenty One

Flour and French voices float on the air all through  the night at Becasse Bakery. The central marble table is a flurry of activity: confit garlic bread, croissants, brioche, burgers, baguettes. Dozens of different breads to be packaged off to our ever-growing family of restaurants: Becasse, Quarter Twenty One, Etch and Charlie and Co.

At 7am Phil, the butcher, appears from the coolroom with the first of the day’s carcasses over his shoulder: a suckling pig, a lamb, a cow, or a brace of pheasants. Each animal is meticulously taken apart, every part of every animal is put to use somewhere. Primary cuts may be quickly grilled, secondary cuts are slowly braised or confit, bones are roasted for stocks, trimmings carefully guarded for the Charlie and Co. wagyu burgers. Bellies and legs become charcuterie and hang in muslin, a beautiful still-life on display at the entrance of Quarter Twenty One. 

To have control over the whole animal is not just a boon for the chefs, indulging their creativity, but an important progression in our relationship with small Australian primary producers. By purchasing the whole animal we can nurture an individual relationship with the producer and their product.  

To the left of Phil the production kitchen is hard at work, they have 120 litres of stock to get underway for the restaurants, not to mention the vegetables, wagyu lasagne and snapper pies that must be cooked and packaged for take-home meals. In front of Phil the brigade in Quarter Twenty One is already humming, to his right the team at Becasse is also going through its paces. 

Mornings in the kitchen are warm and happy. A little music may be playing, the clockwork of the kitchen is just beginning. With precision and ritual akin to the military, the teams work through their morning tasks. People move with pace, but with care. Efficiency is what counts, no wasted steps. Every trip to the coolroom is time spent away from their mise en place. Conversely some tasks are carried out with excruciating precision: the final flourishes are balanced with elongated tweezers, the rim of the plate is carefully wiped. It is a ballet, albeit in the military.

As service approaches the mood changes. Wait staff gather at the pass to learn and taste the specials, guests begin to arrive, the kitchen becomes silent. It is a conscious decision that has filtered from above. While anger and yelling may increase the sense of urgency, the adrenalin that accompanies it decreases the sense of taste; dishes may be over-seasoned, or under-seasoned. Thus, the 30 chefs take on a serene quiet during service.

Staff meal, held in between the two services, is a large affair, with 40 to feed every day, and the fact you are cooking for fellow staff, it is a different pressure that falls on your shoulders. Often in the line up you will see one chef with two or three plates in hand. Making sure the others on their section will eat too, they ferry meals to their “brother” or “sister” on the section. 

The family analogy seems at odds with the militaristic, and somewhat rock-star image of the kitchen. However it is how I have come to see the restaurants. Owners Justin and Georgia North have their work cut out, not just because their business has tripled in the past three months, but because their work family has suddenly grown exponentially. 

I now know this was all in the plan, a plan Justin put to paper 15 years ago, before Becasse opened in Surry Hills, well before it moved to Clarence Street and most recently to Pitt Street’s Westfield. It was a plan for a sustainable restaurant business that thrived on the symbiotic relationship between its parts: the butcher, the chefs, the bakers, the staff and the producers. It is a bold concept, but one that looks as good in reality as it did on paper. www.becasse.com.au