A cute dog, regional produce and a glass of chilled red – what more could weekend campervan warriors need?
Despite being one of Australia’s most interesting and looked-at chefs for her talent, creativity and holistic view of the industry (picking up last year’s peer-voted Gourmet Traveller’s Chef of the Year award) Thi Le cites relationships as the greatest thing to come from her success, “The best thing about owning a restaurant is the connections we've built over the last seven years,” says Thi. “We've had customers who are now our friends, it’s brought us great business mentors, and I don't think we’d have even passed these people in day to day lives without it. The restaurant has built very strong connections for us.” Along with her partner Jia-Yen (JY) Lee, Thi has recently converted their long-standing, hugely celebrated (and Hatted) modern Vietnamese restaurant Anchovy into a more casual, family-feast style Laotian restaurant, Jeow. Why Laotian? It’s a nostalgia thing for Thi. “I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney and my family's Vietnamese, but every time there was a gathering and mum didn't want to cook, she would always go down to a Laotian takeaway. I grew up eating as much Laotian as Vietnamese food, and when I moved to Melbourne, I’d miss my mum's cooking, but also Laotian food.” When COVID hit, Thi and JY decided to put Anchovy on pause (they plan to reopen it at a different location down the track), and create a place where Thi could cook the food she loved, and it was Laotian food that she wanted to show the world. They also opened a Bánh Mì Bar next door called Ca Com. The lunch spot is so popular, it opens at 11am and is often sold out by 2pm.
With a new restaurant, and Richmond’s most sought-after bánh mì, Thi and JY don’t have a lot of free time, so they like to keep things simple. “Thi is about minimalist life,” says JY. “We have exactly two bowls, two forks and two sets of chopsticks.” But what they lack in servingware they make up for in camping gear. With a converted kitted-out van, three days free from the restaurant and a desire for open spaces, the “weekend warriors”, as Thi self-describes, the pair set out to see the best of Victoria as often as they can. They love the hikes, the views, the regional towns, but when asked what they love most the answer is unanimous: “The food”. Here, Thi and JY share their culinary intel, camping musts, and how to have the best food of your life without a kitchen. It will have you setting out to pitch a tent faster than you can say “portable fold-up pizza oven”.
Home essentials
- Q.What should everyone not miss ordering at Jeow?
Thi: “If it's their first visit, I would say the Steamed Tapioca Pearl. It is quite unique. It's a little play on Sakoo Yat Sai, which is a Laotian dish. Traditionally it's done with pork and peanuts, but with the restaurant, we lean quite a lot on what we have available to us. Our duck farmer also grows Jerusalem artichokes on their farm. So they gave us a box of artichokes, and we were just like, ‘,What are we going to do with these artichokes?’ So we steam them down and stir fry them, mix it with a cashew mix, then season with a salted turnip and a bit of soy. It's vegan and it's delicious.
“My number two dish is the Grilled Beef Tongue. It's done in such a unique way you normally don’t see in Australian restaurants. Usually, it’s braised and then re-cooked, but we clean the tongue while it’s raw, cut it up into almost like steak portions, then we marinate it in papaya for three days, then we re-marinate it and cook it from raw. It just has a great texture and is tender.
‘The third dish would be the Crispy Rice Salad, which is a traditional Lao dish made from leftover rice. For ours, we cook it, we make a yellow curry that we season it with, and then we deep fry it and serve it at room temperature. And then the rice gets broken up, and then it gets tossed through with nuts, freshly grated coconut, shallot, lemon grass, chunks of ume, lots of herbs, and then is dressed with fish sauce and lemon. It’s super, super fresh and crunchy. Perfect for muggy summer weather.”
- Q.Away from the restaurant, how do you like to entertain?
JY: “It’s very last minute and very hands-off. We’re not very organised people.”
Thi: “We don’t have a lot of time, and I spend so much time in the kitchen at work, so on my day off, I don’t want to cook for people. On the rare occasions that we do, it’s very impromptu and triggered by me finding something at the markets, like a whole fish. I’ll basically ask people to come around just to help me eat it. When I cook for myself it’s usually a protein and then lots of raw veggies and herbs with lots of condiments and rice paper. So everyone builds their own rolls. It’s very interactive. I’m cooking, but I’m not cooking, you know?”
JY: “We are always with people who know what they’re doing in the kitchen too, so they are assigned to make a sauce or something. Not everyone is a cook, but they’re people who enjoy eating. I can’t cook, but I can wash lettuce.”
Thi: “Exactly. Anyone can wash lettuce. In terms of set up, we’ve always lived in terrace houses with courtyards, so we sit outside at the outdoor dining table, make a mess, and then hose everything down afterwards.”
- Q.What drinks are always in your fridge when you entertain?
Thi: “Our group of friends aren’t huge drinkers, so we always have a lot of low or non-alcoholic drinks. I'm always the biggest drinker, and I’ll only have one or two glasses of wine. I'm a fan of pet nats, and I also really love a good ice tea when there’s a group – like a green tea and then you get fresh fruit, like passionfruit, and you throw a bit of mint in and you make a big punch bowl and then everyone helps themself.”
JY: “We get things like the Heaps Normal Quiet XPA (which is non-alcoholic beer), or kombucha. I also love a good Coke – so much sugar, but I think a bit of sugar is OK. Recently, we've come across the Molly Rose Citra-Citra IPA. It’s citrus based, but stylistically similar to an IPA. I'm quite fond of vermouths too, because they are lower in alcohol and always available if you’re in a country town and the city beverages aren’t available. It’s so nice on a summer’s day with ice and a dry tonic. I’m a tonic fiend. Especially Capi Dry Tonic. It’s also great with Campari. Fantastic.”
- Q.What’s the secret to a great event?
Thi: “Simplicity. I’ve been to dinner parties and the host is so stressed because they’ve spent the last eight hours cooking and it hasn’t turned out how they’d hoped. You can’t talk to them because they’re so stressed about the food! If you want to host, my advice is to buy great produce and keep it simple and interactive with everyone hanging out together.”
JY: “I think one of the best times Thi has entertained was when we brought prawns and crabs, then she steamed them up when we got home and it was ready to go. Minimal effort, max reward.”
Notable mentions
- Q.Go-to drink order?
JY: “I have more of a bitter palate so I like vermouths with tonic, or something like Cynar, which is an artichoke liqueur. Just with ice and tonic it’s really refreshing.”
Thi: “I love a sour, like an Amaretto Sour or Whiskey Sour. I like the texture of the froth.”
- Q.Best restaurant you’ve ever eaten at?
JY: “On our days off we go shopping on Little Bourke Street, and where all the camping shops are congregated is Tipo 00. We love it – it’s convenient and it’s really tasty food with a great wine list. So it satisfies both our pasta cravings, and our need for a good drink. We usually order something bubbly for Thi and something low-alc for me. It’s a place we go to time and time again.”
Thi: “My favourite restaurant overseas is Mokonuts in Paris. It’s run by a couple, the husband is Iranian-French and the wife is Japanese-American. He’s a cook, and she had a corporate job but started baking, and they’ve opened this Middle Eastern/Japanese/Parisian mash-up bistro. When we were there in 2019 it was summer and really hot, they served this berry tart with a miso and sesame base. It was the freshest, juiciest fruit. Like, summer in your mouth. It was presented really simply, and just epitomised seasonality. We’d been to a few places in Paris that were meant to be really produce-driven, but none really showcased what good produce can do like they did. Less is more.”
- Q.Best event you’ve hosted?
Thi: “We used to have a terrace with a rooftop, and I’d just finished working at Luxembourg [an Andrew McConnell restaurant that closed in 2017], and we invited a heap of people around – half chefs, half non-chefs for a very Vietnamese spread. Lots of herbs, lots of leaves and pickles, and I had the Weber on and everyone was just having a go cooking meat on the barbecue. Everyone loved it, and truly, that was when the idea for Anchovy came to me. It was collaborative, super fresh and flavoursome, and we started thinking, that’s the kind of food we should do.”
JY: “I remember it being all the non-chefs doing the cooking and giving it a go, and then, ofcourse, when something caught on fire, a chef would casually step in and take over. It was great.”
Campervan life
- Q.When did you get your campervan?
JY: “We got our campervan just before COVID hit, in October, 2019. It's actually a commercial van that had been emptied inside. We'd been into car camping for a while – we had tents and everything – so we were ready for the campervan investment, but then COVID hit. With the restaurant closed, Thi spent her lockdown time doing up the campervan. There was actually a very brief period in Melbourne lockdown when we were allowed to go out, and Thi and I were so sick of everything, so we drove the van out to somewhere with zero reception to get a bit of downtime. We had a great time, but when we came back into reception, we realised the city was actually back in lockdown. Oops! But the thing I love about camping is the food. For me it was always frustrating that you had to set up camp before you could set up the food side of things. So the campervan made sense because you can pull up on site and just start your fire.”
- Q.How often do you go?
Thi: “We decided that we wanted three days off from the restaurant. With just three days, you can't really go to another state, so we stick to Victoria and go within a three-hour radius from Melbourne. Because we've got a dog, all the campsites need to be dog-friendly. We’d like to go every other weekend, but it's usually once a month.”
- Q.Where is your favourite place to go?
Thi: “My favourite during summer would be Wilson's Prom, though it’s not dog-friendly. For winter my favourite is Bright. It’s high country and beautiful – and also freezing.”
JY: “We actually don’t like camping in the summer that much, too many flies. The Grampians is also amazing and has one dog-friendly campground, so we’ve worked out that if we go with a couple of friends, we can take turns being with the dog while the others go exploring.”
- Q.What food do you eat when you’re camping?
Thi: “We always go to, or through, places where there’s a lot of produce and we pick things up along the way. Victoria is home to some amazing beef, and when you’re out in the country you can find local butchers with fantastic beef that’s come from a paddock nearby. So, I always make a beef tartare, and buy a packet of chips from the servo to have it with.”
JY: “Wilson’s Prom has amazing walks, but you can’t start a fire, so we have bought a camping pizza oven, it folds up to be smaller than a carry-on suitcase, but heats up in 10 minutes! We went camping with it over New Year’s, and I don’t know if people thought we were geniuses or nuts because Thi, being the chef she is, picked up a bag of flour in one of the towns and decided to make her own pizza dough and just started churning out pizzas.”
Thi: “No one was complaining because we gave everyone a slice.”
JY: “I think they were equal parts horrified and amused.”
Thi: “There was another time we were coming from Adelaide and had just picked up the freshest fish, it was incredible just cooked on the fire. Camping gives you access to amazing fresh produce.”
- Q.What are your top tips for people wanting to take out the campervan for the first time?
Thi: “Take condiments that you love, and don’t take food to cater for the whole time. Do half. Then you have the flexibility to eat local. Like, you can stop when you go past an orchard, and if you have the condiments you can easily make a delicious peach salad. A lot of people pack their car with so much food that they then don’t feel like eating because they find an amazing little fish and chip shop, or a fresh fruit stall, or someone catches a fish. And then they end up taking all that food they brought back with them.”
JY: “My top tip is to bring a bin. An actual bin, not just a liner. Also, things to start the fire with. Bits of paper or cardboard that would otherwise be going in your recycling that week. You can find bits of wood when you’re out there, but if you don’t have a magazine to get it going, it’s very tough to build your fire.”
Let’s plan... a Camping Feast
- Q.Who’s coming:
JY: “Us and our dog, Cheddar.”
- Q.The guest brief:
Thi: “We’ll head out the morning after our last shift, condiments and drinks packed. We’ll get some produce from the local stores on the way through. Beef, eggs, bread and pippies. Once our extensive range of camping kitchen appliances are unpacked, we’ll start the fire. ”
- Q.The pre-dinner mingle:
JY: “When we arrive, we’ll have some Heaps Normal beers while we set up. With the van, that mostly means setting up our cooking stuff, so it’s quick. We’ll make the steak tartare first, with potato chips of course.”
- Q.The main event:
Thi: “These all get eaten as we get hungry, but we’ll have some sardines on toast as a starter. These go great with a tonic and Cynar. For the pippies, I like to collect watercress from the river. JY thinks it’s disgusting, but agrees that it’s very tasty. We’ll cook some pasta to go with it and then pour something nice. I always like something a bit bougie with some texture, like a chilled red or a pet nat, to have with dinner and while the sun sets.”
