Tell us about yourself
and what you do?
Born in
China of Chinese Russian background, I have lived in Australia for nearly 30
years. Most times I feel that I was born and raised in this great country that
I proudly call home. I have been working
in the IT/Telecommunications industry since I left university. Currently I have
2 full time jobs, my “day” job is as a life cycle account executive for a large
Telco looking after Asia Pacific region, my “night” job is running a new and
exciting Thai restaurant in Tempe, Sydney – Bai Tong Thai.
What inspire you to
open Bai Tong Thai Restaurant?
Cooking has
always been my passion. I love that
there is no limit to your capability and imagination when it comes to
cooking. We are so lucky in Australia
that we are surrounded by wonderful fresh ingredients and diversity of
cuisines, yet we are often subjected to substandard restaurant food. I wanted to create a place where we can serve
dishes created with best quality of ingredients in an informal environment. We
chose Thai cuisine as it is a shining example of how best to balance fresh
ingredients with five of our fundamental tastes: bitter, sweet, sour,
salty and spicy.
Winter Melon with Prawns
What are the five words that people who know you would use to
describe you?
Now that’s a leading question....
Loyal, Detailed, Decisive, Talented,
Stubborn and my partner would add “Bossy”.
Who (or what) inspires
you to do what you love as a cook and a restaurant owner?
My
partner Ash is my inspiration. He has always been brutally honest with
everything in our life. If he had it his way, we’d be having dinner parties
every weekend and I would be cooking up a storm.
We’d
seen a lack of creative and quality food surrounding where we live, and often
talk about how good it would be if we could bridge this gap. In 2011, we took
the plunge and opened Bai Tong Thai at Tempe.
Panang Curry
Where do you get your inspiration from when you design the menu?
Our menus are designed based on what’s
fresh in season as well as our Chef’s signature dishes. We carry all the
standard Thai dishes that you find in all Thai restaurants around Australia
such as Pad Thai, Fried Rice, Green/Red Curry; however, we also have an award
winning chef who has some amazing dishes as her signature cuisine. A shining
example of our philosophy can be found in our current seasonal specials menu –
Our chef’s own ChiangMai style pork sausages for entree and Wintermelon stuffed
with Prawns served with a Choo Chee sauce for main.
What are the signature dishes in your restaurant?
On our menu, we have many dishes that
you would be hard to find in another restaurant in Sydney, some of our
customer’s favourites are:
Choor Muang – a violet dumpling stuffed
with minced smoke duck and caramelised peanut, this dish was originated from
ancient royal Thai cuisine.
Lemongrass whole fish – Whole Barramundi
filleted boneless, then crispy fried and
served with lemonsgrass floss and chilli dressing.
Banana Blossom Salad with Prawns –
Tender banana flower with grilled king prawns
Miang Pla Grob – crispy fish with
cashewnut and coconut served on a fresh betal leaf
What motivates you
to do your best as the Restaurant owner?
To see and hear
happy and satisfied customers after
their meal as well as the wonderful creations coming out of the kitchen. We are
so lucky that we have a very talented award winning chef that creates new and
exciting dishes regularly.
What are key tasks for
Restaurant owner?
As a small establishment, I have to be very hands on. Like
most small businesses, it’s a 24x7 job keeping the business afloat. Examples of
key tasks are below:
Sourcing – constantly looking for ingredients, suppliers, negotiating on
price, organising orders and pickup. To ensure the best quality of ingredients,
I would be out shopping daily on perishable items and once or twice weekly to
various markets to source ingredients.
Menu Design and delivery - Menu is key to success for a restaurant, I need
to ensure that it’s up to date, printed and delivered to client’s mail boxes.
Our seasonal menu changes every 6 weeks, and can take upto 2 weeks to source
and decide on what’s best in season.
Staffing – As a small business, every staff is important to the success of
the place. Everyone also have to learn multi tasking and multi skills. I need
to do staff roaster, staff training, payroll, hiring and all HR related activities.
Farmers' Market - carriage works
Paperwork – mountains of! There is no end to paperwork, daily banking,
accounts payables, book keeping.
Customer Service - I am the face of the restaurant, I need to ensure that
our customers are all well taken care of. Recognise regular clients and
ensuring that any of their special needs are catered for.
Marketing /Advertising – This is an ongoing task, in today’s online world, I
need to try and ensure that we have a good marketing/advertising plan with
limited resources.
Shopping – doesn’t matter how well planned we are, there is always something
that’s needed at the 11th hour.
Helping hand -Whichever station that needs help I would be
there, cooking, serving, washing dishes, cleaning.
Where do you see
yourself in five years?
I’d love to combine my passion for
travel and cooking. I’d love to have a place where there will be no menus and
we would source whatever is fresh in the market for the day and create an
amazing meal for people to share.
What do you most love about your job?
Happy and satisfied customers, a
discovery of a new dish that can be add to our menu.
If you had just one wish, what would it be?
Hmm.. more hours in the day!
Seriously, I wish Australia government really have a good look at how best
to support small businesses. We are drowning
under the weights of paperwork, taxes and fees. If we had money to hire all the
extra hands, we wouldn’t be a small business!
How do you connect with other artisans, and your customers (i.e. how
do you network)?
In today’s internet world, I connect
with a lot of people via Linkedin, facebook etc, however I still believe in a
good old fashioned face to face catch up to share ideas. Although right now
there’s not a lot of time for that.
Best cooking tip for a
novice just getting into the business?
Get the best ingredient you can possibly
afford and keep it simple.
Prawn Cakes
What advice can you offer other artisans who are just starting out
and following their passions?
The road is long and winding, and
sometimes you have to go through dark tunnels and you might get lost along the
way, but the most important thing is that you start the journey and follow it
through to the end, the reward will be invaluable.
What is your proudest moment so far?
We opened the door on October 6, 2011
after more than 12months of planning and 3 months of renovation. Some days it
felt like we would never get here. We
were so worried that no one would turn up but was so pleasantly surprised with
the support we received from our locals. The first thing on most people’s mouth
on our opening day was “what took you so long?!”
Who do you most want to meet and why?
Maeve O’Meara – through her work she
would have been to some fascinating places in the world and met some amazing
people. I’ve love to hear the stories and gain more inspiration.
What is the most important lesson in life that you have learned?
Be independent, you can only rely on
yourself to make your own dreams come true.
Do you have a favourite
cookbook to recommend?
Maggies
Harvest – Another inspirational lady in my life. Maggie’s recipes in this book fit
right into my philosophy on food – great seasonal produce with simply recipes
that can be easily adapted to suit everyone’s taste and the end result is
shared with family and friends over a long table and a good glass of wine.
Where do we find you and your restaurant?
Bai Tong Thai Tempe
703 – 705 Princes Highway
Tempe
NSW 2044
Australia
2 comments:
As a Tempe resident I cannot state enough how happy we are to have Irina's dream come true in our little neighbourhood. The menu and food are truely something else, and every single time I order from BaiTong Thai I love the new taste sensations. Thanks Irina for all your work and for bringing Pom to cook at BaiTong and for giving her the room to show off with her special dishes.
I agree wholeheartedly with Bettina's comments. As another Tempe local I love that we have a great local restaurant run by a local. BUT what I love most is that many of the dishes are not your standard Thai restaurant fare, they are innovative and very delicious. Good luck Irina.
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