SPEAKER_02 0:00

In this episode of the Hospital Dojo podcast, I chat with Donato Tocce, head chef and co-owner of Gelato Metina. We talk about his rise from dishwasher to dessert pioneer, how Metina became a national icon, and what it takes to stay consistent in a fast-paced environment. This episode is proudly brought to you by Food and Hospitality Week, a major event in Australia's hospitality calendar connecting 15,000 chefs, owners, and industry professionals every year. Donato Tocce. You're an inspiration to many. Honestly, you uh pioneered one of the greatest brands that Australia's ever had had seen. Thank you. In the retail sector.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

I'd love to say that it's all mine, but there's a whole big team behind us, so it's beautiful. It's uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Tell us a little bit about your story. Um you started working in kitchens when you were 13.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Yeah, so I started very, very young. Uh basically, uh my father passed away when I was 13, and my mother basically said, if you want pocket money, you've got to go out and earn it. And I went, Alright, cool. Um, so at that point I had a a cousin who had a pizza shop, and I basically asked him for a job, and he said, All right, you can start doing you can start on the pot wash. And that's what I was doing. At 13, I was washing dishes in a in a restaurant that was doing 250 covers on a Saturday night, you know. Um, learnt very fast how to work, but in the meantime I would uh cook myself a little pasta throughout the night when it was quiet. Everyone was quiet, yeah. You know, and the chefs would teach me how to cook the pasta and um how what to do, and then one guy didn't show up and they said you want to jump on the line. And I think I was about 14 then.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Was it always al dente? Always al dente. What's it called? Montecari. Monticari, uh you have to. You have to. You have to.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yeah, and that's how it started. And then ever since then, uh can't remember a night without a service, huh? Can't remember a night without a service. Uh tried going to school, tried doing uni, uh not so good at school, even worse at uni, um, and just dropped out and started cooking.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

And then when you were the head chef at Atavola, what lessons you know from that from that time shaped your approach today with what you do at Messina?

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Um I think I've learnt to be a little calmer. Um could be I I got trained in the old school of cooking, so I came up through the restaurants where you're beasted. Um whether that made me a good chef or a bad chef, I'm still trying to work that out. But I think what I what was then and now that that's like oh man, that's like 17 years ago. Um at the end of the day, chefs aren't curing cancer. So you don't need to be so fucking serious. You can just relax. You everything will get done, just find a uh a solutions approach to everything and don't worry about the problems. They'll work themselves out, you know. So for me, it's just I my business partners taught me this just to be calmer and you know, let it slide. I still get a little hot headed now and then, but you know, shit happens.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

It's a part of it, right? It's a part of it. Now, you know, Messina as a brand and yourself are known for pushing those creative boundaries all the time. And we see it through the flavor profiles you create. Where do your ideas come from and and how do you like how do you guys as a team decide what makes a cut?

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Uh so this morning the exec chef and I were basically having a coffee together, and we just thought of a couple of flavors. So it's not it's not a thing where we develop these flavors and we sort of you know get customer feedback and all of that sort of stuff. For us, we build flavors, we do a lot of nostalgia, so things that resonate with people, um, and we just do it in an ice cream form. Um, if we've got something that's like beautiful, for instance, our hazelnut or our pistachio, for us that they're the pinnacle ingredients. So if you emphasize that and do something different with it, that that there is a flavor in itself.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

It's it comes from everywhere, but how do you have like a foundational place and okay? We need, you know, what's a nostalgia point, what's a creative point, what's the is there a bite, is there a texture, is there a crap?

SPEAKER_00 4:23

No, no, no. For us, it's just how the flavor sounds. Does it sound good? Sometimes we fuck up big time. There are flavors that don't move, and then there are flavors that you what was a fuck up out of curiousity. We've we've done so many. We did one, uh it resonates. It was a it was an orange sorbet and a yogurt gelato swirled together, and then we put like a granola through it, and we thought, uh, cool, it's uh breakfast and orange juice, and it just tasted like fucking shit. Um but yeah, so that that one wasn't so what's and then what's been like your your market leader like domination? Domination, and um it's not my flavor, it's actually uh one of the guys I work with, he came up with a flavor, and it's it's basically it's Milo gelata with Oreo biscuits and Nutella. And the thing is, it Milo is just chock malt, so we we don't use Milo. Oreos we make our own dark chocolate cookies and um the Nutella we make as well, we make our version of it. So it's not like we're using any of the products, we're just you call it that, and that's what it is, and it's a triple whammy because it's all three things that it just it just hits. It just hits. It just hits. If we ever do that flavor, when we do put that in the specials, we basically we make make about two and a half ton. Wow, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

So that goes out to all locations. That's phenomenal. And even like to now we see that uh each site has like a has a micro lab inside.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yeah, so every every site is yeah, we churn on site, so that guarantees freshness. Generally, what happens with ice cream stores is you'll buy the product off a uh a manufacturer, and the manufacturer just sends it in frozen. Sends it in frozen, yeah. We don't do that, so we churn on-site, so that guarantees freshness. So for us, nothing in the cabinet is older than 36 to 48 hours. Um and we only once it goes down from minus 20 to minus 12, 13, 14, whatever the cabinet's set to, it's finished and it's done, it's gone. Wow. Yeah, so that that for us is key. It's it's freshness. So every store was the first store had that and now every store has it since.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

That's phenomenal. And and you know, how do you so with that, right? How do you balance the the consistency and the quality over the 30 plus stores?

SPEAKER_00 6:40

So we've got a central DC, so with that we make everything. So with with gel alto, the the part that's like really, really uh enticing and what everybody loves is when it's coming out of the machine. Yeah, but all the work is done in the kitchen where you're formulating recipes and where you're loading pasteurisers, making sure that everything is there and creating flavours and all of that, that's done in our kitchen. Then when it goes into the batch freezer, it's it's already done. When it gets to store, it's already a complete kit. So they just get the the liquid base, they get their flavourings that we'll make, they get the inclusions that we make, and they just put it all together and it's done. And the inclusions they throw them in as the stuff's going through. Correct, correct. So it's really important for us that when we say it's got like bringing back that triple whammy flavor, when we say it's got Nutella and Oreos and the gelato, obviously, we want to make sure that every scoop you get has everything that you want. So we we have two people that go around basically to all our stores around Australia and train the churners how to do it. How to do it, wow. Yeah, so it's phenomenal. Yeah, so we we have the and we're we're pretty we're pretty good at it.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

Well, 100%. I'm telling you, it's consistent, man. Yeah, and it's a great product. Thank you. And your cakes are phenomenal too. Cakes are really good. I don't know if anyone's not ever tried their cakes, but their cakes are honestly crowd favourite. Yeah, it's it's they're actually great. That the chocolate log that you guys got.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Yeah, the four chocolates. The four chocolates, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

That's phenomenal. Yeah. Um, and then you've got the is it the bomber? Bomba bombalaska. I won't forget that one. Yeah, that's one of my favorites. That's a good one. And the mushroom just looks wild. I've never tried it.

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Yeah, it's good. What is it? It's uh it that was one of the original specials we did. It's chocolate gelato with peanut cookies and Lucia de Leche. Ah, that's why I could never get it. My sister's allergic to peanuts. There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that that now the mushroom is like one of our iconic symbols, so we actually can't change the cake.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Well, it's uh yeah, so it's that's phenomenal. That's beautiful. Now you you you've obviously had you know experience the culture of dessert in Australia changed so many times, and you've you've constantly evolved with with what's to come. What's your take on how the dessert culture now in Australia is shaping and where do you see it heading in the next five years?

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Um the the palate's definitely developed. Like to go from our biggest flavour being cookies and cream to now being pistachio and pistachio praline, um, you can see a trend where people people actually appreciate flavours as as beautiful as pistachio. There's there's always been a pistachio in every gel at the earth, but it's never sold as much as it does now. Um, you know, and cookies and cream is still great, it's one of my favourite flavours, but I think it's developing in in that way, and I think people either want nostalgia or they just want something that tastes really, really good. So bringing in other flavours, and because Australia is so multicultural as well for us, our third most popular favourite flavour is dulce de leche, right? Argentinian, well, South American, depending on who you talk to, um like caramel, and it's got a really, really savoury taste to it. And it's it's very different to normal caramel, but South Americans just love it. And I think because we've got so much multiculture, multicultural society here in Australia, I think things like that resonate.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

And and with the growth of of your brand, and and uh you're talking about South America a lot, you guys are really about the food mall. You guys have your own milk farm, that's correct, and then you've even worked with like single origin Ecuadorian cacao. Yeah, like so crazy. Right? So you're going like farm to table here, but then you're someone saying, Hey, I need a source of best chocolate I can in the world. Yeah. Yeah. So how's that work with you guys in regards to new products and offerings that you're having?

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Well, the the beautiful thing is that we because we're allowed to buy, we we can buy in volume. Um, for us it it guarantees a pretty good supply. So for instance, the there's the Ecuadorian chocolate that we get from a co-op in in Ecuador. Um, then we get a different variety from a place in Peru. Uh then, you know, yes, we've got our own dairy farm that's completely sustainable, like cows are milked once a day. Um, we keep calf on cow, there's a no-till method, so it stops erosion in the ground. Um we do so much on this farm just just for the milk. But the milk is the most important thing in our whole product. Yes. So as long as you've got a high quality for us, it's you know, even the price of chocolate going through the roof, it doesn't mean that we're going to cut down the amount of chocolate that's in our chocolate fondant. We just have to wear it. Um so for us, it's about giving quality and sourcing these fantastic chocolates and so you know being able to create this amazing milk. Well, not us creating the make milk, but yeah, but it's going through the same yeah, I understand it's in your ecosystem. Yeah, so everything we do is it's about sourcing the right product. Sometimes Australia duck can't deliver that, so we have to go elsewhere. Um, but you know, it's it we do as much as we can here locally. Like for instance, our chalk mint, we grow the mint on our farm. Wow. So, you know, when you taste our mint, it doesn't taste like toothpaste. Yeah, it tastes like her.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Yeah, you guys do your part with the food mile, definitely. You know, you are doing your best to reduce that and and keep it all in-house, and and you really see it with the quality and the consistency of your product, especially with the volume that you're doing. You know, you're not um it's not like someone can't deliver that volume, but for you it's about how can I centralize it and call that in. And that must be a challenge for the business as well, because you know, you're dabbering into things that are that are completely different to what you what you know and what you do, right? Yeah. And how important is business partners in this regard?

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Business partners this comp I don't our CEO Nick, who's the also the founder, is um I think his uh vision for this business is is what he's created here and he has a driving force and it's uh it's addictive. Like it makes you want to push harder. Um there again it come comes back to that what I said earlier about what I picked up when I was a chef to what I am now. It's not about it's like sourcing something. It's not about oh we can't source it because it's too hard. It's about okay, how do we do it? Just how do we do it? How do we get it here? Well what do we need to do to get it here? And it's there's no there's no boundaries. There's no boundaries, but there's also no it's impossible. There's no limitations, we'll we'll work it out. Yeah, we'll get to it, we'll work it out.

SPEAKER_02 13:12

Yeah, we are. So so if if there's a chef listening to this podcast right now, and he's you know I'm not gonna say he's, but whoever's listening to this a chef is listening to this podcast right now, what is you know one piece of advice you'd give them?

SPEAKER_00 13:29

If they want to get into a restaurant, this again is said by my business partner, Nick, and and it resonates because it's it's one thing that's sort of it I I live my life by it now. It's there is no plan B. If you want to do something, don't have a plan B. Just do what you want, do what you have to do to get your dream. And he like all my business partners have allowed me to fulfil my dream. So it's yeah, for for us, it's just don't don't deviate from the path. Stay on. Stay on, stay on. Stay on track, stay on track, don't move, don't move, don't think because oh, you know, we've got less turnover this week, I should change this, and I need to change this, and I need to do this. No, stick to the path.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

And if there was a you know, upcoming pastry chef hoping to stand out in the industry, wanting to make that mark, wanting to get on stage like you have, and uh, you know, a master chef and and dessert masters, right? And build a personal brand, how can they shine through this light?

SPEAKER_00 14:37

I'm probably the wrong person to ask that because I I don't have a personal brand and then I never want one. But I'm fortunate to have this other be part of this other brand. And I think for me, I I like the anonymity. I like the anonymity. Like I like just being in the background. You don't need to know who the hell I am. You know, for me it's it's I I I don't know what it is. I don't want the limelight, but I love Messina getting the limelight. For me, it's she's she's everything. Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:08

I like how you refer like it's it's it's a baby, it's yours. It's it's all about it. It's all as a group.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah, yeah. It's it's literally it's without sounding like a complete wanker. Yeah, it's the only thing I've got. Yeah. You know, the only thing that's actually you know, I love my wife, I love my family, but this is it's special too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:28

That's so beautiful. Thank you. That's so beautiful. So you're you're out here in Melbourne, you're at Food and Hostility Week. You were just doing a talk on food and food uh the flavors and food science. Amazing. For Discover the Source? Yes. Right, so can you tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Uh so I did an article um in January with uh a journalist, Jackson, who basically writes uh uh a long-form article in the The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, and it was just on flavor um and how we develop flavors. So they had me who develops uh flavors, gelatos, and then they had a food technologist on how he develops flavours and where flavour comes from. And just how it's how flavor tends to how gonna put it how it it's how it develops within you. How you taste it, how you feel it, how you flavor flavor can be a whole heap of things. Um so it's yeah, that was basically that.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

That's amazing. Well uh I'm gonna be we're gonna we're gonna link that article because we'd love people to to read it, understand more about the flavor profiling and what it what it does and how it can change things. And I guess if there was a a piece of inspiration if you wanted to give, you know, one one little viewer that's that's sitting there right now, what's one hit of inspiration you'd love to give him?

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Oh fuck. Jesus. Just do what you love. Just do what you love. Make sure that you need you need to get up out of bed every morning and and get to it. It's not it's not a thing where you're thinking about going, oh fuck, why the fuck am I doing this? It's about it it drives you. You need to find that thing that drives you, that pushes you, that you love. It's it's a lot harder uh it's a lot a lot harder done than said, but yeah, it's for me I love just getting to work and and starting the day. Get in the kitchen, starting the day. I wish I was I wish I was a little more hands-on, yeah, a little rusty. Uh but you know, being there and being there with the crew is for me, it fuels me.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Yeah, amazing. And what's next for Messina? What can we what can we see coming?

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Uh we just opened a store in Singapore.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Beautiful, congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Thank you, thank you. We opened that with a couple of uh partners there, yeah. Um, and then we've got a couple in Hong Kong. Hopefully, next is uh is Dubai, and uh we'll see what happens after that.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

Beautiful, and you send the product from here over there?

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Uh it's a little different, but the way we do it, but the the product all comes from Australia, but it's all pasteurized in the country. So we just send them a powder blend and and all the inclusions that comes with it. So it's basically a very, very small down, small honed down version of what we do in Marrickville in Sydney. We send that over there, and wherever they are, for instance, in Singapore, they're in Chinatown, bang, they they make everything there.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

Wow. Yeah. Congratulations on such an amazing achievement and thank you being a proud Australian brand. Love it, representing Italian heritage. Yeah, Donato Tonce, thank you so much. Thanks, Paul.