The secret behind some of Melbourne’s most delicious steaks and skewers? This man

There’s a surprising thread linking some of the most exciting restaurant dishes in Victoria right now – and it’s nothing to do with chefs, ingredients or cuisine. The impeccable sardines at city newcomer Cote Basque, the juicy toum-smothered chicken kebab at Zareh in Collingwood, the buttermilk-blanched cauliflower at destination diner Barragunda Dining, and the sambar deer at three-hatted Yiaga – all can be traced back to Samuel Fraraccio, a local artisan who designs and builds bespoke wood ovens and grills for commercial kitchens.

Widely known by his Instagram handle, The Brick Chef, Fraraccio was named on Monday as winner of The Age Good Food Guide’s Trailblazer Award presented by SevenRooms.

“Sam has given everyone an ability to reimagine fire,” says Simone Watts, executive chef at Barragunda, which has just been named Regional Restaurant of the Year by the Guide.

“Because he’s so creative, and he knows so much, you can say to him ‘I have this space, this is the cooking I like to do’ and he can create something that suits. He’s a fire nerd in the best possible way.”

Two-thirds of the menu at Barragunda is touched by fire. “It’s the workhorse of our kitchen,” says Watts.

Fraraccio fabricates ovens and grills at his studio in Melbourne’s outer-east, then installs them in restaurant kitchens, lining them with fire-rated bricks and venting them meticulously to ensure seamless extraction. He focuses on safety, durability, utility and an efficient use of wood or charcoal.

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In Collingwood, Zareh’s Armenian-Lebanese kitchen is driven by a Brick Chef oven and grill. “Sam is integral to the Melbourne, if not Australian, dining scene,” says Tom Sarafian, co-owner of the hatted restaurant, named New Restaurant of the Year in last year’s Guide.

“His design gives us endless possibilities to create a signature style. After a year, I feel we’re just scraping the surface of how we’ll be able to cook with fire.”

Fraraccio trained as a stonemason but grew up building mud-brick wood-fired ovens with his dad. “It would collapse every five years, and then we’d rebuild it slightly better each time,” he says. He always enjoyed hospitality, too, and found himself doing front-of-house shifts at O.My restaurant in Beaconsfield while working for a construction company. “I was a terrible waiter, but I saw the care in everything from the farm to the food to the end customer – it really triggered something in my head. I was like, ‘I love this’.”

In 2017, he built his first restaurant oven at Lesa, the dining room above city wine bar Embla that closed in 2020. It was the first of about 130 restaurant jobs over the past decade, including many interstate.

Anyone can buy a standard-issue grill, but that simple transaction doesn’t come with a 360-degree appreciation of a restaurant’s specific needs. Fraraccio considers the dimensions of the kitchen, the style of cuisine and the realities of cooking enough food to make the restaurant’s financials stack up.

When Sarafian first imagined his kitchen, he pictured a simple long grill. Fraraccio steered him towards a shorter rig with shelving above the fire, so that food could be cooked by indirect heat as well as fierce flame.

“I’d watched Tom cook and I knew that hot and fast isn’t how he drives his menu,” says Fraraccio. “Each chicken skewer takes 22 minutes to cook, for example. He is more about controlling caramelisation.”

Having multiple heights on the grill means more food can be cooked in a smaller footprint over less fuel by fewer chefs, radically improving the economics of the restaurant.

Beauty is also important. The Guide’s Restaurant of the Year, Yiaga, worked closely with Fraraccio on its integrated wood grill, which sits in the open kitchen concealed behind specially made brass trim and terracotta tiles.

“We could never have had this outcome using off-the-shelf products,” says executive chef Hugh Allen. “It was a very complex build involving Sam, the architects and numerous consultants over many months. The result is seamless. From a guest perspective, it looks like a fireplace in a wall. For us, it’s what we cook everything on, and we can build racks, use different fuels.

“It’s more than a piece of equipment – it comes with the maker. It’s an ongoing relationship, not a transaction,” Allen adds.

Reducing fuel consumption is key to Fraraccio’s ethos. His deep understanding of the “fire triangle” – the nexus of fuel, oxygen and heat – is baked into his streamlined designs. “Zareh did a full service recently and they only added one log to the fire,” he says.

The Brick Chef’s ovens have doors, which means greater control of the heating up and cooling down of the fire. “Closing a door overnight means you start the next day with an oven that’s already around 150C or 200C,” he says.

That translates into less money being spent on wood and wages, because a chef isn’t needed to get the oven back up to temperature. During service, a door also means less heat escapes into the kitchen, creating a healthier work environment. “You’re not blasting the chef with radiant heat from a 500C oven,” says Fraraccio.

For chefs, managing the peaks and troughs of heat allows for more creativity, too. “I think if you’re lighting a fire you should be able to use that energy from start to finish,” says Charley Snadden-Wilson, executive chef at hatted Clover wine bar in Richmond, which has a Brick Chef oven.

“Our bread is baked in the oven using residual heat left over from the night before. We smoke our butter with coals. We can bake a sponge cake in five minutes as the oven is heating up or cooling down. It’s complete engagement from start to finish. The fire is part of us.”

The Brick Chef doesn’t just endear himself to restaurant people because he brings the heat. He’s also a sincere supporter of the industry and a frequent diner and fan.

“I constantly have conversations with other tradies about food, and they tell me things like they would never spend $28 on a pizza,” he says. “On the other hand, they might have a houseboat and two jet skis. Well, restaurants are my jet ski. I prefer to have some of my income go back into the industry that employs me, the industry that I love.”

The winners of the 46th Age Good Food Guide Awards, presented by Oceania Cruises and T2 Tea, were announced on Monday, October 12.

The home of the Good Food Guide, the app is free for premium subscribers of The Age and also available as a standalone subscription. You can download the Good Food app here.

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