We open Billy Kwong at six every night and on a Saturday people start queueing at 5.15pm to get in the door. We all just hide in the kitchen; it's madness but it's better to be busy than not busy. It's a nice problem to have.
I only cook there a couple of nights a week now because I'm too busy doing other things. I have a contract for another book, which I have to hand in by the end of the year. And I want to go to Europe; I've never been to France or Italy - I should be shot. I've been busy setting up the business. But I've set it up so it runs itself. That's why you have your own business - so you can have more freedom. I know how to do the cooking; I've stood at a stove for 12 hours a day. I've got all these young - well, younger - people to do it now.
But I get feverish if I don't cook for more than two days. Billy Kwong is not like going to work; it's like home. My kitchen at home is lovely too. It's clean but it has lots of mortars and pestles and chopsticks and spoons and steamers and flowers and chopping boards. It's cluttered and overflowing with stuff. I like that country, rustic stuff. I'll never have a minimalist stainless-steel kitchen.
I cook lots of Italian. You know, Italian food is very similar to Chinese food the way it's handled: cooking the meats and everything on the bone; the sourness - you know how we love sour and salty - the beautiful fresh herbs. But my thing at the moment is Vietnamese chicken-noodle soup with all the bean sprouts and sweet Thai basil and lime. Love it.
I usually get out of bed about seven or eight and go for a walk. I go around Centennial Park and Paddington, where I live. I do this circuit and end up in Queen Street, Woollahra, looking at the antiques shops. After the walk I'll check e-mails, have a shower and go to the restaurant about 12. It's an eight-minute drive from Paddington. I'll buy some flowers on the way. When I'm there I talk to the head chef and ask him how last night went, speak to the fish man and decide what specials to put on that night. A lot of chefs don't do that; they just order off a list - that takes the art out of cooking. We hand-write our specials menu every day. In the afternoon I go home again and check my e-mails, have a shower, then go back to the restaurant and have an early dinner with friends. That's about it. I went to bed late for so many years when I was a chef, and that's so bad for you. I like going to bed at 10.30pm-11pm and getting up early, as opposed to going to sleep at 2am and getting out of bed at 11am, which I did for seven years; that's what you do when you're a young chef. Then you get home and you can't sleep because you're so hyped up.
I have dinner parties once every couple of weeks. I love setting the table. I've got all these beautiful Irish linen tablecloths and French napkins and I bought these beautiful old-style plates when I went up to the Blue Mountains [west of Sydney] recently. I love the ritual and the ceremony of setting the table and creating moods. My parents still have dinner parties every Saturday night for about 12 people. They're 61 and 66 but they've always enjoyed having parties. My mum came over the other day to borrow one of my electric woks because she was having a steamboat dinner at the weekend for 10 of her girlfriends from golf.
My parents like routine; that's why I'm the opposite. I hate doing anything twice. When we were little we used to go to Bondi beach every Sunday. For about 15 years we sat in the same spot, right in the middle of south and north and near a bin - how practical! I'm more Australian than the Australians. My mother was born in Darwin, my father in Melbourne. My mother's mother, my pau pau , lived with us for seven years when we were little; my father's mother lived with us as well at a different time and tried to teach us Chinese, but we didn't want to know because we were the only Asian children in the neighbourhood. None of us speaks Chinese; we're horrible, we just cook it.