European touch 

chef profile - Jeremy Schmid

There’s a receptive calmness about chef Jeremy Schmid that is almost disconcerting in an age of bad tempered, tantrum-throwing TV chefs who have left a false impression of how a commercial kitchen really handles 100 plus covers in a space of a few hours. Good kitchens are calm and collected, and there’s none more collected than Two Fifteen on Dominion Road. 

It is the week before Christmas 2009 and he’s stealing too much time away from the stove and prepping tables of his kitchen to participate in our profile and Foodstyle Review cooking project on octopus. 

Jeremy Schmid is a member of Auckland’s celebrity chef pack, a keen and well-trained order of kitchen masters in their 30s who dominate the city’s fine dining restaurant scene. It includes Simon Wright from the French Café, Michael Meredith from his namesake restaurant, and Michael van de Elzen of Molten in Mt Eden Village. 

Jeremy’s hallowed place of cuisine creativity is Two Fifteen, a bistro near the intersection of Dominion Rd and Valley Rd in Mt Eden, and the culmination of two decades cooking over the big stove and training that began at Auckland’s AUT in the early 1990s. An interesting career followed, that has seen him on the Tele (Hells Kitchen), co-owning an Italian-inspired restaurant south of Auckland with Tony Astle (the venerable godfather of the country’s restaurant scene), inventing fashionable sausages (Little Boys), and working at a number of the Queen city’s culinary hot spots such as Vinnies and Euro. He also slipped in stints overseas with the Culinary Institute of America in the Napa Valley and restaurants in Europe and London, preparing menus both modern and classic. Creatively, chefs usually peak in their 30s, for this is the age when they have mustered a combination of training and confidence to press their own mark on the dining public, and Jeremy’s cuisine statement is ‘traditionalist’. He is comfortable cooking the old European way, slowly, with as much product made on the premises as possible, and, like many of his generation, is self-conscious about prices and plating perceived ‘value’ in front of his dinners.

Jeremy Schmid is a traditionalist to the extent that he cures his own small meat products and salmon on the premises, and makes his own sausages and bread. Not surprisingly, with such passion for kitchen commerce (and his surname), he was born in a far off land in the German-speaking town of Winterthur in northern Switzerland. Located in the middle of three different European cuisines (French, Italian and German), the neutral Swiss wrote the textbook on culinary technique and Jeremy has inherited the nation’s passion for managing the entire cooking process, not just the finished menu. His involvement in our ‘Octopus’ story in this summer issue was an inspiration to witness. When not cooking, which is not often, Jeremy Schmid likes cycling, snowboarding, kite boarding and driving a very powerful and very noisy American/English classic V8 sports car called a Cobra. 

Chef’s last meal questionnaire - Jeremy Schmid 

Most overrated ingredient? Truffle oil. 

Most underestimated ingredient? Pork shoulder. 

What scares you before service? Service is fun, nothing to be scared about. 

Milestone career experience? Winning the ‘sausage of the year’ competition and spending an evening at the French Laundry [Napa Valley] watching service and enjoying the food.

Ideal customer? Someone that is out to enjoy themselves. 

Customer nightmare? People that are never happy, but one can only try and make their night. 

You are limited to three flavourings? Smoked paprika, salt, and garlic. 

Favourite cookbooks? Anything that I get an idea from - Nico’s books are a good read. 

End of service treat? Don’t really have one, unless it’s getting out of cleaning up. 

What do you cook at home? I currently live above the restaurant so on my days off I go downstairs and usually just use what I have in the chiller. So I guess what I have on the menu. 

Always within reach? Salt 

Food aversion? Button mushrooms. 

Do you work to music? Sometimes. 

Cooking superstitions? None that I can think of. 

Day off recreation? Driving my Cobra. 

Cooking philosophy? Good food done simply with good ingredients. 

Always in your home fridge? Milk. 

Worst meal ever? Half frozen calzone in Florence. 

Favorite cooking tool? Knife [Swiss-made Victorinox]. 

Recipe inspiration? Friends, recently talking to Mark Gregory. He has heaps of ideas. 

Expensive food indulgence? Good chocolate. 

Favorite table decoration? A glass with a good red in it. 

What’s the next career step? Not sure, keep on cooking at Two Fifteen at this stage. 

What will you be doing at 50? Cooking or maybe teaching if they will have me. 

What would your last meal be? Anything, as long I am with friends and family.

Summer 2009

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