In his 30-odd years as a chef, Ben Willis has done just about everything. He's cooked for the likes of the Rolling Stones' Ronnie Wood, Elton John and George Michael at The Harrington Club in London. He once cooked the dishes of Marco Pierre White for the man himself at the National Gallery of Australia. Aubergine, the Griffith restaurant he's owned since 2008, has long been regarded as Canberra's finest, winning hats and accolades consistently for more than a decade.
But now, with the doors of Aubergine closed, he reflects on one of his favourite moments.
"It was my daughter Chloe's ninth birthday in July and she came in with Andrea, my wife, all dressed up and she ate the whole set menu," he says.
"To see her there, looking all grown up, not making a fuss, it was a really special night."
Perhaps that's been the secret of Aubergine all along. For as much as he's focused on quality food, on exceptional service, on getting things right, he admits he's sometimes disappointed if a night doesn't meet people's expectations. He wants every night, every dish to be special. Even after all these years.
"Expectations" is a word that comes up a lot in our interview. We're sitting in Aubergine, the tables clear, chairs stacked, fridges empty. He seems relaxed, contemplating weekends with the family - Andrea, Chloe and Jack, who's just four. He's thinking about his golf game and skiing. About creating special nights for his own family at home around his dinner table.
When he announced the restaurant would be closing in June, that October 1 would be the final service, the restaurant was inundated with messages of goodwill - and with bookings. It was impossible to get a seat in those three months and a long wait list.
"There was a lot of positivity in those last three months which kind of made us think, what are we doing?" he says.
"We had people who hadn't been in for years, who may have had their first date here, or had been here for every anniversary, so many people had old stories - it was lovely."
He says while there wasn't one particular reason why he decided it was time to close, the lockdowns during the pandemic shifted his priorities somewhat.
"It was tough for so many people, for us too, but staff were being paid, and it's rare just to take three months off from a restaurant.
"Sure, it was nerve-racking at the start because we didn't know if it would be six weeks, eight weeks, six months, but there were parts of it I enjoyed.
"I liked being able to spend time with the kids, to take them for bike rides. Home-schooling had its moments, but it was nice to be able to have some early nights, to just stop."
He admits he came back from it all with more energy for the restaurant, and that diners too were happy to be back.
But he thinks the industry has changed, with staff shortages, increases in food prices, and that word "expectations" again.
"People just expected more and sometimes it was hard to deliver due to things outside of our control," he says.
He's always prided himself on gathering the best people around him. He opened Temporada in the city with chef Chris Darragh in 2014. Dave Young moved into the kitchen in 2018, buying the restaurant in 2020. Sun Jang has been with him for years at Aubergine. Caitlin Baker was restaurant manager there for 18 months before it closed.
"I've learned patience and compassion from Ben, knowing when to say something and when not too. There's been lots of laughs and good times, plenty of eye-rolling too," Baker says.
"I think Ben is seen as an uncle to the younger restaurateurs of the city. He's always happy to be called upon for advice. In the past 14 years he has pretty much seen it all.
"He's always supportive, excited for the younger generation to grow and just has a great love for the industry."
Chris Hansen, who's had 20 years' experience in the Canberra hospitality industry and is now a Canberra Times restaurant reviewer, says Willis has always been the benchmark chef in this town.
"He took the keys to Aubergine at a relatively young age, when it already had a solid reputation, and took the restaurant to a whole new level.
"I can remember around two years in, when I was chatting with Andrea and she told me that Ben was starting to think that his food was getting pretty good. Such were his high standards, that it took him two years to start to think that, when the people were actually raving about his cooking from the very start."
Willis never really thought about being a chef; he just knew he wasn't too keen to go to university straight after school.
"I quite liked the idea of cooking and Erindale College had just set up a kitchen and a little hospitality program," he says.
"But it was 1992 and there weren't many restaurants around in Canberra. There were clubs, maybe a few Chinese places, but finding an apprenticeship was really hard."
After he finished at Erindale, he did a business diploma at the Canberra Institute of Technology and landed his first job at the Hellenic Club in Woden, where he worked as a waiter before he went into the kitchen, washing dishes before moving on to be in charge of the deep fryer.
"Cooking got serious once I was in charge of that deep fryer," he says.
"I had fryer baskets on the go everywhere. We had 600 people in a night and I had to make sure there was always enough chips."
He was soon in Sydney working in the kitchens at the Opera House, then on to London, where he worked at The Harrington Club, Criterion Restaurant and Chez Bruce for the next few years.
Back in Canberra in 2007, it was a matter of working out where he could fit in.
"I started to think about what it was that I could offer Canberra in terms of food and a restaurant, but we didn't have any money," he says, admitting he contemplated getting out of cooking altogether.
"But the longer I thought about it, the more I missed being in the kitchen, more so being able to do things my way, using what I'd learned in London."
He'd picked up some shifts with James Mussillon, who was the owner of Aubergine at the time, and an offer was made.
It only took four years for the restaurant to get its two hats in the Good Food Guide awards "and that changed things". Few restaurants go from zero to two hats in one shot.
"People are sending you messages saying there's a little restaurant in Sydney with two hats, it's called Tetsuya's ... now you've got two hats. Again, it's all about expectations," he says.
"When we had low expectations we could over-deliver and make everyone happy, but the opposite of that is a nightmare."
He could have easily settled and been content with his place in the Canberra dining scene, but that's not who he is.
"I've never wanted to be just a good restaurant for Canberra. Restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne are held in much higher regard, with bigger populations and staffing pools," he says.
"But I've always wanted to be a good restaurant for Australia, at the bare minimum, and out of that mindset it means I didn't focus too much on what other people were doing here.
"Although wonderful things are happening, with the wineries, new restaurants, new faces who are full of love for food and wine and this town."
So what's next?
"I don't know, to be honest. It's not like I'm running away from cooking, because it's all I know," he says.
"I know I have more to give. Canberra is growing, there are definitely more opportunities here, maybe big companies will move in and I'll be in a position to take on an executive role or something. But I have no real agenda."
