Chef Talk: Jing'an's Dane Clouston

Dane Clouston is the Executive Chef at Jing’an, a chic new restaurant in, yes, Jing’an. More specifically, it’s the restaurant in Shanghai’s one and only ‘urban resort’, the Puli.

Dane Clouston is only 29 years old, but he already has an impressive résumé. His secret to success isn’t much of a secret. Clouston has made his own opportunities and worked hard, and not just I-didn’t-get-the-chance-to-check-Slate-today hard. He’s in by five in the morning and often doesn’t leave until 11 at night. The former executive chef at Hong Kong’s renowned Opia restaurant is a junkie for his job, and unapologetically so. 

“I wouldn’t want to be, like, 'Off to the golf course! Off to the pub!'” he says. “I want my customers to know that there is someone out the back. That it’s not just a kitchen. There is some guidance. They’re paying a lot of money for lunch, a lot of money for dinner, and it would be selfish not to be there all the time. And after all, it’s your food. So you should be there to see it go out.” 

Clouston’s hard work has taken him a long way from New Plymouth, in New Zealand, where he grew up. At just 14 he set out for Adelaide, where he studied cooking. 

“When you’re that young you think you can conquer the world,” Clouston says. “But now, in hindsight, when I see people 14 years old I think, hmm, maybe that was a pretty ballsy move.” 

Yet Clouston doesn’t think he made his move into cooking too soon. “I did start young,” he says, “but I think you should start young. I wouldn’t want to be a builder or an office guy and then go, oh, I’ve had a midlife crisis and I want to start cooking. Although some people do start older and they do very well. But it’s very hard – it’s kind of antisocial. It’s long hours. Imagine for a nine to fiver, having that freedom, and all of a sudden having to work crazy hours.” 

It was at school that Clouston met top Aussie chef Teage Ezard, who went on to be named chef of the year by The Age newspaper in 2003. “We were at cooking school and he turned up to this chef’s lunch. A top chef came and he did a lunch and the little apprentices would run around and cook his food.” Then 19 years old, Clouston asked Ezard if he had a job going in the kitchen. 

Clouston went on to run Opia in Hong Kong’s Jia hotel, named the best restaurant in Hong Kong in 2005 by the South China Morning Post. The food there was known as Australian “freestyle”, with Asian influences. With delicious, sophisticated fish and chips on the menu and a meat pie of the day, there’s also an Australasian vibe at Jing’an. 

There's nothing pretentious about Clouston, or a meat pie for that matter. And, he says, "it turns out most people like meat pie.”