The new, the first ever, the hotly anticipated Burnt Ends book is about to land. The Singapore barbecue restaurant with a Michelin star by Australian chef Dave Pynt has put out a tome that includes not just a memoir of the restaurant, grilling techniques including how their ovens work, and beautiful photos, but also a whopping 70 recipes. So, I could just take those recipes and open another Burnt Ends in some far-flung corner of the globe? “Be my guest,” Pynt chuckled.
He rests secure in the knowledge, of course, that it’s not that simple – the stars must align; the fengshui must be right (and the equipment, as far as educated guesses go, costly). How Burnt Ends came to be in the first place, starting with a fortuitous call from Singaporean restaurateur Loh Lik Peng while Pynt was holidaying in Peru, is an example of “right place, right time”. This and other stories are recounted in the book.
Only hardcore fans of the restaurant will know that Burnt Ends started out as a 2012 pop-up in London called Burnt Enz, using ovens Pynt built with his own two hands. Meanwhile, hardcore fans of barbecue will lap up the detailed descriptions of how the restaurant’s hot and cold ovens work. The rest of us will be eagerly looking up the one recipe that’s been Burnt Ends’ most-requested.
“I think the favourite part of the book will be the beef marmalade recipe, because we get asked for that so much,” Pynt said. There has been more than a little media interest in the book, which is available for pre-order and will begin to ship on Nov 1, including from publications like The New York Times. Co-written by Australian journalist Max Veenhuyzen, the text conveys Pynt’s own laid-back, conversational vibe.
“I find telling your story to be quite difficult without sounding a little bit obnoxious a lot of the time. So, we just wanted to make it a little bit of fun,” he said. “It’s like that old adage, ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,’ right?” One way this has been done is to tell a part of Pynt’s personal chapter in the form of a graphic, which the 40-year-old quips that he feels a bit “squeamish” reading.
The book also includes a couple of perspectives on the Singapore dining scene. For example, in the case of beef, while he’s noticed that European and British diners appreciate texture and “chew to the meat”, here, “I don’t think grass-fed beef from the UK or Europe is what Burnt Ends diners are looking for,” he writes. “Often, ‘It’s chewy!’ will be the biggest complaint if we’re not serving wagyu.
Most people want a steak that’s tender and low-chew, because that’s their perception of luxury. It’s the steak equivalent of an Egyptian cotton bath towel or 1200-thread bedsheet: Smooth, light and easy.” Even if a guest requests a steak well done, he has no trouble conceding to the request, he writes.
“Ultimately, I don’t give a f***, you’re eating it, you’re paying for it. My logic is, you’ve been eating steak cooked well done for 30 years so who am I to tell you that you’re going to enjoy it differently?” He reiterates a few times throughout the book that his “job is to make the diner happy”. “I can think things are really amazing but when I get my team or guests to taste it, if everyone says it’s not, then maybe I’m wrong.
And it’s easy to just be like, ‘Yeah, I’m wrong’. It’s easy for my life if we put it to bed, move on to something else, and then have happy customers and happy staff. Who gives a sh*t? It’s just food.
” Given his love for all things gritty – the Burnt Ends’ logo, a flaming skull, is printed on the book’s cover – the picture that emerges in the book is actually pretty mellow and rosy. “I’ve obviously got very strong opinions on a lot of different things but we’ve not really had a lot of of controversy within the restaurant,” he shrugged. “My partners are incredible, I haven’t had a bust-up with my missus, we’ve got two beautiful kids.
Our job is to make people happy and I think we have strong opinions on what that means. And when things are being done fairly, I’m happy to speak my mind.” As a frequent diner at other restaurants himself, his consideration is: “Pull yourself away from all the hype and actually eat it.
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’Is this delicious?’ There are only two answers, it’s either ‘yes’ or ‘no'. There’s no ‘maybe’. If I don’t want to eat it, why the f*** would my guests want to eat it?” One thing he does know, from the experience of co-writing a book, is that he doesn’t want to write a second book.
Heck, “I didn’t want to write one book!” The original impetus for the tome was the plan to open Burnt Ends at the Harrods department store in London. That plan has since been scrapped because of the challenge of installing the ovens and grills in the conserved building. “We’d been open about 10 years at the time, we were meant to be going to Harrods.
.. I was kind of like, ‘If we don’t do a book now when we’re going into Harrods, the biggest and best department store in the world, when are we ever going to do one?’ And I did feel that looking at it, there was enough to tell to make an interesting story rather than just, ‘Oh, here’s a book, here are our recipes, away you go.
’” It also did not start out as a cookbook. “It was actually, 'We don’t want any f****** recipes’,” Pynt laughed. “We’ve got our wood-fired ovens, we’ve got our elevation grills – how do you translate that for someone at home?” Eventually, that was deemed unnecessary.
“We’ve got a disclaimer at the start of the recipe section, which is basically, if you don’t have our ovens, if you don’t have our grills, if you don’t have the same produce, it may not work. So, don’t cry, but have fun, explore and do something interesting.” Something he gained from the process of putting what he does into simple words was that “it was very challenging but very rewarding because you can walk away from it and you can articulate what it is you’re trying to do a lot better.
When we’re training staff now, I can articulate what this technique means and what it’s meant to do and how it’s meant to work for them, which I probably wasn’t doing as effectively beforehand.” And those of us who dream of becoming the next great grillmaster – even if it’s just in our kitchen at home – just might benefit from it, too. At the very least, we'll find ourselves hungry for some barbecue.
The Burnt Ends book is available for pre-order at burntends.com.sg, and will be for sale at Books Kinokuniya from Nov 1.
300 limited-edition copies are available for ordering via email eat [at] burntends.com.sg ; these, priced at S$395+, are ironbark-smoked, personalised with the buyer’s name and signed by Pynt, and come in a 6.
6kg metal box studded with 12 bronze skulls..
