Ricos Tacos Captain Toby Wilson’s Latest Cooking Endeavour Is ... Revolting

Toby Wilson is known for his pack-a-punch tacos in colourful easygoing digs. His business Ricos Tacos had food truck days and pop-up days, then a life on a Chippendale corner. Now the tacos are in residence at The Norfolk in Redfern, where Wilson’s head chef. We’re yet to meet a Ricos bite we don’t like, but the same can’t be said for the chef’s latest kitchen endeavour: a video series documenting his travels through vintage cookbooks.

“I was never intentionally looking for bad cookbooks, believe it or not,” he tells Broadsheet. “But now I’m, like, deep on forums and really strange cookbook shops just trying to go as obscure as I can.”

There’s been Vegemite spaghetti and tuna pear pizzas, “creamed lamb shape” and curried rabbit in grapefruit. A pie topped with ketchup meringue? Creamed tripe? Barbequed spaghetti (that didn’t require a barbeque)? All in attendance. Coca Cola and eggs have met twice so far.

“The best stuff comes from promotional cookbooks, whether it’s the Australian Banana Board or someone selling custard powder or mayonnaise. They’re just like, “99 ways with mayonnaise”. Some of them have to suck – they’re really gonna start stretching the product at some point, and those are the fun ones.”

We had a chat to the Sydney chef about his creative process, the best (worst) recipes so far and why he always goes for a second bite – plus, get an update on his Porridge World Championships career.

Toby, my main question is: why?
laughs Fair enough! It’s a weird thing for a chef to do in their spare time, but something I did want to do this year was cook a lot more out of cookbooks. I’ve got an old French [one], and there’s trout [that’s] butterflied and stuffed with foie gras and banana and cream sauce. Someone obviously made this and ate it and thought it was delicious enough to publish. I’m trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and see if there are hidden gems or forgotten recipes or flavour combinations that’ve been lost to the ages. So far, no – maybe something will pop up. In the meantime, I’m trying to cherry pick the ones that are particularly revolting.

So you just went for it?
I’ve thought about doing it for maybe a year, and then I found this Golden Circle recipe book. I put it up on my Instagram for people to vote for what I should cook [from it], and then I recorded a video. I was like, “Oh, this is actually so much easier than I thought”. You can really just shoot a video, edit it and have it posted in under an hour. If it was any harder, I probably wouldn’t do it.

What’s been the best part so far?
I get stuck cooking the same stuff in the kitchen, and this is obviously pretty far from what I usually cook. Even just cooking tripe and a bunch of things that I don’t do professionally a whole lot. I am, as a side benefit, picking up a few new ingredients and techniques, which is a cool extra bit.

What makes a recipe great for this series?
I’ve always been drawn to food that’s different to what I usually eat or drink. Yesterday, I saw an Armenian cookbook, and I was like, I don’t know anything about Armenian food, maybe I’ll pick it up. But now I’m really looking for the bad stuff.

The Coca Cola Cookbook has Coca Cola glaze on ribs and stuff like that, that’s objectively pretty delicious. But then egg recipes and seafood recipes and stuff where, like, Coke probably really doesn’t belong.

The creamy Coke eggs! It’s the textural element for me.
Totally. The flavours haven’t been too bad, apart from banana stroganoff, which was a really upsetting clash of flavours. But it’s the textual stuff that’s been the most upsetting – like the baked beans cheesecake. It had this faint, insipid baked bean flavour, and then just really fatty cream cheese mixed with sour cream. It was just so mushy and fatty with no other flavour in there. It was just so gross.

And the jelly prawn cocktail, with the really crunchy bits of celery in there. There were two jelly textures: a clear jelly, which is more like the jelly you’re familiar with, and then the bit that also had mayonnaise in it. So it was creamy jelly, clear jelly, whole prawns and crunchy celery. It was just a real salad of textures. Unenjoyable.

Has anything been surprisingly good?
The avocado sour cream pie was pretty good, and the Women’s Weekly lychee chicken was really good. But nothing that sounds super fucked was that good. Generally, things taste like they sound. But I’m maybe somebody who is pretty fine eating really bad stuff.

You don’t seem to gag, and you always go for a second bite.
I almost find those flavours interesting. It’s a weird journey. Like, “Oh, it’s gross – but why is that gross?” And you want to have more to try and pinpoint the things that make it really disgusting. I’ll often choose the weirdest sounding thing on a menu, which is a curse. I never order the thing that I want, or the thing that sounds most delicious – I’ll generally order the thing that interests me the most.

How long are you going to keep cooking these recipes?
I’ve got no idea, I’ve got plenty more recipes. It feels like it’s building, people are resonating with it, which is fun. I’ll do it for a while – I’m doing a bit more media stuff at the moment, I’ve got a documentary coming out this year.

Fun!
I went to the World Porridge Championships two years in a row and we filmed a documentary the second time, which has its international premiere next month in Copenhagen – it’s one of the world’s biggest documentary festivals. Hopefully that’ll be in Sydney, too – I want it to have its home debut.

Is there an update on your porridge career?
Common question. I don’t think I’ll go back anytime soon, it’s just so far away. If I lived in Europe, I’d go every year, easily. Apart from wanting to win it, it’s genuinely such a fun weekend. Everyone’s really nice, everyone’s super kooky – it’s just a bunch of lovable weirdos in the town hall cooking porridge slowly for like 20 minutes. Competitively. With an opening ceremony.

What’s the secret to ripper porridge?
I’ve come so close to winning twice, I feel like the difference between where I am and what it takes to win is almost a bit of a roll-the-dice on the day. I feel like I’m there. I realised I was using two of my annual leave weeks and six grand to go cook porridge in a town hall every year. It was getting a bit silly.

Are there recipes that are too rank to do? Or are you looking for as-bad-as-it-can-get?
Yeah, as bad as it can get – apart from recipes I’ve seen that use roadkill. I probably draw the line at health hazard. I think there are some organs I wouldn’t eat… maybe. I’m not particularly keen on eating brains.

What recipes can your viewers look forward to?
They’re pretty impulsive. I’ll find one and within two days I’ve cooked it and posted it. I just got the Australian Banana and Pork cookbook from the ’70s and it has some really bad stuff in it. I also just found the official cookbook for the American Olympic team for the Moscow Olympics.

I’m finding some pretty rare stuff. It was such an age of creativity in cooking – probably for the worst, but I’m fascinated and I respect how much people were really going for it for a while. Particularly with the fruits with the meats. I mean, there’s ways it can work, but I just can’t find a recipe that makes banana work with meat. Like, peaches and apples and berries work. But bananas – it’s in everything.

@tobywilson