The failure that taught chef Mitch Orr the biggest lesson

In the past year, Mitch Orr – head chef of ACME, long-time magnet for Sydney's cool dining brigade – has felt the sting of failure. But to get to this, you need to flash back to the beginning: a young kid from the city's north-west who was smart enough to stay in school.

Whether his reasons for staying were entirely driven by the pursuit of higher education are up for debate. "You get 16 weeks of holiday a year," he says. "You're home at 3pm. You don't go to class half the time. Why leave this environment?"

He did, however, go straight to work after the HSC, cutting his teeth cooking at a popular pub in Parramatta. But Mitch Orr's future was not to focus on counter meals and club nights. Destiny pushed him to a Monday TAFE class filled with apprentices working in hatted restaurants. He saw the level of skill displayed by his classmates. It wasn't always impressive. It got him thinking, "Maybe you don't have to be the best chef in the world to work in a hatted-restaurant. Maybe I can do that."

Not quite ready to try for the big league, he looked at restaurants closer to home. Which is how he ended up working for Elvis Abrahanowicz (Bodega, Porteno, the Continental Deli) at Eurolounge, then a semi-celebrated restaurant located in a shopping centre in Castle Hill. "Elvis was really young at the time," Orr says. "Maybe a little bit wilder than he is now. Less tattooed. He had a different way of thinking and encouraged you to think differently, too. Not by the book. If you want to put something together and it tastes good, put it together."

While Abrahanowicz moved on to open Bodega, Orr landed at the short-lived Surry Hills Italian fine diner Lo Studio, working for chef Danny Russo. While working there, he took part in a dinner showcasing young talent at Sardinian restaurant Pilu at Freshwater, cooking alongside the likes of Phil Wood (Point Leo Estate) and Daniel Puskas (Sixpenny). "They became mentors, even though we're the same age," he says. "I was like, 'Oh, these are the people I need to know, and this is what I should be aiming for'.''

Encouraged, Orr applied for, and won, the Josephine Pignolet Young Chef of the Year Award. The win (which includes a cash prize and a stage overseas) was announced at the Good Food Guide Awards in 2010 while he was sharpening his technical skills at three-hatted Sepia. He was in Martin Benn's kitchen long enough to discover he hated fine dining.

I think you're being reformed and reshaped and reeducated all the time.

But it was working a stage at Modena's Osteria Francescana, currently ranked the best restaurant in the world by the World's 50 Best, that he realised just how much. The whole experience for him was completely alienating. He didn't speak Italian, in a kitchen where everyone was fluent. It was hard for him to be in service because of that. Head chef Massimo Bottura didn't particularly like him.

Despite the fact he had a lousy time, he did learn a few things about himself. He didn't want to be yelled at (by Bottura, or anyone else), he didn't want work in a precise environment where the world was going to end if anything was inconsistent. And coming back to Australia, he knew he wanted to try doing something fun for himself. "I don't like being put in a box and told what to do. I like to play loud music and have a good time."

And so, in 2010, the divisive Duke Bistro was born, above a ratty pub in Darlinghurst. A partnership with his friend Thomas Lim (Goldies, LA), it was fast, frenetic and freeform. "We just cooked. And that was a great experience. I was also still a f---ing child and arrogant and made a lot of mistakes. But you know, it was a really formative part of my career and how I cook now."

Today, he owns and runs ACME with front-of-house manager Cam Fairbairn (2016 Good Food Guide Awards Citi Service Excellence winner). The restaurant, which opened in 2014 with former business partners Ed Loveday and Andy Emerson, has a loyal clientele that comes for baloney sandwiches but stays for the non-prescriptive pasta dishes. The brief? Think of the principals of Thai cooking (building flavour for perfect balance) combined with the taste-chords of Cambodia/the Philippines/downtown LA, then add spaghetti.

In 2016, though, he was also helping run Bar Brose which the ACME team opened with chef Analiese Gregory (Franklin, Hobart). On paper, the restaurant, with its ''after midnight sandwich'', comte gougeres and killer wine list, should have been an easy win. Instead, a combination of bad timing, bad accounting advice and a lack of capital made it an expensive lesson he and Fairbairn are still paying for today.

Before the closure of Brose, the only thing Orr had ever failed at was a maths test. It was a massively humbling experience. "It's still hard to talk about but I think it's also important that we do. We're not the first people to f--- it up and we won't be the last. It's a depressing, stressful thing. Looking back, there were signs that we never should have opened. We didn't have enough capital, the rent was higher than it should've been. We had our heads up our bums."

When it comes to advising anyone else about to make a similar business move, Orr's not even sure he can. "It's really tough. I don't have the advice because I never got that advice from anyone. I don't really know how I ended up here.

"One thing led to another. All of a sudden, I have a restaurant and now, 'f---. How do I keep this restaurant afloat? How do I keep paying my staff and paying my suppliers and providing a livelihood for all these people?' No. You never do.

"When you're 23, you think you've got worlds' of life experience. Then you're 27, you look back and [realise] you're an idiot when you're 23. And the process repeats itself throughout your whole life."

Quickfire corner

Music to cook to: I've been playing a lot of music produced by the Neptunes lately, whether it's Britney or the Neptunes themselves (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo) or Mystikal or whatever and just letting that go and I've also actually been revisiting DJ Moto, which is stuff I listened to in high school.

After-midnight snack: A kebab from Erciyes [in Surry Hills], delivered to my house.

Kitchen weapon: I think my creativity is my strongest thing at the moment. I mean, the whole restaurant doesn't run without our pasta machine – that's the heart and soul of the thing – but me in service, it's basically a sharpie these days.

Formative food moment: I don't think they ever stop, I think the defining thing is probably going to [Osteria] Francescana and realising that's what I didn't want to do. Another phenomenal moment – when I've eaten food that my friends cook and see what they're doing. I think you're being reformed and reshaped and re-educated all the time.