This comedy and cooking double act has reincarnated Freak Scene

"The idea is that Scott and I spend 48 hours in a foreign city," Hills explains. "He's got two days to create a pop-up menu and I've got two days to write a stand-up routine about the place we're in. On the final night we present both the food and the comedy in a show."

Hills admits that the series, provisionally titled Dinner and Show, has yet to enter production. "That's why I'm talking about it now in the hope that a commissioning editor reads this interview," Hills laughs.

The two Aussies have been discussing the idea since Hills became a regular at Hallsworth's Freak Scene restaurant in Soho in London. For now, though, the pair are focused on making the newly launched Freak Scene Sushi and Robata Balham in south London and Freak Scene Parsons Green in south-west London, which opened in March last year, fulfil the potential of a brand now in its fourth incarnation.

Hallsworth initially operated Freak Scene as a pop-up in Farringdon in central London after he lost ownership of his ground-breaking modern Japanese restaurant Kurobuta. A permanent Soho site launched in the former Barrafina Frith Street premises in 2018 but closed during the pandemic. When the opportunity arose to reopen in Parsons Green, a branding consultant suggested a new name.

"I told them, Freak Scene's not done," Hallsworth says. "I never had the money or the time to take the brand where I wanted. But it still has a lot of room to grow. And I'm excited about it."

The money has come from an investment by Adam Hills, stand-up comedian and presenter of Channel 4's news satire programme The Last Leg. The two met at a London fundraiser for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, where Hallsworth was being auctioned as a private chef; once Hills tried his cooking, it was love at first bite.

"I was just totally blown away by the food at the Soho Freak Scene," Hills says. "I loved the audacity of the flavours. The tuna sashimi pizza is still one of the best things I have ever eaten. We're so close to Vietnam and Thailand in Australia and those kinds of foods influence what Aussies love to eat."

Hills had some money to invest and his wife suggested Freak Scene. "I was doing a TV show with Tom Kerridge and I told him my idea," Hills says. "Tom said, that's a great way to blow £20,000." But Hills went ahead anyway.

"The short answer to why I invested in Freak Scene is that I just wanted to eat in my favourite restaurant again," he explains, though eating and observing is pretty much where his hands-on involvement ends. "I think if I have any suggestions about the food, then it's time for me to step away. I don't know about cooking and cheffing, but I do know audiences and crowds. So if there's anything I notice about the vibe, then I might say something."

Southern charm

The south London site was, until recently, a Colombian bakery called Paula's and prior to that the Red Duck Chinese restaurant and Arlo's steakhouse. As a long-time Balham resident, Hallsworth says there is "100% a gap in the market" for Freak Scene to prevent locals heading to neighbouring Clapham or Tooting for somewhere cool to eat.

While the Parsons Green Freak Scene has many of the Hallsworth greatest hits going back to the Kurobuta days – not only the tuna sashimi pizza with truffle ponzu, but also the Singapore chilli crab wonton bombs and the chicken-fried chicken with peanut, soy, pineapple sambal and pickles – they're not on the menu at Balham.

"I've been known for the chicken-fried chicken for years," Hallsworth says. "But I just looked at it the other day and thought, no, I'm not feeling this anymore, this isn't where I want to go. I don't feel any pressure to stick to the dishes I'm famous for at the Balham restaurant. I'm feeling a bit more freedom with this one."

Hallsworth stopped eating meat in 2019, though he still eats fish, which is one reason the Balham restaurant is offering sushi such as spicy tuna rolls and a nigiri omakase. Another reason is that his former Kurobuta sushi chef Yauheni Kharytonau was looking for a new opportunity and the plan is that he will become a partner in the business.

"There's something really familiar about this new restaurant," Hallsworth says. "It's bigger and busier than Parsons Green and it reminds me of Kurobuta and Nobu. I've brought back the grains and greens salad with honey soy ginger dressing and roasted cashews, which was a Kurobuta dish. We're doing chicken skewers because people want a bit of simplicity. Not everything has to be too clever or cheffy, like Willy Wonka."

Hallsworth finds it hard to describe his cooking style, but when pressed, he says "it might have something to do with umami and balance. There's something playful about the way I approach food – there's no trickery." Cooking, however, was not his first career choice.

Hallsworth's stepbrother was an apprentice chef and his mum was a skilled home cook, but the young Scott was more interested in being in a band like his two older brothers, who had got themselves a recording contract and reached number one in the Australian indie charts. Hallsworth learned to play bass guitar and drums but was, by his own admission, "pretty bad at all of it".

His mum got him a Saturday job in the local Chinese restaurant in his hometown of Collie, a mining town in Western Australia, to instil a work ethic in him. He left school when he was 16 and got an apprenticeship with Alain Doisneau, a former Le Gavroche sous chef, at the Lord Forrest hotel 40 miles away in Bunbury. Jobs in Hayman Island, Toronto, Taiwan and Singapore eventually led to Nobu London in 2000, where he became head chef.

"I learned so much at Nobu," Hallsworth says. "Not just about food, but how they made things exciting. I'd tasted Japanese food before, but nothing like the way Nobu himself used chilli and coriander and the freedom he gave his chefs: my creativity blew up. And we were doing 500 covers a night. I'd never worked like that in my life."

Hills describes Hallsworth's cooking as "Southeast Asian punk" and for interview the chef is wearing a Sonic Youth T-shirt of the grunge band's 1992 album Dirty. Yet there is a feeling that Freak Scene has cleaned up its act, moving from urban to suburban by swapping Clerkenwell and Soho for Parsons Green and Balham. Hallsworth might be dressed like a teenager, but has the 48-year-old finally grown up?

"Freak Scene had to mature as a concept," Hallsworth says. "The Soho and Farringdon restaurants turned into parties for both staff and customers and that was a bit too rock and roll. Things couldn't keep going on that trajectory. Freak Scene has to be a viable business which meant it had to mellow a little bit – just like me."

King of the road

Hallsworth first came to fame with Kurobuta, the restaurant he opened in chichi Chelsea in 2013, long after the King's Road was famous as the stomping ground of punk icons Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren. The chef says that nine out of 10 customers at the Parsons Green Freak Scene were regulars at Kurobuta – "which blows me away. It was 10 years ago but they have been thinking about the salmon sashimi pizza ever since".

Kurobuta first opened as a pop-up on King's Road and soon included three central London sites, in Chelsea, department store Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge and Marble Arch, as well as the Kurochan spin-off at the Mandarin Oriental Bodrum. But the brand fell into administration in 2017, an understandably difficult time for the chef, but it didn't take him long to come up with his next passion project.

Hallsworth's dad, who was over on a visit from Australia, asked his son what his plan was. "I told him, I'm going to cook food and I'm going to sell it. Dad said, show me what you're going to do and I'll put some money into it. Within two weeks, we'd created Freak Scene on Cowcross Street. Dad helped with the carpentry. He was pretty proud of being able to do that."

Hallsworth's father worked in the mining industry in Western Australia and the exposure to asbestos gave him mesothelioma, a cancer that affects the lining of the lungs. Hallsworth flew home to stay with him for the three months before he died. "For his birthday we took him to my brother's house. Dad didn't have much of an appetite at the end and hadn't eaten for weeks, but asked me to make him a wonton bomb. So I bought a bloody great blue manna crab and made the sauce and the wontons and dad ate two of them."

Hallsworth's father is honoured on the Freak Scene Balham drinks list with ‘Bob's Steakhouse Martini' in tribute to the days when he and his son would sit in the window of Arlo's, washing down bavette steaks with cocktails. These days, though, not only has Hallsworth turned pescatarian but he has given up alcohol to help him focus on making Freak Scene a success. He gains further mental clarity, he claims, courtesy of daily ice baths in his garden. His three teenage kids, who live with his ex-wife in Sussex, are less keen on taking a dip when they come and visit, but are more enthusiastic about the restaurant. "They've eaten here several times and they love it. In the back of my mind I opened in Balham because I wanted somewhere local to go with my kids."

It's an inclusivity that Hills also appreciates. "I popped into Freak Scene Parsons Green on the opening night," he says. "Scott's first words to me when I walked in were ‘welcome home'. And that's what I hope the place feels like for people: that they're coming home."

Australia might be the other side of the world, but the double act of Hills and Hallsworth has brought Aussie warmth closer to home.

‘Edam' Hills' favourite cheese jokes

What did the cheese say when it saw itself in a mirror?

Halloumi

What's the best cheese to use if you want to cover a horse's eyes?

Mascarpone

Which cheese should you use to lure a bear out of a cave?

Camembert

Aussie rules

Hallsworth credits his love of hospitality to his mother, who would always have food ready in the fridge in case any friends or neighbours dropped in unexpectedly.

"I've always wanted to inject a bit of Australian culture into the way we do things," he says. "There's a natural hospitality to Australians. I inadvertently employed one Aussie at Kurobuta and it was like wildfire. They had a cousin who had a mate and then someone else's cousin was working there too."

One person who noticed was Pret A Manger and Itsu founder Julian Metcalfe, who asked Hallsworth to meet him at the original King's Road Itsu nearby. Metcalfe was a Kurobuta regular and wanted to ask Hallsworth how he got his staff to enjoy working at the restaurant.

"I said I didn't. I choose people for their personality, because I want friendly hospitality and I need them to engage the customer as a friend – have a shot with them or high-five them on the way out. They can put their own music on the playlist if it fits. And I let them dress in their own clothes so they feel comfortable."

Metcalfe looked around despondently at his staff wearing their uniform of Itsu T-shirts. "I didn't really know what I was doing when I opened Kurobuta," Hallsworth says. "But that meeting spelled it out for me. You should always follow your gut instinct."