Conversation with a chef

Tucked away in a little shopping village in Beaumaris, Hinata Premium Sushi and Sashimi is a neighbourhood Japanese restaurant where chef and owner Thant Aung brings almost two decades of experience to a menu of beautifully fresh sushi and sashimi, hand rolls, comforting curries and generous Japanese meals. Thant's journey began washing dishes at a sushi train in Queensland, eventually taking him...

Williamstown was buzzing when I drove over to meet chef Deepak Mishra. The sun was out; the waterfront was busy and finding a car park took longer than the drive from Port Melbourne. A few blocks back from the bay, I found myself admiring the old cottages and streetscapes before heading to Bungalow 147 By The Bay, Deepak's soon-to-open restaurant on Nelson Place. The restaurant occupies a heritage...

There was a queue out the door when I arrived at Dear Neighbour on Smith Street for the opening of Emily Soley's exhibition, A Love Letter to the Inner North. I remember looking around at the crowd and thinking, this is so Melbourne. Thirty-one beautiful watercolour illustrations of the pubs, restaurants, cafes and neighbourhood institutions that mean so much to so many of us. Emily is the artist...

There's something rather lovely about starting a Sunday morning talking about food, particularly when the conversation takes you all the way to Fiji. Arrnott Olssen was in Sydney, coffee in hand, still recovering from the previous day's Fiji Day celebrations and a very generous helping of lovo, the traditional Fijian feast cooked in an earth oven. It seemed a fitting place to begin. Arrnott has ha...

I first spoke to Rob Kabboord six years ago, just before COVID upended Melbourne hospitality and changed the shape of the industry. A lot has happened since then. Rob has cooked, travelled, collaborated, co-written a play and, somewhere along the way, made the move to regional Victoria. Now he is part of Rühe alongside sommelier Daniel Saligari in Kyneton, a neo-bistro with a little punk in its bo...

Once I’d switched off the recorder at Ladyboy, owners, chefs and partners in life Sumalee Sae-tang and Manpreet Singh very kindly brought out some dishes from their Beyond Bangkok menu for me to try. As we talked over the food, Sumalee began to tell me more about how much she loves what she does. I also had the chance to meet Gun, their chef, who is from southern Thailand and is enjoying sharing t...

There’s something very grounded about the way Jeremy Sutphin talks about food. He grew up in the American South around big gardens, smoked meats, family cooking and that wonderful idea of Southern hospitality, where feeding people is simply part of life. Now, 20 years into living in Melbourne, he’s overseeing a growing group of pubs and venues by The Ganley Group, including St Kilda’s Fifth Provin...

Stepping off Nicholson Street into Al Dente Enoteca, I was immediately taken with the exposed brick, the wall of wine and the rare quiet of a restaurant between services. Andrea calls this stretch Melbourne’s “Italian Golden Mile”, with neighbours Scopri and Bar Olo helping make it a very good street to be hungry on. He is funny, candid and full of stories. Al Dente began with pasta sold through I...

I had never been up to Langlands, 25 floors above Melbourne in the Hyatt Centric. Ryan Dunn knows it can be a little too well hidden. With the dining room now opened up to the skyline, we sat looking over the wave of Southern Cross Station’s roof and talked about what he and chef Richard most like to cook: food with smoke, chilli, acidity and plenty of flavour. Ryan’s career began almost by accide...

When I spoke to Pieter Buissje in 2022, he was appearing on under-30 chef lists and attracting plenty of attention. He’s still only 32, but now he’s a co-owner of a new Chapel Street restaurant, with the keys in his hand and an opening date to work towards. Rah Dining takes its cue from the Silk Road and the way ingredients and ideas travelled between cultures. Pieter’s eight-course menu will move...

It’s been seven years since I last sat down with Josh Rudd, and it was genuinely lovely to catch up with him again. Since then, he’s opened venues, moved into large-scale events and catering, built teams and systems, and now finds himself at Flores at the Angel in Malvern, part of the Refinery Group. What struck me this time was how much his role has broadened. He still talks about food with the s...

I first met Jasmin Lefers almost ten years ago, when she was heading up the kitchen at Wine 1160 and I went along to write about it. Since then, our paths have kept crossing through mutual friends, Melbourne’s food world and Jasmin’s wonderfully inventive events. Jasmin doesn’t call herself a chef. She’s a cook, a food designer and a creator of immersive experiences that ask us to do much more tha...

It was such a pleasure to meet a fellow Francophile in Sally Hillman. Her new book, Celebrating Champagne, is about Champagne, of course, but it’s also about the things that sit around it: cooking, family, France and the pleasure of having people at your table. We talked about where her love of Champagne began, the growers she seeks out, and why she thinks we should stop saving the good bottle for...

When Mikey Dalton first walked into San Telmo in Melbourne with a CV in his hand, fresh off the plane from Ireland, he could hardly have imagined where that small decision would lead. Fourteen years later, he is now chef and co-owner of San Telmo Brisbane, a restaurant three years in the making and already finding its own rhythm in a new city. It was very easy to chat with Mikey. Even over the pho...

Denmark House feels like a small pocket of Copenhagen tucked above Little Collins Street. Light pours through the large, black-framed windows, Danish drifts across the room, and Raj Shrestha looks completely at home. After spending almost 15 years in Denmark, he has found a place in Melbourne where that part of his life still feels close. Raj is deeply passionate about being a chef, but there is n...

Over a fragrant samosa, kofta and garlic naan, with a cup of chai in hand, I sat down with Sunil Tyagi at Indian Star and listened as he traced an extraordinary life in food spanning more than five decades. He began his training in India in the 1970s, learning from great chefs and grinding spices by hand, before his work took him to London, Japan and eventually Melbourne, where he opened Indian St...

There is something very easy and generous about the way Reki Reinantha tells his story. He came to Australia from Indonesia as a high school student, began studying architecture, then slowly found himself pulled towards the kitchen and the pleasure of making people happy through food. Since then, his path has taken him through Japanese restaurants, major hospitality groups, pop-ups, setbacks and,...

Amarjeet Singh is not someone who naturally enjoys being on a microphone or in front of a camera. He was shy when we began talking at Bibi Ji, which is about to celebrate its second birthday, but the more we spoke, the more his deep attachment to hospitality came through. Once the recording stopped, Amar became much more animated. He talked about how restaurant owners have to be able to multitask,...

As I drove out of Melbourne and left the fog behind, the day opened up into that bright, golden Daylesford light and the whole town seemed to be out walking, eating, browsing and making the most of it. I’d arrived a little early, wandered up one side of Vincent Street, back down the other, bought a scarf and a block of soap from Marseille, then stepped into Kadota to meet chef and co-owner Aaron S...

I sat down with Mark Tagnipez at Marmont to talk truffles, but the conversation very quickly became about much more than that. Mark is warm, funny and wonderfully unguarded, and his story moves from Los Angeles to Hawaii to Melbourne, from Filipino food at home to Chicano neighbourhood cooking, deep fryers, hay fever, fried chicken, monkey bread and the thrill of discovering that maybe truffles ar...

I first spoke to Shannon Martinez almost a decade ago, when Smith & Daughters was already changing the way Melbourne thought about vegan food. A lot has happened since. Smith & Deli has grown, Degraves Street has opened, Made by Smith is beginning to supply chefs with high-quality plant-based products, and deliveries are heading interstate. But what I loved about this conversation is that Shannon...

I knew when I went to the launch of High Cheese at The Westin that Jeremy Spradbery from Supercheese would be a great person to talk to, and visiting his Richmond shop proved it. We stood together beside his impressive hero fridge: a glorious lineup of cheeses that each show off their style, while he told me how he became a self professed curd nerd, weaving in stories from kitchens, farms, and fes...

Raph Rashid and I last spoke in 2020 when he was making Mean Cuisine and finding clever ways to keep people entertained at home. This time, he’s in the middle of something just as playful, but much more public: The Greatest of the Mall, a winter school holiday project with Melbourne Food & Wine Festival that sends him into shopping centres across Melbourne to create free, centre-inspired doughnuts...

When I arrived at Tarra, Mike Jacques was in the thick of service. Mike is executive chef for Searoad Hospitality, overseeing Tarra in Queenscliff, Onda in Sorrento, the ferry offerings and now Wilsons Prom too. We spoke about Tarra as a “postcard for the Bellarine Peninsula”, and Onda as its Mediterranean-leaning counterpart across the bay: a restaurant over the water with wood-fired cooking, sea...

I’ve always had a soft spot for Queenscliff. Every year, we make our pilgrimage down for the Queenscliff Music Festival, pitch our tent on the footy oval, and live very happily for a few days on music, festival food and that particular seaside feeling the town does so well. So to arrive this time and stay at the restored Queenscliff Hotel, in the glorious Stone Pine Suite, with its enormous bath a...