Dirty Linen - A Food Podcast with Dani Valent

Dirty Linen continues to contemplate the future. Today we speak to Paul Waterson, CEO of Aus Venue Co, a large national pub group. Paul has a broad perspective, with venues in every mainland state, and a spread of CBD, suburban and country operations. The group has made many changes to fortify the business, including new technology, recruitment strategies and training programs. Recovery is uneven...

Dirty Linen moves into a series of discussions contemplating the future - without JobKeeper, rent abatement and insolvency protections yet still with difficult trading conditions. Today's chat is with Iain Ling, who has just made the difficult decision to close Super Ling, one of his two restaurants in Carlton, close to the city and adjoining Melbourne University. There are so many variables Ling...

Underground kosher sourdough micro-baker Maaryasha Werdiger has moved her ghetto garage bakery to a shop in Ripponlea. Zelda’s soft opening has been big news in the local Jewish community, with queues along the street and around the corner for quality sourdough loaves, sesame-topped bialys, challah buns and more. We check in... https://www.zeldabakery.com.au Follow Dirty Linen on Instagram https:/...

On a day when Australian women #march4justice, we speak to an Aboriginal woman who's passionate about truth-telling, change-making and justice for First Nations peoples. Bidjara woman Keelen Mailman runs Mt Tabor, a cattle station on the black soil plains of western Queensland. That she is running a business on her own traditional country is sadly rare. We talk about the gulfs that exist between p...

Today's conversation is with Fahan Ahmed, one of 14 African women who form Magnificent Mamma's Kitchen, an employment program with the City of Moonee Valley, providing culturally appropriate (and DELICIOUS) food to local residents impacted by the pandemic. Fahan is from Somalia via Egypt and she's made a good life for herself and her six children in Melbourne. At the same time, she speaks of July'...

Everything has been a bit full on, don't you think? Dirty Linen reckons it's time to pause, centre, reconnect and honour ourselves. With that in mind, it's a pleasure to introduce you to Merryn Padgett, a pizza shop owner based in Bairnsdale in East Gippsland. But that's not all - Merryn is also a trainer in nutrition, mindset and resetting habits and today she will guide us through a meditation t...

Lorena Corso is a chef from Sicily with a track record in London and a love for Australian hospitality. She's launched Thick Accents Project with Ilanit Bard (episode 145) to foreground immigrant women in hospitality. We chat about standing up against crap, how to be brave and the power of hard conversations. Lorena works at the wonderful Napier Quarter, an extremely wonderful expression of Melbou...

It's International Women's Day! To celebrate the solidarity, ingenuity, determination and all-out brilliance of women, we are speaking to Australian-Filipina changemaker Grace Guinto, co-founder of The Entree. Pinays. This food-loving collective of entrepreneurial Filipinas brings Filipino cuisine, culture, and communities to the hearts, minds, and tastebuds of Australians on Wurundjeri country. G...

We wrap up a thought-provoking, galvanising week of conversations with awesome women with the incredible Hana Assafiri. Hana's Moroccan Soup Bar is a restaurant, yes, but it's foremost a forum for social justice in action - through employment, careful and caring conversations, and by being the change you want to see. I can't imagine anyone not being inspired by this chat! https://www.moroccansoupb...

As we continue to talk women in hospitality, we head to Brisbane, where Nims Zavackas founded a support group to offer comfort, strategies and a listening ear to women feeling lost in their food businesses and careers. Her path has been strewn with difficult periods and bad dreams as well as strange and beautiful encounters with food legend Maggie Beer. https://www.instagram.com/nimsxx/?hl=en Foll...

Deborah Harris is a professor of sociology at Texas State University and the co-author of a book called Taking the Heat: Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen. Deborah got interested in researching women in restaurants after an episode of the reality show Top Chef and she's applied academic rigour to her study of the societal structures that make professional kitchens trick...

Why aren't there more women chefs? Why don't more women get into the industry in the first place and ,when they do start out, why do so many leave? Miranda Moreira trained with Middle Eastern master Greg Malouf and cooked in Paris for actors Gerard Depardieu and Johnny Depp but when she returned to Australia she was desperate to find a new career. Leading up to International Women's Day and in the...

We wrap up Dirty Linen's week talking to ex-employees of Red Spice Road with a weird kind of dialogue. Host Dani Valent reads an open letter from the restaurant's owners and straightens out a few things. Follow Dirty Linen on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/deepintheweedspodcast/?hl=en Follow Dani https://www.instagram.com/danivalent Follow Deep In The Weeds on Instagram https://www.instagram....

Today Dirty Linen speaks to Arslan Mukhtar, ex-assistant manager at Red Spice Road. Arslan is now a frontline worker in hotel quarantine. The podcast is a great chat but I was also very moved by something Arslan said after we stopped recording. He told me that the people staffing hotel quarantine are largely overseas nationals on temporary visas. Arslan said he is not unusual in that he is restric...

Today Dirty Linen speaks to Red Spice Road's ex-head chef Sungeun Mo. Mo worked for the restaurant for four years and was well along the path to permanent residency when she was sacked and the restaurant closed, owing her $36,554.09. The money and the dashing of her residency application and career aspirations were all hard enough, but hearing on the grapevine that the restaurant was to reopen mad...

Dirty Linen stays on the topic of Red Spice Road via a chat with ex-group general manager Christian Price. Christian had the tough job of telling his team they had all lost their jobs then stuck by them through a tumultuous year of lockdowns and low employment. When the news broke that Red Spice Road was reopening, Christian was as shocked as anyone. https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/res...

Dirty Linen talks to visa worker Laura Dauphin, previously events and reservations manager at Red Spice Road, a Melbourne restaurant which liquidated in May 2020, then announced its reopening in January 2021, while still owing thousands of dollars to ex-employees. Laura was sponsored by the restaurant which means her presence in Australia was imperilled by the business closing. It's not so much th...

Dirty Linen chats to Jesslyn Chhua, who opened Jack the Milkman in Murrumbeena just as Melbourne locked down. Weirdly, it's been pretty good timing and her second cafe is off to a flying start, albeit only with takeaway. She's feeling plenty of love from the local community and lots of optimism about the future of hospitality in Melbourne. Silver linings... https://www.facebook.com/jackthemilkman...

Dirty Linen heads to IDES in Melbourne to talk to chef and restaurateur Peter Gunn. The pandemic has been tough but it's also been an opportunity. He's learnt a lot about himself, his staff and the kinds of experiences he wants to create. IDES is about to celebrate its fifth birthday. The future is about refinement, balance and trust: fine dining is very much alive and it's up to visionaries like...

And we're out of lockdown! Victorian restaurants are reopening after a five-day circuit breaker. We talk to experienced restaurateur Barb Dight from 27-year-old Cicciolina in St Kilda. Barb and her business partners have made big changes through the pandemic, tightening up the balance sheet at Cicc and closing their second restaurant Ilona Staller. People tell Barb that it's sad she let go of Ilon...

LOCKDOWN #3 Last time we spoke to Di Keser, she was bunkered down in Barcelona with her husband and dogs. Today she's locked down in Melbourne, having just completed hotel quarantine in Adelaide, then flying home and making the tough decision to close one of her two Hardware Societe city cafes. She'll still lose money but hopefully not as much. Di is frustrated with hotel quarantine and with the d...

LOCKDOWN #3 grinds on and we head to Metung in East Gippsland for a chat with publican David Strange. He's frustrated that regional Victoria is closed down for a handful of cases in Melbourne and wonders if Premier Dan Andrews could learn from NSW when it responds to clusters. He's worried for his staff who need their casual shifts, and for suppliers who are losing income during a summer period th...

LOCKDOWN #3. Melbourne is in the middle of a snap "short, sharp" five-day (fingers, toes & eyes crossed) lockdown, called on the eve of a super busy weekend for restaurants. We chat to Lisa Slaughter, owner of Ripponlea Food & Wine and Glen Waverley's Mocha Jo to find out how she's coping, especially given this blow comes soon after Mocha Jo was named a "COVID case location" on December 30. There...

Today on Dirty Linen we chat to Jodi Crocker from Baketico and Wonder Pies, which she runs with her partner chef Raymond Capaldi. Jodi moved full-time into food manufacturing and retail when her hospitality and events public relations business evaporated last March. We talk about that transition, as well as her previous roles at Crown and with George Calombaris. Jodi also shares invaluable advice...

We hit a few hot button topics in today's Dirty Linen chat with Zowie Minchin from Zsa's bar, deli and bistro in Melbourne's Northcote. But before we get onto staffing issues, tricky customers and the dreaded payroll tax, we find out that Zowie's first hospitality memory is making prawn cocktails for mining magnates Rose and Lang Hancock in her home state of WA. It's been a journey! http://zsas.co...