Dirty Linen - A Food Podcast with Dani Valent

Our week focusing on representation in hospitality continues. We chat with Jason Chang, a new councillor for the City of Melbourne. Jason owns Calia restaurants in the city and Chadstone and believes that small business needs great representation in the political sphere - especially now, during a pandemic. As well as advocating for hospitality, Jason is proud to represent the city's Asian populati...

Dirty Linen continues investigating representation in the hospitality industry by talking to James Consiglio, one of the founders of Hospo Voice, which is now part of United Workers Union. Hospitality workers have traditionally not been unionised. Why, in a time of declining unionisation generally, is membership in this union increasing? What are they fighting for, is it reasonable and is it worki...

This week on Dirty Linen we are discussing representation in the hospitality industry. Who gets to speak for restaurants, cafes, bars and their workers? Who do they speak to? We kick off with one of 2020's most prominent voices, Restaurant & Catering Industry Association CEO Wes Lambert. He's oft-quoted and often on TV speaking on behalf of restaurants. But does he speak for the whole industry? An...

Dirty Linen wraps up a week of running around the country with a trip to Hobart to chat to fine dining waitress Yoana Lemonnier. Yoana is from France and she coming up to three years in Australia on a working holiday visa - that means she's had to do 88 days plus six months rural work to remain here. When the pandemic hit, Yoana had just finished her second stint on a NSW cattle and sheep farm and...

Dirty Linen continues its trip around the country as we head to Brisbane to get the lay of the land from ramen obsessive Taro Akimoto. Taro has four shops in Brisbane and his ambition is to create Australia's best ramen. He talks about the difference between the CBD and the suburbs and what that might mean for his business. Taro also dives deep into some of the detail and craft that goes into maki...

The borders are open and Victorians are FINALLY allowed to go to West Australia so I do - well, via audio at least, and today's chat with Perth-based food writer Max Veenhuyzen. Max talks about how great things are in his home town: the city is busy, the restaurants are full and the vibe is festive. What pandemic? We also chat about food media and whether 2020 is a turning point that means more di...

Dirty Linen continues zipping around Australia's cities with a Sydney stop in the 2020 tale of Mike McEnearney from Kitchen by Mike and Carriageworks Farmers' Market. We talk CBDs and airports, produce and hope, and whether the struggle to find staff will prompt a welcome reset or anguish all round. https://www.kitchenbymike.com.au Follow Dirty Linen on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/deepinth...

Dirty Linen chats CBDs - how are they going and can they recover? Sommelier Jane Semple is an owner of new, optimistic, epic sandwich hole-in-the-wall King William Takeaway in a dusty, insalubrious bit of Melbourne's CBD. She also runs Goodie Group, a corporate caterer. Jane has given herself a couple of unofficial roles too: city cheerleader and welcome mat roller-outer - when people do come back...

Dirty Linen wraps up a week of talking about customer behaviour with Jessica Bilston. Jess runs a Melbourne HR consultancy which services many hospitality businesses, including her mum's cafe Bob's Your Uncle. We talk about supporting staff through tricky situations, including a post-lockdown upsurge in abuse. I also try to role play getting mad about a coffee served to me at the wrong temperature...

Karen Golding chats to us from the carpark of a variety store where she's buying supplies to reopen her restaurant at Red Hill Brewery on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. We chat about the difficulties of corralling customers who want to wander around the beautiful property - it's hard to tell a parent chasing after a toddler that they need to sit back down. Karen also talks about the benefits she...

Dirty Linen continues talking about diner behaviour and the impacts it can have on hospitality staff. Today we chat to experienced baker and chef Rod Shokuhi, who is currently keeping things ticking along at Beasley's Tea House in Melbourne's Doncaster. Rod had a very difficult customer a few hours before we chatted. He uses it as a teaching moment, explaining his attitude and approach to aggressi...

What's going on with customer behaviour? This week Dirty Linen throws the spotlight onto rude, aggressive, unreasonable and upsetting diners and the impact they can have on hospitality workers. Today's chat is with Lisa Bilston, owner of Bob's Your Uncle cafe in Melbourne's Doncaster East. One day last week, a customer went ballistic about being served the wrong rice. He upset Lisa and her staff s...

Are backpackers exploited on Australian farms? Georgina Dent is a young UK chef working at Anchovy in Melbourne. Having arrived in Australia on a Working Holiday Visa, Georgina was required to spend 88 days on a farm to secure a second year in Australia. She ended up in Bundaberg paying exorbitant rent to do piecework picking lemons: it was hard, hot work and hard to earn money too. And out of 300...

Dirty Linen continues with the topic of regional labour. Nina Meiers is a tree-changer who moved to north-east Victoria with her husband and started an organic strawberry farm instead of retiring. There have been endless challenges but her biggest problem right now is labour - there are no internationals around to pick her fruit and locals are unwilling or unavailable. The consequence? She's just...

Dirty Linen is spending the rest of this week talking about labour in the regions - it's in deep crisis. We are 26,000 workers short and produce is rotting on the ground. We start with Kim McDonnell, CEO and founder of Thankful, which aims to create connection and change by fostering gratitude. In Australia, the organisation has flowered as Thankful4Farmers. They're about to launch a plan to help...

With South Australia's six-day lockdown ending after three days, Dirty Linen decided to check back in with Daisy Miller, owner of Adelaide's Soi38. We get fired up. Why is one visa holder blamed for a major government decision? What kind of machine lies behind this? How might it tie into Federal policies that exclude and marginalise? Where do anger and trust fit into health responses? How do we re...

For 30 years, Marika Oost has been in kitchens, including a period as Karen Martini's head chef at Melbourne Wine Room. She often struggled with the culture and expectations of the industry, finally leaving it - and her own children - for her own mental health. When we speak to Marika, she's all aches and raw fingers from her first day as a meatworker, a job that she welcomes as part of the journe...

We head back to Adelaide to talk to Daisy Miller, owner of Soi38. It's the first day of a planned six-day hard lockdown and Daisy is feeling stoic but uncertain - it's impossible to plan or to know how things will pan out, but she's panic bought an inflatable pool and is bunkering down with her family. https://www.soi38.com.au Follow Dirty Linen on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/deepintheweed...

As South Australia enters a hard, fast lockdown we chat to chef and restaurateur Adam Liston from Shobosho. He's a bit shellshocked but supportive of stringent measures to control a COVID outbreak that escaped hotel quarantine, so long as it does the job it's supposed to do. That is: quash the virus in six days so that Adelaide can get back to being Radelaide in time for the busy Christmas trading...

Jacqui Allen owns the Wy Yung Pub in Bairnsdale, East Gippsland plus two sushi shops and a festival business. Let's face it, she's a gun. It's been a hell of a year for the 30-year-old publican, kicking off with horrific bushfires then rolling straight into the pandemic. We talk about managing change, staff shortages, resilience, application, learning, stickability and the gladness that she's mana...

Dirty Linen first spoke to French restaurant manager Clement Demarais in August. Melbourne was locked down and as a sponsored worker, Clement's options were severely limited. He ended up taking a job in Sydney managing a creperie. We talk about escaping Melbourne, the post-traumatic stress of emerging into low-virus Sydney, and because our topic this fortnight is staffing, we talk about the diffic...

Paul Stafford owns Bigger Than Texas BBQ food truck and we chat to him while he's setting up in Mornington during the first weekend that Melbourne is allowed to travel more than 25K. The Peninsula is flooded with people but there isn't enough capacity to feed them, partly because of COVID restrictions but also because businesses like Paul's can't find enough staff. As well as knowing his way aroun...

Dirty Linen spoke to indomitable chef and restaurateur Joseph Vargetto two months ago when Melbourne was in a very different place. But now, with the city opening, life is actually harder. The employment market is a constant stress: where are the workers? Can Melbourne have the restaurants we pride ourselves on when there aren't enough people to work in them? Joe also makes an impassioned plea for...

After Dirty Linen's 100th episode segue, we are back talking staffing with Jerry Mai (Annam, Bia Hoi, Pho Nom and a pop up at Mornington's Ocean 8). Jerry is a big believer in training, nurturing, work-life balance and career planning. Around 80% of Jerry's pre-COVID workforce left the country and it's proving terribly difficult to staff up again. At the same time, she encourages employees to be c...

To celebrate 100 episodes of Dirty Linen we decided to turn the tables on host Dani Valent. We wrangled stable mate Anthony Huckstep to take the steering wheel and discover the driving force behind Dani’s quest to unearth the issues at the heart of not only the industry, but discover who we are, as people with a podcast series that has become an integral voice of the hospitality industry. Follow D...