Dale Kemp began his cooking career back home in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Although he had always been aware of and interested in the fact his grandmother was a great cook – she had a huge garden and grew fruit and vegetables throughout the year he didnt think about becoming a chef until he got an after-school job at 16 as a dishwasher at the Boat Shed Caf in Nelson.He lovedthe sounds, the aromas, and the adrenaline you get from a busy service. After working there and at other venues around the South Island, as well as completing his qualifications, Dale moved to Melbourne when he was 18 and began working at Hammer and Tong in Fitzroy under Emma Jeffery and Simon Ward. After Hammer and Tong, he worked at Little Big Sugar Salt on Victoria Street in Abbotsford as sous chef before starting at Terror Twilight also as sous chef. A few months later, he took over the head chef role and five years on he is executive chef of the group with 4 venues and a thriving catering kitchen. I sat down with Dale at Convoy in Moonee Ponds on a chilly Melbourne morning and had a really great coffee. It's a beautiful space with white walls, pale wood and a lot of lush plants on the huge deck. The menu is no run-of-the-mill caf fare offering a very popular Turkish eggs dish as well as cinnamon scroll pancakes, a king prawn roll and a steak frites sandwich amongst other delicious options. Convoy turns one this week and they are offering free coffees on Friday. But I reckon you are in for a treat any time you go. And if you like great music, the other venues, Terror Twilight and Hifi spin vast amounts of vinyl as well as producing tasty wholesome food.
Hi Dale, lovely to meet you. It is beautiful here. I don't know why I don't come to Moonee Ponds more often. This is a gorgeous space.
It's so nice.
What was it before?
It was a cafe called Queen Bean. It wasn't anything like this. There were a few walls in here. I think when we first took it over, there was just a coffee machine in there. That was it. I think it was run by one person. There was no balcony. We put that wall in and we built a kitchen and it took about 18 months. It was a bit of a slow process. My boss Ben actually built it with himself and a few of his mates.
How many does it seat? It feels big.
About 160, 170. It really pumps.
And so, a year on.
It's actually one year this week.
Right. And I think on Friday there is going to be some free coffee.
That's right. We've learned a lot in the time that we've been open. It was our first big venue. We weren't really sure what to expect. We probably underestimated how busy it was going to be.
Okay. What else is around here?
There's Brother Hen up the road. There's another one around the corner called Mr. Walker. There are no menus of this size around here. They're all quite small. We get a lot of big groups, especially on Sunday. Lots of families. Around here is quite family-oriented. Lots of young families.
Do you do daytime only?
I think we are looking at maybe getting into the events down the track, but for now we are open from 7.00am to 4.00pm, 8.00 am on the weekend. It's doing great.
How different is it to Terror Twilight?
I would say it's very different. We didn't really know what to expect when we opened it, but we quickly learned that what people want out here is very different to Collingwood. I would say we're still trying to work that out. There are a lot of European and Middle Eastern people up here. So we've leaned towards that kind of style of menu, which has worked really well for us.
Our biggest seller is definitely our Turkish eggs. Which is just very simple. Sujuk, which is like a traditional Turkish sausage, poached eggs, red pepper, butter, and a simit, which is like a Turkish bagel. We sell hundreds.
It's really interesting. I was just speaking to Adrian Richardson at La Luna. And they're about to turn 25. And he said, the important thing is as a chef, not to cook what you want to cook, but what the public want to eat. And I think that is important.
Very important. I think you can do a bit of both. I think you should definitely cook what you want to cook, but definitely take on all the feedback from the customers. And we get a lot of very honest feedback here. Some good, some not so good. We really take that on board and we're just continuing to evolve. Week by week, we are tweaking and making these small adjustments every week, just to try and make it better, which is great.
That's good though. That's what it's all about, isn't it? I think that's what I love about talking to chefs is that you seem like a bunch of really curious people who want to keep learning and I think that is really great as well.
I think in cafes you don't see people being as creative and evolving as you do in the restaurants. I think a lot of cafes will stick to that very almost base menu of your breakfast classics. And the chefs probably don't have as much creativity as they probably should.
But is that because of the price point? Is that because you have to keep things under a certain amount in cafes so you are limited as to what you do?
I think if you're serving a good product that you're confident and you believe in, you can charge a bit more for it. I would say we're on the higher side of pricing, but we don't get people complaining about the price. I think if you're serving good food and using good products, then you're good.
And where did it all start for you? I know that it started in Nelson.
Are you, you're Kiwi as well?
Yes, I'm from Christchurch.
Oh, nice. I was actually born in Christchurch. My family's still there, but, yes it started for me in Nelson when I was in high school. I just got a job as a kitchen hand. Never thought about really being a chef. My grandma was always a really good cook. But I would say I didn't become super interested in what she was doing till I was a bit older. But she was always cooking good food. She's always making sauces, growing her own veggies and fruit. I started at a beautiful restaurant in Nelson. I'm not sure if you know the Boat Shed Cafe.
I have heard the name.
It sits over the water, looks out over the bay and we served I would say, Mediterranean, Italian flavours, all fresh produce. We baked sourdough twice a day. Everything from scratch. I was lucky enough to work under some really great chefs there who had all travelled through Europe. A lot of them were actually European. I got a really good start there.
What did you like about it? It sounds like a beautiful place, but what is it, that drew you in?
I would have to say initially it would be the adrenaline you got from a really busy service and the team and just the comradery. And it was fun. Some days were really hard, but you are all in it together. That drew me towards it. It was an open kitchen and just seeing the customerscoming up to the pass and thanking you. I think that's what initially drew me to it. And just how passionate everyone was there. You kind of get sucked into that.
I've been saying this to everyone, because I've just binged two seasons of it, The Bear. Just seeing the pressure and it's a stressful show to watch, but it made me really think about how chefs are great problem solvers as well. I think the people that really love it do love that adrenaline and do love the fact that all these dockets are coming out and it's crazy, but we're in it together and how do we make it work? Thats impressive because it is a stressful situation to be in, day in, day out.
Yes. I think I handle the stress a lot better now. I think the more you stress out and get in your own head, it just makes the whole situation worse and everyone working under you, it just falls apart a little bit. I think I'm a bit more level headed now and know how to deal with it better. But it just comes with experience.
That's it. And I think those waves of thinking, well this too will pass and we'll get through it and no one's going to die.
Exactly. Hopefully.
So from Nelson, I did read that you were at C1.
Yes. I was there for about a year. I actually dabbled in a bit of coffee roasting there. When I first started there, the sous chef at the time was on their way up, but they didn't have enough hours for me. So they taught me the, the ins and outs of roasting coffee. And it was this old Probat gas coffee roaster. It wasn't plugged into a laptop. It was all, you had to write down all your times. Back then I felt like I really knew what I was doing. They kind of showed me how to use it. And when I think about it now, I probably butchered a lot of coffee.
When was that?
That was probably 2016. It was a cool place to work.
Was that where it is now?
Yes, it's in the old post office. New owners now. I was actually there over Christmas and the manager is now the owner. It's nice to go back.
Yes, it's got a good name there. That's a pretty good place to have worked.
It was very, very different. And it was probably my first experience working in a big operation. I had been working in small teams my whole career, four or five chefs. It was run really, really well. I stayed there for a year and went back up to Nelson. I actually moved over here when I was 18. I stayed here for two years and then I went back. And then as soon as I, well maybe six months after I got back, I thought, why did I do that? It's hard to move back to New Zealand after living in Melbourne. So I came back.
It's a hard one because New Zealand is so great and it's so beautiful and I love going back there. I love hearing so much, Te Reo Maori just used so naturally. I love the landscape, but I can't imagine moving back and living there because it is such a small pond.
Especially in this industry. You don't have much choice or opportunity. All my chefs pushed me to come over here. That was the main reason I probably came over. Me and another guy I was working with came over together and it was probably one of the best choices I've ever made.
You definitely have to work hard at the start and get yourself somewhere where people care about what you’re doing. I started at the Boat Shed, but I worked at another place at the same time and my head chef there said, you shouldn’t become a chef. It’s too hard. I actually left that place not long after. I would say, get yourself into a good restaurant with people who are passionate about what they’re doing and you’ll latch onto that. ~ Dale Kemp, Convoy, Terror Twilight, Tinker, Hifi
Have you worked in evening restaurants as well?
Initially, yes. The Boat Shed was all evening. We did breakfast on the weekends, but we were known for our evening shifts.
But you prefer cafes?
When I first moved over here, I started a job at Hammer and Tong. I'm not sure if you know that place, working under Emma. Jeffrey and Simon Ward.
I've spoken to Emma.
I realized you can be creative in the breakfast scene; you can work days and have your evenings off. They were super passionate and they were always coming up with new ideas and that place was absolutely mental. It was so busy every day, even weekdays. It was just crazy. I think I realized then you can have a bit of creativity in the breakfast scene. Before that I thought it was just eggs Benny and eggs on toast and that was it. So that was nice. After that I just leaned towards that style of cheffing and just kept going with that.
Now that you are executive chef, are you overseeing different venues?
Four venues.
Are you still on the tools?
I still do get on the tools. It's been a bit of a change for me in this business as well. When I first started here where it was just one venue, I've seen it grow. I started as sous chef and eventually worked my way up to now executive chef. It was a bit of a shock from running a kitchen and being on the tools every day to then managing two venues then three venues, then four venues. It's taken a little bit to work out. I work really closely with Kieran, one of the directors. He has a lot of say in the menus and we work on that really closely together. But yes, I still do jump on the tools. It can get hard sometimes, if you stay on the tools too long at one venue, then the other venue might start to slip. So I try and spread my time out over the venues and of course if someone's sick, I might have to cover or if someone goes on holiday.
You've got Convoy, Terror Twilight, Tinker..
And Hifi Sandwich Shop on Smith Street. Which we opened just after Covid based on a takeaway model.
I saw that from across the road once and thought it looked really good. And great music.
We love our music. We have a huge vinyl collection, which we share between Terror Twilight and Hifi. We swap them out and keep it fresh. Kieran buys all of them. He's probably got a bit of a problem. He probably buys more than he should, but it's great. There's always fresh tunes and we get so many comments on it. It's a big, big part of Terror Twilight and Hifi, the music. We also run a catering business out the back of Hifi, which is based off the Terror Twilight menu, which we started doing at Terror Twilight on the tables before service and it just outgrew it. The kitchen at Hifi is massive, so we do our catering out of there.
What sort of events do you cater?
It's pretty much photography studios, funnily enough. We do, I would say 90% of all the photography studios in the inner north. Theyll have a shoot for the day, we'll do their breakfast, we'll do their lunch, two drops. It has grown from that, from word of mouth. Now we're dabbling in a bit of corporate stuff in the city. It has been really good. It's been a big learning curve. I've never really done catering before.
What are the numbers you are catering for?
Some days we're doing 14 to 15 drops. So we've got a van now with nice sign writing. It's really starting to grow. Luke, our head chef at Hifi does a great job in managing that. He's super organized, which you have to be in catering. It's growing quite rapidly, which is awesome.
In terms of all the different facets of your job now, staffing's a consideration as well and making sure that everyone's happy and that wellbeing is in place.
That's the hardest part about the job; dealing with different personalities and we're lucky enough to have some great people in our management positions. All of them have been here for quite a long time and worked their way up into those positions. I'm very lucky in that regard to have some great people managing the kitchens. But you know, there was a time where I would post a job and I would get one application. Sometimes even none.Now, we recently posted a job for Hifi and we got 350 applications.
Where do you start with that?
You can't! I think it's getting better.
What about people staying? I've heard there's a lot of people moving around at the moment because they have the luxury to do that. Everywhere needs people. Do you get people who come and stay?
We definitely get some people leaving, but not really to move to other venues. People go away and go on holidays and stuff. I think we do pretty well at retaining staff. It's a big focus for us. We do constant check-ins with staff and catch ups after their first month, performance reviews. I think is a great way to let the staff know that you care about them and how they're tracking and you want them to continue to evolve. Two of the chefs here started here as kitchen hands. When one of them started, he wanted to be an electrician. Now he's about to go off to chef school and he's cooking. It's nice to see that. Another guy had his first kitchen hand job here and now he's a full-time chef. That's one of the best parts about the job; seeing people grow and evolve. They start and they don't really know what they're doing and now they feel like they have a bit of purpose and they enjoy coming to work.
What's your advice to young chefs from your experience?
You definitely have to work hard at the start and get yourself somewhere where people care about what you're doing. I started at the Boat Shed, but I worked at another place at the same time and my head chef there said, you shouldn't become a chef. It's too hard. I actually left that place not long after. I would say, get yourself into a good restaurant with people who are passionate about what they're doing and you'll latch onto that.
Convoy, 109 Pascoe Vale Road, Moonee Ponds