Conversations

Hamed Allahyari is a Persian chef with a heart for others and a soul-warming laugh. I went out to Sunshine Café in Sunshine the other day and spoke to the café’s other founder, Jen Morillac. Jen and Hamed wanted to run a place that could employ refugees and asylum seekers who have had difficult time finding…

Read more

Eileen and I sit down to chat by the open sash window in Napier Quarter, the cute blue stone wine bar on the corner of Napier and Kerr Street. Afternoon sun is glowing on the buildings opposite and deliciousness wafts out from the kitchen. After the chat, owner Daniel Lewis helps style my portrait taking,…

Read more

Maureen Andrews is one half along with Gary of the mother and son team behind Ostrich and the Egg, a South African eatery and bar in St Kilda. When you step through the door off Inkerman Street, you feel as though you are stepping into their home. Not surprising really, Maureen has always welcomed and…

Read more

Mandacaru is a little bit of a different business model to the usual restaurants I visit. Chef and owner, Carla, is making delicious Brazilian dishes from a commercial kitchen just a little bit bigger than a shipping container out the back of an industrial-feeling complex in Port Melbourne. She feeds people through Menulog, Deliveroo, festivals…

Read more

I first met Dave a couple of years ago when I went into Embla for a chat. It would have been one of the first conversations I did and I loved every minute of it. Back then, Dave was running between Town Mouse and Embla and doing an excellent job at both. Now he is…

Read more

This was such a great chat. They are ALL great chats and I can’t even tell you how lucky I feel to be able to sit down with these chefs and just ask them anything I want to about their craft and things that occur to me mid-flight. Dan was so accommodating and really went…

Read more

For the guests it feels like they are coming into our home. Like a French provincial little restaurant. And it’s a bit like a show. I’m just doing my thing. People feel like they are watching a cooking show. When you walk into Curly Whiskers in Brighton, it feels as though you are walking into…

Read more

Johnny Di Francesco is getting all old school traditional on it at Gradi at Crown. Wanting to create a menu with dishes from the heart, passed down through families with a story to them, he put the call out on the Italian grapevine for nonna nominations and was inundated. After a lot of thought, he…

Read more

When Cristian Folletti talks about pasta, his eyes light up and he gesticulates even more animatedly than ever. A relative newcomer to the chef scene, Cristian had already learned a lot from his aunt in Italy, who is also a chef, so that when he went to culinary school, what he was learning was really…

Read more

Jessi is eating a bowl of dahl when I go in and asks if I mind him eating. Having seen how crazy busy it gets at Daughter in Law from the minute the doors open at 5 o’clock, he should definitely be having that dahl. There won’t be a moment to breathe until much later…

Read more