How do I explain what we're doing?” Ellie Bouhadana says, with a little smile. We're looking for somewhere to sit in the courtyard next to Hope St Radio, the Collingwood wine bar where she has been head chef for the past three years.
Owners Jack Shaw and Pete Baxter, who picked Bouhadana to run the kitchen back in 2021 after attending one of the pop-up dinners she hosted on the street outside her house, are looking quizzically in our direction. She has spent the day interviewing for a new chef, she explains; perhaps they think I am one such candidate. Bouhadana relays that I'm here for Australia and Shaw and Baxter leap into action, dragging an enormous table into the sun for us. We settle in, glasses of beer before us, which Bouhadana, two gold bangles jammed up her
