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

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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 tricky ground for so many women. We chat 'precarious masculinity', the role of food media and the intersection of race and sexuality - plus everything going on in Austin, Texas right now where a dramatic cold snap cut off power and water for days on end.

https://faculty.txstate.edu/profile/1922299

Deborahs Book

https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Heat-Inequality-Professional-Kitchen/dp/0813571251

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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 midst of necessary discussions about toxic masculinity, Dirty Linen talks women and hospitality.

https://www.brideandwolfe.com.au

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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.

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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 restricting his own after-hours socialising as an added layer of protection for the community. The community, that is, that failed to look after him through the pandemic.

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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 made her feel utterly betrayed.

https://www.instagram.com/sungeunmo/

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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/restaurant-workers-not-paid-tens-of-thousands-as-red-spice-road-reopens-with-new-staff-20210218-p573st.html

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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 the $11,500 she's owed but the fact that her previous employers seem to want nothing to do with anyone who made the restaurant one of Melbourne's favourite places to dine.

Read Dani's article in the Age

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/restaurant-workers-not-paid-tens-of-thousands-as-red-spice-road-reopens-with-new-staff-20210218-p573st.html

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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

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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 Peter Gunn to work out what that means in 2021 and beyond.

https://www.idesmelbourne.com.au

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