“We’re Very Similar”: Danielle Alvarez and Rosheen Kaul on Their Upcoming Collab

You couldn’t dream up two backgrounds more different. Danielle Alvarez was born to Cuban parents and raised in Miami. Her childhood table was filled with rice, beans and sofrito-based stews. “It wasn’t until I started travelling around the US that I understood just how different our food and our culture was, but I loved it,” says the chef, who went on to work at the esteemed French Laundry and Chez Panisse in California, before moving to Sydney and heading up farm-to-table restaurant Fred’s. She stepped away in 2022 and now works as a freelance recipe writer, with two cookbooks already to her name.

In contrast, Rosheen Kaul was born in Singapore (“the crossroads of Asia”) to a Kashmiri father and Chinese Filipino mother. “We’ve got this multitude of layers in my extended family. They live all over the world, but because their cultures are so same-same-but-different, food was one of those things they connected over the most – the dishes particularly, just the way that we eat. Everything’s centred around rice. We use a fork and a spoon, not chopsticks. And we have very similar palates, where we usually have one little protein dish and several vegetable dishes,” says the Melbourne-based chef, who apprenticed at Lee Ho Fook and cooked at Dinner by Heston before accepting her first head chef role at Etta in 2021. Like Alvarez, she’s now a published author and hired gun.

On November 8, the two chefs are coming together to cook a priceless, one-off dinner at the MCA’s relaunched rooftop. Here’s what they have to say about the event, and their experiences in the industry.

An unexpected collaboration

Alvarez: I find that, although my food is not overtly Cuban – ever – I always find ways of slipping in some flavours from my youth that might be unexpected. The squid dish I’m doing is a riff on something my grandmother might have made, but I’m also trying to make it part of a salad with beautiful pea shoots. So it’s marrying those two parts of myself – that more rustic, party-keeping fare with the fresher, produce-forward thing. Rosheen, I suspect you do that all the time with your food?

Kaul: Yeah, we’re very similar. My whole thing is exactly that: secretly Asian. I never want to do anything that’s overtly what it is. There are flavours that if you write them on the menu people would say, “I don’t really want to eat that.” But if you can just slip in these really powerful, nostalgic flavours and textures with, say, lamb, you’ll actually get people to try them. I like giving people different experiences that are really evocative to me, but in a very palatable, beautiful, simple, approachable way. But yeah, sneaking it in. Always sneak it in. That’s what I do.

Alvarez: I think this event is merging two personalities with very different food backgrounds, yet I think it will feel quite harmonious. And I feel like that will be a surprise for people. Not least of all, it’ll just be a gorgeous, fun night with delicious food – which is ultimately what it should be. But people can expect a bit of surprise, let’s say.

Kaul: The menu reads really cohesively as well, and it will be. It’ll be quite nice if people can’t tell whose dish is whose.

The key dishes

Alvarez: I’m really excited about my entree. It’s a warmish sort of salad. There’s poached squid, some beautiful pea shoots and more of a spring feeling. And then underneath is a little crostino with all the trim from the squid, and the tentacles get braised down with some sausage, red chilli and garlic. Like I said, that’s something my grandmother would have made – a squid stew. She probably would have done it with chickpeas or something like that, taking it in a very Spanish direction, but I cook it with sherry, and it actually ends up tasting like XO sauce.

Kaul: I’m most excited about my fish main: a rainbow trout baked with the skin on. It’s carried by this compound butter that’s made with a base of really heavily roasted lobster and prawn shells combined with South Indian curry spices. And then once that cools down, I fold through a whole lot of fresh herbs as well – shiso, coriander stems, fresh chilli, dried chilli, lots and lots of garlic, and lemon zest – just to bring the whole thing up. And then I’m going to take some of the compound butter and warm some prawns through that, and then use the rest of it to make a butter sauce. It’s got fragrant, fruity, spicy flavours. It’s a delicate dish, but at the same time really punchy.

The changing industry

Alvarez: When I was coming up, 18 to 20 years ago, you really felt like you needed to earn your spot in the kitchen. You needed to contribute something so that they wouldn’t sack you the next day. You really had to work hard and have your wits about you. I’m not suggesting that way was better, but I think there are a lot of young kids now where they can just pick wherever they want to work, because everyone needs staff. There aren’t enough cooks and chefs to go around, so you can just be there.

Kaul: You can just be there, and you can dictate your work days. You can dictate work hours. And the industry and the skill level has suffered for it. Obviously people are a lot happier working in restaurants now, which is what we ultimately want. But the skill level, I find, has gone way down. When I started my apprenticeship, we would all come in before work every day and sharpen our knives, because, one, if you dared come to work with a blunt knife you’d get blasted for it. And, two, they’d say, “Why are you here? You’re not ready to work.” There’s this nonchalance about being ready to work and about working on your knife skills and, you know, reading and reading and reading [to improve kitchen knowledge], not just scrolling Instagram and being like, “Oh, that’s a sick dish, I’ll make that.”

Alvarez: Totally, yeah. To me that’s super important and does really distinguish a cook that really cares and will go the distance in hospitality – the people that are curious, that want to learn, that know the history, that practise the patience of craft. It starts with learning how to sharpen your knives.

Kaul: Yeah, it’s all the base skills to build a solid foundation so that once you’ve done the hard yards – once you’ve suffered on a stocks and sauces section for too long – then when you want to make a simple dish of tomatoes, you can do that, because you know how to cook.

Alvarez: I’ve only been in Australia 10 years, but in that time … I think the super positives are that people are being treated with more respect – all people across the board – and I think that that translates to people being happier in the workplace, it being a more respectful and safe environment. Although we know that’s not happening everywhere all the time, so that still needs work. But you know, just recording hours properly, paying people properly – these are things that we shouldn’t have to question. And I think as an industry, there’s been a lot of improvement in that space over the last decade, for sure.

Kaul: If you’re running the kitchen, writing the menus and writing the roster, you have to understand the real parameters you’re working under. If your team isn’t able to make really complicated 700-component kind of food, then you just can’t do it. It’s having that realisation that you can’t work people to the bone just because you have a vision. It’s not always viable.

Alvarez: Yeah, it’s unsustainable. We talk so much about sustainability on the food sourcing end, but I think that has to translate all the way through the business and how you treat people.

Kaul: You can see why, then, food has become so simple in restaurants. That skill level has decreased somewhat, and your working hours are very much being enforced, as they always should have been. There’s not a whole lot more that you can do.

Rediscovering a love of cooking

Kaul: I thought I needed to take a break from kitchens to figure out where I was supposed to be. I was standing at a crossroads where I could have pursued writing full-time. I could have pursued food media full-time, if I wanted to do the TV thing or any of that. Or if I wanted to just continue working as a chef, I could do that as well. But after about three weeks, I realised that was exactly where I was supposed to be. I love writing, I do, but the lack of adrenaline in my day to day now … I don’t feel alive the way I do when I’m in service. For me, when it comes to creativity and problem-solving on the go, that’s where I really feel like I’m using my brain. When you’re cooking your way out of the shit, basically – that’s when you see that you can do this job. And when you’re doing it really well, and your team is amazing –there’s nothing like it. Since that realisation, I’ve sent a message to maybe seven different chefs asking, “Can I come cook with you?” And then they all said yes. And I was like, “Oh shit, that’s a lot of people.” But now I’m just going into my friends’ kitchens, cooking with them on different set-ups, and figuring out what other forms my food can take.

Alvarez: I can relate, but when I left Fred’s I was in a bit more of a place of burnout, I guess. On reflection, I can probably say confidently that it was burnout. I just needed to take a step back from the day-to-day pressures. When I started cooking there, I remember being so alive and charged, thinking, “What could I make this? What could it be?” And by the end of it, I was thinking so much more about, like, “Oh my god, the person on larders has called in sick again. Who am I going to get to cover that?” The wages, the this, the that. Food became the last thing I got to think about, and that bummed me out because that was the reason I started doing it. I needed to take a break and come back to the love of it, which I feel I have. When you’re working in a kitchen day in, day out with people that you really enjoy cooking with, I think that’s how magic happens. So that’s what I really love, but also understanding that I want more out of life than just that. I want to maintain healthy relationships with my friends and my family, and all those things. If you run a busy, successful restaurant, which is the goal, those tend to be the things that get cut out. I’m still trying to work it out.

Beyond Gourmet: Danielle Alvarez x Rosheen Kaul is hosted by Mastercard, in partnership with Broadsheet, at MCA’s Sculpture Terrace from 6.30pm on November 8. Secure your tickets – available to Mastercard holders only – to this priceless, one-off collaboration here.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Mastercard.