Head Chef

Head Chef — The Nielsen, Shark Beach

A harbourfront kitchen with no dinner service. You’ll be home for most of them.

The Nielsen’s biggest day of the year is about four months away. Every summer, the whole of Sydney remembers Shark Beach at once. The kitchen you build between now and December decides whether that’s a good week or a bad one.

Why we’re hiring now

Nielsen Park was closed for three years. It reopened, and the trade came back harder than anyone expected. SRG is opening seven venues this year, which keeps pulling experienced people out of venues that are already trading. What the site needs now is someone who treats a hot Saturday in January as a planning problem solved in October.

What you own

• Food cost inside budget every quarter, with variances traced to their source in the same week they appear
• Kitchen labour matched to how the site actually trades, including the days when rain cuts covers by half before 9am
• A kitchen that runs to standard across The Kiosk, The Pavilion and The Beach Club on the days you aren’t there
• A sous chef who is ready to do your job by the end of the year
• Guest food scores that hold or climb, and a clean record on allergens
• Events up to 200 guests delivered without the day trade dropping a level

What good looks like

At 90 days: You know your food cost to the dollar and can explain every variance without checking. Prep lists and line checks are written down and followed, including by casuals. You’ve named your sous chef. You have a summer plan on paper.

At 12 months: Food cost and labour have held inside budget across four quarters, including summer. Service has run to standard, without you present, at least twice each quarter. Your sous chef has an active plan to replace you, and nobody good has left your kitchen.

You’ll do well here if

• You build the roster from what the site actually did last year, not from a template
• You look at a weather forecast on Thursday and change Saturday’s prep because of it
• You tell the Executive Chef about a cost problem while it’s still small, and never surprise them with one
• You write down how your kitchen works, so it survives a resignation
• You get quiet under pressure rather than loud
• You’d rather your cooks got the credit for a good service than take it yourself

What you get

• A salaried role with a documented annual incentive plan, measured on food cost, labour, food quality, and how much stronger your team is at year end. 
• Day-shift hours. The kitchen closes at 4pm on weekdays and 5pm on weekends. Evening work is events, and it’s rostered in advance.
• A site inside Sydney Harbour National Park, in a kiosk building that’s been on that beach since 1914
• A group opening seven venues this year, which is why this role exists and how people here move up
• Discounted WSET courses, the annual managers’ conference, and dining across all 17 SRG venues

The essentials

You need Food Safety Supervisor certification and full working rights in Australia. You don’t need a Certificate IV — we’d rather see a kitchen you’ve run well than a certificate you’ve filed away.

Who we are

SRG is a Sydney hospitality group, owned and run by the Drakopoulos family since 2000. Aqua, the first venue, is still trading 25 years later, which tells you what we build for. We run harbourfront sites across the city — Chowder Bay, Little Manly, Milsons Point, Rose Bay — and The Nielsen is the one people are most protective of. We measure things: wine list awards, food scores, and the numbers in your kitchen budget.

How to apply

Submit your CV via this portal. 

You’ll hear back within five working days either way. Then a phone call, one conversation on site, and a trial shift. A decision inside three weeks of that first call.