Menu Reveal: What To Expect When Two Masters of Fire Join Forces at Old Palm Liquor for Dine Out

If you can’t handle the heat, you’d certainly want to get out of Almay Jordaan and Isobel Whelan-Little’s kitchen. The two chefs are known for their fire-powered cooking – Whelan-Little as culinary director of Sydney’s Ace Hotel, including flagship restaurant Kiln, Jordaan at Melbourne’s Old Palm Liquor – and now they’re combining their fiery forces for a one-night-only dinner, presented by DoorDash, as part of Broadsheet’s Dine Out festival.

Taking place at Old Palm Liquor on Monday July 20, the collaboration will bring diners a menu built around smoky, charred flavours. Both chefs will cook over the restaurant’s braai, a South African-style open-fire barbecue that’s a signature at Old Palm.

“It’s custom built, and it’s different to South American parrillas,” says Jordaan. “It’s very hot to work on, because the fire isn’t sunk into a box, it’s waist-height with the chefs, and we cook everything from start to finish over the fire. When we say something is from the grill, it started on there as a raw product and it gets quite a decent char on it, which is a hallmark of South African braai.”

Whelan-Little’s love of open-fire cooking, meanwhile, began with a childhood spent around campfires in rural New South Wales, but it’s the almost alchemical transformation of the food that keeps her cooking over the flame now.

“What coal and fire and low embers can do to fruits and vegetables and proteins is pretty remarkable,” she says. “A peach is a peach, but then if you burn a peach, you get all those caramelisations and the flavours change, which I think is such a beautiful thing.”

The two chefs are splitting their Dine Out menu 50/50, with snacks, entrees, share-style mains, and a takeaway dessert, plus cocktails along the way. Old Palm regulars might recognise two of Jordaan’s dishes: coconut cream lentils with tomato, curry leaf and cracker (“That’s been on from the opening,” the chef says), and woodfired flatbread. To finish, she’s sending diners home with a South African dessert called koeksister that she says might be sweet enough to keep you up all night.

“It’s like brioche dough that’s plaited, deep-fried, and then dunked in syrup,” she says. “Think very syrupy Greek sweets, but the syrup is flavoured with cardamom and lemon zest.”

Whelan-Little’s side of the menu will feature a dish of thyme-stuffed cuttlefish grilled over fire with “a beautiful frothy, beany situation” of slowly braised white beans and chickpeas with a green anchovy sauce, as well as confit potato and pickled mussel tartare.

“It’s going to be a beautiful slow-cooked potato, then deep-fried, and then I’m going to make a smoked mussel emulsion, chop up the mussels as they’ve been slowly opened over the fire, and mix them with classic tartare seasoning, like capers, parsley, eschalots, and a little bit of mustard,” she says.

Both chefs are contributing sides for the main, too – a flatiron steak cooked on the braai. Jordaan’s is a seasonal salad of persimmon and radicchio, while Whelan-Little will be smoking and roasting eggplant to be served with pickled prunes, toasted pepitas and goat’s milk labneh.

Although Whelan-Little is looking forward to working some fiery magic with Jordaan here in Melbourne, she’s most excited to be fostering a great, communal dining experience for those lucky enough to snag a ticket.

“Breaking bread and sharing a plate of food with someone is, I think, one of life’s most treasured things,” she says.

Book your tickets now via the DoorDash reservations platform, while tickets last.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with DoorDash. Broadsheet’s Dine Out festival returns from July 20–26, 2026 in Melbourne and July 27–August 2, 2026 in Sydney, with 100 events across the two cities.