When chefs and restaurateurs say their venue is an extension of their home, few mean it quite as earnestly as Almay Jordaan and Simon Denman – the couple behind Fitzroy North icon Neighbourhood Wine – who converted their home into their beloved Brunswick East sequel Old Palm Liquor.
These days the former workshop is a warm, welcoming, wood-panelled wonderland of fire-licked food, outstanding wines, cool vinyl and potted plants. The open kitchen centres around a braai-like grill – informed by Jordaan’s South African heritage – which imparts smoke and char to fish, flat breads and flank steaks. But if you’d walked through the door a few years ago you’d have found, well, a similar sort of scene.
“We had a braai out the back that we’d cook on,” Denman tells Broadsheet. The signature Old Palm pork chop is a riff on a dish the pair would often throw on the barbeque at home.
We’re sitting in Old Palm’s jungle-like courtyard after a Friday lunch service as Jordaan scans her phone for photos of what the place looked like before it became a venue. “We grew so many plants in here because of all the skylights,” she recalls. The acclaimed chef, cookbook collector and artist also had a small studio where she would paint still lifes. It was a home filled with art, recipes, records and (a whole lot of) wine.
“We had a succession of houses we lived in where landlords would get upset at us storing bulk wine there,” Denman says.
“One woman thought it was too heavy and her house would sink,” Jordaan adds.
“So we had to look for a commercial space we could live in and store wine in,” Denman explains.
They did it again when Old Palm opened in 2019. Denman and Jordaan had just nabbed the space next door (previously Lygon St Nursery) and moved in temporarily before flipping it into buzzing wine bar Bahama Gold. “We thought it was a good idea at the time,” Denman says. “Living next door to work is actually not a great idea, it turns out.”
The ties between work and home are more entwined than most – even for hospitality lifers – but it’s nothing new for the pair, who met in 2008 while working at London wine shop Vinoteca (a few doors down from the legendary St John) back in its heyday. Jordaan had been cheffing there for a few months when Denman waltzed in for a job interview.
“He kind of smashed into my vision,” Jordaan says. The South African chef, who grew up on a farm outside of Cape Town, was struck by the handsome Aussie and his “strange” RM Williams boots. “The door got stuck and he banged it, and he’s such a big guy, so it flew open and he sort of flew into the place.
“I remember looking at him going, ‘That guy, I’m going to marry that guy’. I just thought he was really handsome.”
So, of course, Jordaan ignored him for the first three months, until she eventually dropped a hint one night after work. “Then she walked around the corner [to get on the bus] and I got on my bike and I was like, ‘I think I’m missing an opportunity here’,” Denman recounts.
He rode to the bus stop near her house and waited to greet her. “The bus came and she wasn’t on it, then I waited for the next bus and she wasn’t on it. I waited for five or six buses before I went home.”
“How did you turn this into such a martyr story?” Jordaan laughs. “I happened to take a different bus that day.”
Cut to the following weekend and a shared taxi ride home sealed the deal (they both emphatically take credit for initiating their first kiss).
Sixteen years on, the married couple live in Fitzroy North – around the corner from Neighbourhood Wine, the charming old-world bistro they opened in a former underworld gambling den in 2013 – in a house they share with their six-year-old May and three-year-old Noah. “Our life almost exists in this triangle,” Denman says.
“I drive to Neighbourhood, here, home and school,” Jordaan adds. “If someone saw me, they’d be like, ‘There goes that woman again!’”
So how does the pair manage together in such close quarters? Boundaries are key. “We had some fierce, robust conversations early on,” Denman says. “We learnt we have to stick to our sections. I stay out of the kitchen and she leaves me to do everything else.”
“It’s not easy,” Jordaan adds. “I’d love to see someone who’s perfected it. Especially once you have kids. I don’t know if we’ve nailed it. But we know how to get around it.
“You have to get to the point where you know how to argue. Then you carry on.”
With kids in the mix, the couple spends less time on the floor and over the hot plates these days – even at home. “There’s definitely a bit of takeout going on,” Jordaan admits. “Especially if I’ve worked the whole day.” But she’s currently rediscovering her hundreds of cookbooks and aiming to cook a recipe from each one, a journey she occasionally documents on her personal Instagram account.
She’ll also be firing up the braai more regularly once they move into their new home – another warehouse space in Brunswick. “This one will stay a house,” Denman assures us.
This article first appeared in Domain Review, in partnership with Broadsheet.
