My hospitality career began at KFC, from the age of 14 until I finished high school. Some people might not consider that “hospo”, but trust me – there’s a lot we can learn from fast food (but that’s another story). Once I got to Tafe, I went looking for any job that wasn’t in fast food and, luckily, I got my foot in the door at Rockpool Bar & Grill at Crown in Melbourne polishing dishes, cutlery and glasses. Not quite a kitchen hand, but kitchen-hand-adjacent.
In those days, Instagram was just getting started – a fun new app where you could add a shitty filter to your shitty photo to try to hide how shitty it was. No one really knew how to monetise it back then, let alone leverage the platform to promote a restaurant.
Chin Chin changed the game. A friend of mine, Jess Ho, spearheaded the restaurant’s opening marketing campaign, which was launched and rolled out on Instagram. It was a massive success, and today, Chin Chin is still one of the busiest restaurants in Melbourne.
After spending some time at Rockpool in Sydney, I returned to Melbourne where I landed a job at the (now infamous) Lume, in 2015. Shaun Quade was the mad scientist chef of Australia, and was doing this molecular-slash-theatrical dining concept – we were making things look like things they weren’t: cheese made from cauliflower. And, at one point, a “lab-grown” meat dish (it was actually lamb) served at a dinner where guests had to send a lock of their hair (to serve as a DNA sample) to the restaurant ahead of the event.
It was groundbreaking at the time, some might say challenging. I spent a good couple of years there, and Shaun became a mentor. He pushed me to find my own style, but also opened my eyes to other aspects of this business that are (almost) just as important as the food you cook.
When I first started at Lume, Shaun had this whacky vision of banning guests from using their phones to take photos of the food. This, of course, ruins the surprise and theatre that he set out to create – like reading the entire plot of a film on Wikipedia days before you head to the cinema. Places have done it since, but it's not hard to see why banning phones in venues hasn't taken off.
Shaun’s partner Veronica Fils was a psychologist and economist, and she understood the power of social media and how it was going to be a major player in the future of marketing. Hashtagging, geotagging, keywords, SEO. All these techy words became a lot more important at Lume, which is ironic when I think about the early days of the restaurant, when we shrouded ourselves in mystery.
One of the biggest things I learnt from Shaun and Veronica is this: if you don’t move with the times, there’s a chance your business will become irrelevant.
And right now, chefs and restaurants can’t afford to ignore the power of social media.
We live in a world where it’s not unusual for restaurants to create dishes with social media in mind. I’m guilty of it. One of Askal's signature dishes is our beef clay-pot rice with roasted bone marrow. It comes to your table with instructions to scrape the marrow into your clay pot and give it a good toss. It’s pretty, interactive, exciting and iconic. A friend (who’s also a content creator) filmed it for us, and now the video has two million views on Instagram alone.
But I warn you: making food just for the camera is a dangerous trap for young chefs to fall into. Sure, it looks pretty – but does it taste good? Often there’s no cohesion, there’s no consideration for the diner’s palate. And this is the negative aspect of social media that I think, perhaps, doesn’t get talked about enough.
Take social media with a grain of salt, because it doesn’t show the context of what’s going on behind the scenes, or the hard work it took that chef to reach a certain level or a goal. Young chefs should take inspiration from what they see on social media but, more importantly, they should put the work into their craft.
It’s true – you can’t build a pretty house without a solid foundation. A builder doesn’t put the roof or the windows up before setting up the slab. Cooking is no different. Practise knife skills, read more books, try recipes you’ve never made before. Taste, taste, taste! Eat out a lot – especially at those places you admire on social media. Create a solid foundation so you can make pretty, Instagrammable food that helps your business – but also tastes fucking amazing so that the people you draw in via social media keep coming back.
A bit of personality goes a long way, too. People want to see people. A stylised still image of a dish doesn’t really excite anyone anymore; most just doomscroll right past it. Ditch the vanilla approach and create content that’s engaging, fun and maybe a little unhinged.
Melbourne is a saturated market, so I knew the only way to set our venues apart was to create that kind of content. You’ll see me and my staff in a lot of Askal and Kariton’s content because I want diners to immediately associate with the people and personalities they see online. It’s way more engaging to see a real human being themselves. For so long, we’ve been programmed to think restaurants should be polished and hide all their flaws. But actually, personality sells.
Most of all, it was integral for us to stay true to who we are: our Filipino character and hospitality. We’re jovial, we’re cheeky. I wanted to reflect that in our visual communication. Because when you walk through our doors, that’s what you get. And I hope that that makes the food taste even better.
I’m lucky to say I’ve got a great team – both in the kitchen and in marketing – that allows me to be more creative with the social media side of the business. Our marketing manager Pauline thinks like me, and finds the trends and opportunities to propel Askal, Kariton and Inuman’s online presence to greater heights. In the kitchen is a crew of talented, hardworking chefs I can count on to run the ship in my absence.
There’s no question social media has changed the game for restaurants. It’s powerful, fast-moving and often unpredictable. But no amount of viral content can replace the foundations of good hospitality: solid skills, thoughtful cooking and a clear sense of identity. The smartest operators know that while platforms like Instagram and Tiktok can fill seats, it’s the quality of the food, the service, and the atmosphere that keeps people coming back. Embrace the digital tools at your disposal – but don’t lose sight of why you started doing this in the first place.
