New Hire: Five Minutes With Tommy Hope, New Head Chef at Sid at The French Cafe
Words by Rosie Herdman · Published on 30 Sep 2022
Owned by Sid and Chand Sahrawat, Sid at The French Cafe has long been counted among the best restaurants in the country. The couple took it over in 2018 (when it was just known as The French Cafe), at which point it had been an acclaimed spot for more than two decades.
Now, another chapter begins with a new head chef. Tommy Hope started with the team in June, having returned to Auckland earlier this year from Melbourne. A New Zealander, Hope grew up in Mount Eden and in 2015 moved to Melbourne, where he quickly racked up impressive kitchen experience.
Soon after arriving there, he started working for chef Dave Verheul (co-founder of wine bar Embla) as a sous-chef at the now-closed Town Mouse. “It was quite sideways thinking and got me excited about food,” Hope tells Broadsheet.
Around the start of 2017, he moved to famous fine dining restaurant Attica and worked with Ben Shewry for just under four years. It was “super amazing. He’s an incredible person and a really good friend of mine still,” says Hope. “It was more than a restaurant – we got to do lots of trips around the world, side events, and he’s really structured in his development.”
By 2021 Hope wanted a new challenge, so he departed Attica to take on the head chef role at Bar Thyme, a wine bar in Footscray, in Melbourne’s inner west. “I developed my own style a little bit – [continuing] the standard of Town Mouse and Attica but a little bit more freestyle, casual and fun.”
He tells us a little more about his new role, what he’s excited about and what diners can expect.
Tell us a bit about what your new role encompasses.
Sid will have three restaurants in about a month – including Cassia and Kol , which is going to open up next month sometime. I’m overseeing operations for French Cafe solely.
We have the main restaurant, which is the front and back rooms, and then also operate The Cellar, which is the private dining room for about eight to 12 people. We also have The French Kitchen, which is the private dining room out the back and is sponsored by [luxury appliance company] Gaggenau. We do one test kitchen dinner there on the first Tuesday of every month. So lots going on.
We do some catering and events every now and again, as they come up. I’m involved in the creativity with Sid, and we all bounce ideas off each other, especially with these test-kitchen Tuesdays. There are about nine chefs in the kitchen at the moment. They are all involved in the development of dishes and each brings something different to the experience as a whole.
Why did you decide to join Sid at The French Cafe?
[Sid and I] have kind of known each other for years but never worked together. I’ve always respected what he’s done; he’s always still pushing and being quite fluid with experimentation, not being too worried if he tries something whether it works or doesn’t work, which I like. He brought me into the restaurant, showed me around and I fell in love with it. It’s just such a beautiful space, a cool team and the culture is really cool here – so I took the job on the spot.
Do you have any fun plans or ideas for your role?
There’s an awesome garden space out here. The first thing I do in the morning is come and set up my laptop and look out the courtyard with the olive trees and lemon trees. It’s so under-utilised, especially in winter. I want to get the guests out of their chairs mid-service, and take them out to the garden to have a little snack next to the fire or under the sun. Move people around a bit, shake it up and have a bit more interaction and a little bit more of the unexpected. People [can] see fine dining as stark and white tablecloths and think that it can be boring, but I want to bring some energy to it and show them a new approach.
Will you bring along any dishes or ideas you're known for?
The signature is a funny question; it’s something chefs always get asked about. There’s a couple of dishes – like butternut pumpkin with sprouts and some burnt bay leaf – that I’ve put on at a couple of other restaurants, but in this setting I did a refined version that would suit the clients. It was cool to see that elevate in a different way. I’m constantly evolving my own “signature” dishes.
