Dirty Linen - A Food Podcast with Dani Valent
byA Deep in the Weeds Production
ArtsFood
Dirty Linen goes behind the scenes in restaurants, cafes and bars, covering issues the hospitality industry finds hard to share in public - it's all up for grabs and everything is on the table. Your host is food journalist Dani Valent. For 20 years, Dani has been writing about restaurants and the people who give them life. But she's an outsider, a critic, a tourist, a fan. Despite hearing the stories and writing the tales, she's never really understood what happens behind the scenes. Now it's time to get stuck in, with compassion, humour and fearlessness. Dirty Linen goes deep, both...
Episodes(40 episodes)
Isabelle Pearl Love-Dack (Finn’s Oyster Bar) - Is there anything more perfect than an oyster?
Is there anything more perfect than an oyster? Isabelle Pearl Love-Dack runs Finn’s Oyster Bar, which attends events to offer just-shucked bliss. She also works for Shuck Don’t Chuck, which collects oyster shells to use in reef rehab. Finn’s is named for Bella’s son Finn, who died in 2019 aged 13 months. The grief is always present but there’s joy too.
https://www.instagram.com/finnsoysterbar/
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Published: May 10, 2026Duration: 40m 24s
Melanie Lionello (nutritionist, content creator and author) - From My Little Kitchen
Melanie Lionello is a nutritionist, content creator and author of new book From My Little Kitchen, which brings achievable Italian recipes with dietary information and a practical sense of how cooking fits into people’s lives. We talk about why there are no rabbit recipes (maybe in book 2?) and how she has built her social media audience to almost 400,000 followers.
https://www.instagram.com/frommylittlekitchen/
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Published: May 4, 2026Duration: 34m 7s
Marco Finanzio (Umberto Group) - In hard times, what matters?
Returning to Dirty Linen after a huge 16 months, Umberto Group’s Marco Finanzio has changed the shape of his business, closing venues and refocusing.
In hard times, what matters? Who are we accountable to? What is the mission? A bowl of pasta might be part of the answer…
https://www.umbertogroup.com.au
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Published: May 3, 2026Duration: 37m 35s
Stephen Nairn (Omnia, Yugen) - Portside at Prahran
Australia imports most of its seafood, and the most commonly eaten locally produced fish is farmed salmon. Do these facts point to problems? Today’s chat is with return Dirty Linen guest Stephen Nairn (Omnia, Yugen), who has recently opened Portside, a retail store at Prahran Market with a focus on high quality seafood from known fishers.
Stephen’s previous chat on Dirty Linen:
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/stephen-nairn-omnia-skipping-asparagus-season/id1518946986?i=1000494057149
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Published: Apr 26, 2026Duration: 55m 12s
The Producers: Louisa Dunn (Potato Farmer - Blackwood, Victoria) - Spud Fest.
Louisa Dunn farms potatoes, beef and sheep in Blackwood, an hour north of Melbourne. A city girl from Brighton, who married into a fifth generation farming family, Louisa has learnt more about potatoes than she knew there was to know. There are more than 4000 types of potatoes and the Dunn family is proud to grow around 20 of them, both for chipping and sending to market.
Louisa has become a keen advocate for regional farming communities such as hers; she’s a huge wrap for the Great Trentham Spudfest (May 2 & 3), which celebrates local potato farming families every autumn....
Published: Apr 20, 2026Duration: 42m 22s
John Laureti (Cafe Lewi, Sydney) - the lure of Lewisham
Chef John Laureti owns Cafe Lewi in Sydney’s Lewisham with his wife Isabella Leva Laureti, a pastry chef. The pair have a background in fine dining but they decided to bring their skills and experience to a daytime cafe, which now does a couple of nights due to customer demand.
In a tricky time for hospitality, we talk about expectations, scary spreadsheets, and open conversations with a cafe’s community. Oh, and feeding legendary chef Peter Gilmore.
https://www.instagram.com/cafelewi/
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Published: Apr 20, 2026Duration: 39m 4s
Jason M Jones (Entrecote, Melbourne) - turning 10
When you’re busy and always thinking about the next urgent matter, it can be hard to stop to celebrate the milestones. I love it when I see a restaurant share that they’ve turned 1 or 5 or 20. It’s great to take stock, find time to be proud, consider the legacy, and what you want to take forward. For Jason M Jones, there are a couple of milestones - he’s turning 50 and his Melbourne restaurant Entrecote is turning 10. Let’s hear some tales…
https://www.entrecote.com.au
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Published: Apr 13, 2026Duration: 40m 37s
Zoe Birch (Greasy Zoe’s) - consistency and change
If there’s a type of restaurant that I appreciate most intensely, it’s small independent family places where the creativity has to be as much about business structure as food on a plate. Greasy Zoe’s is one of those businesses.
Run by couple Zoe Birch and Lachlan Gardner, the eight seat restaurant is in a leafy suburb an hour from Melbourne. It’s a special place.
As the business clocks up nine years of operation, we check in with Zoe to see what is consistent and what needs to change.
ht...
Published: Apr 7, 2026Duration: 35m 19s
Emma Sheahan ( Lumen People, Fitzroy) - Illuminating Lumen
We return to a favourite series on Dirty Linen: Illuminating Lumen. In this occasional catch-up, we enter the world of Lumen People, a cafe and wine bar that launched in North Melbourne in 2023, closed in 2025 and reopened in Fitzroy.
Six months after landing in the second site, owner Emma Sheahan tells us how it’s going.
https://www.instagram.com/lumenpeople/
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Published: Apr 6, 2026Duration: 29m 11s
Jenna Abbruzzese (Addington Downs) - farming with purpose
We’re back with Jenna Abbruzzese from Addington Downs in the second episode of our ongoing series about lamb farming. Jenna and her partner Alex farm with purpose and in alignment with strong values around nurturing land, animals and the humans who eventually eat the meat they produce. We talk about the problems with purity and strict labels, and the emotions around sending animals to the abattoir.
We mentioned:
How Now Dairy
https://deepintheweeds.com.au/podcast/cathy-palmer-how-now-dairy-from-music-to-milk/
Felice Jacka
https://deepintheweeds.com.au...
Published: Apr 1, 2026Duration: 37m 39s
Daniel Saade and Redmond Stevenson (Order Up) - A City Fed by Many Cultures
Daniel Saade and Redmond Stevenson have collected thousands of order dockets from 33 Melbourne restaurants and made them part of a fond, resonant, immersive exhibition called Order Up: A City Fed by Many Cultures. It’s on at the Immigration Museum in Melbourne until May. What can we learn about restaurant culture by looking at crumpled, food-stained scraps of paper?
See Order Up:
https://museumsvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/whats-on/order-up/
They spoke about:
Supper Inn
Kababi
Akwaaba
Abla’s
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Published: Mar 29, 2026Duration: 40m 36s
Lucy Ridge (Author) - Recovering chef
‘Recovering chef’ Lucy Ridge is the author of Fed Up: A Chef’s Adventures in Food, Farming & Feminism. Burnt out by hospitality, Lucy embarked on something of a chef’s gap year, seeking out female farmers and producers to intern with, all around Australia. There was cheesemaking, distilling, pig farming, salad nurturing, harvesting bush foods on Country and grape stomping.
https://lucyridge.com
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Published: Mar 24, 2026Duration: 31m 50s
Felice Jacka (Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University) - Connecting food and mood
Connecting food and mood - whether good or bad - is probably not a radical proposal for anyone listening to this podcast. But what’s the science behind it?
Today’s guest is Felice Jacka, Professor of Nutritional Psychiatry and founder of the Food & Mood Centre at Deakin University. Felice’s work links the food we eat with our mental wellbeing - can foods of different types make us feel better…or worse. She’s also the author of a popular children’s book about gut health called There’s a Zoo in My Poo.
My...
Published: Mar 22, 2026Duration: 40m 16s
Abi Balingit (Cookbook Author and Dessert Remixer) - the dusky kitchen
Melbourne Food & Wine Festival is on March 20-29 with local and international chefs and creators heading to Victoria to cook, share and inspire. There’s a big Filipino thread to the program and we’re chatting to one of its stars, cookbook author and dessert remixer Abi Balingit, author of the James Beard Award-winning book Mayumu.
See Abi’s events:
https://www.melbournefoodandwine.com.au/search/?search=balingit
https://www.instagram.com/theduskykitchen/
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Published: Mar 17, 2026Duration: 31m 4s
The Producers: Carly Baker-Burnham (Bonnie Doone Organic Beef) - Winds of change
Carbon neutral climate positive agriculture is not the first thing many people think of when it comes to cattle farming but in Queensland Carly Baker-Burnham and her family from Bonnie Doone Organic Beef have an incredible story of evolution, generational change and now Australia’s first and largest soil carbon sequestration.
https://www.bonniedoone.com.au
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Published: Mar 16, 2026Duration: 28m 30s
Greg Sanderson (Speakeasy Group) - a focus on workplace culture
Greg Sanderson has played a pivotal role in establishing some of Australia’s most beloved bars as managing director of Speakeasy Group, which has eight venues in Melbourne and Sydney.
What’s it like running a bar group in a time of renewed and necessary focus on workplace culture, and when so many people are reducing their consumption of alcohol or not drinking at all?
https://speakeasygroup.com.au
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http...
Published: Mar 15, 2026Duration: 39m 28s
Dirty Glass with Dani Valent and Shanteh Wale - the life of a wine taster, fine dining, Quay, Yiaga and more
Shanteh Wale and Dani Valent team up for Dirty Glass, the occasional crossover pod featuring Over A Glass and Dirty Linen.
We talk about fine dining: as Quay closes and Yiaga begins, what can and should high-end dining be? Plus bushfire recovery, the life of a wine taster, the joys of Coravin, and whether buying local and seasonal is a bunch of BS.
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Published: Mar 10, 2026Duration: 44m 33s
Matthew Evans (chef, author and farmer) - well grounded
I said in my first episode of the year that I want to cover big juicy topics that draw some of the many strands of the food world together, things like farming, education, cooking, pricing, environment, health.
We do that today with chef, author and farmer Matthew Evans. Matthew runs Grounded, a roaming farming conference that’s also a food festival. I’ll be one of the MCs at this year’s festival on April 22 & 23 in Victoria.
groundedaustralia.com.au
Listen to Matthew’s conversation on Dirty Linen wi...
Published: Mar 8, 2026Duration: 34m 30s
Matthew Evans (chef, author and farmer) - grounded
I said in my first episode of the year that I want to cover big juicy topics that draw some of the many strands of the food world together, things like farming, education, cooking, pricing, environment, health.
We do that today with chef, author and farmer Matthew Evans. Matthew runs Grounded, a roaming farming conference that’s also a food festival. I’ll be one of the MCs at this year’s festival on April 22 & 23 in Victoria.
groundedaustralia.com.au
Listen to Matthew’s conversation on Dirty Linen wi...
Published: Mar 4, 2026Duration: 34m 30s
Bill Drakopoulos (SRG Hospitality) - a family group.
We’re chatting to Bill Drakopoulos at a pivotal moment. The veteran restaurateur is handing over Sydney restaurant group SRG to his four children as the family-owned company enters a busy period of expansion. SRG’s venues include waterfront Aqua, Sails and Ormeggio as well as sweet neighbourhood spots.
One of the topics I’m always thinking about is the place of the family restaurant in a hospitality landscape that’s increasingly dominated by groups.
But what about when the group is also a family?
https://srghospitality.com.au
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Published: Mar 3, 2026Duration: 32m 47s