24/08/2026
Head Chef wanted.
Your kitchen, your menu, and a house to go with it.
Scallywags is a licensed restaurant and bar on the water at Mallacoota, right down the far east corner of Victoria. Fresh local seafood, a proper bar, and a dining room that goes off from December through March.
We're after a head chef to run the kitchen. Not to cook someone else's menu. To run it.
What you get
- $90,000 plus super. Published, because you shouldn't have to ask.
- A rent-free two bedroom townhouse, 500 meters from the door. All year, including over the quiet season. You cover power, gas, internet and water usage. No rent, and nothing comes out of your pay.
- The menu is yours. Design it, cost it, change it when the fishing's good. Gutsy owns the restaurant, you own the food.
- Work for your partner if they want it. We've got front of house shifts going.
The job
Summer we do around 100 across the dining room, the bar and outside. You'll have two to three cooks and a kitchen hand, plus extra casuals through the peak so you're not carrying it on your own.
Winter winds right down. Thursday and Friday nights, Saturday lunch and dinner, Sunday lunch. That's when you build next season's menu, lock in your suppliers, train your crew and sort the kitchen out properly. Most head chef jobs are twelve months of grind. This one isn't.
We close from Anzac Day to Grand Final Day. If you'd rather work through, tell us and we'll stay open. The house is yours either way.
Days off are real days off. You get a minimum of eight full days off every four weeks, including through January. We'd rather pay for another cook than run you into the ground and lose you in October.
What we need
- Trade qualified. Cert III Commercial Cookery or equivalent, or a trade test.
- You've run a kitchen before. Ordering, costing, GP, food safety, rosters, training.
- You can hold a standard through a hard January.
- Food Safety Supervisor certificate, or willing to get one.
- Driver's license.
Seafood experience is a bonus. Gutsy's been wokring this coast for decades, so the good stuff comes in fresh.
About Mallacoota, honestly
It's a town of about 1,100 people, 500km from Melbourne, and the nearest supermarket of any size is a fair drive. If you want a city, this isn't it.
Here you get the inlet view form the kitchen, the ocean beaches ten minutes away, some of the best fishing in the state, and a five minute walk to work. It's the kind of place chefs move to when they've had enough of the commute and the rent and the eleven o'clock finish followed by an hour on the train.
Start date: As soon as you can get here.
Apply: [email protected]
