Chef

Bustling Nelson pizzeria and café restaurant seeks experienced Chefs for full time roles.

We are looking for experienced Chefs for key roles in our team. You will need to be an experienced professional Chef with a least two years working with Italian cuisine.

We need stars in our ktichen who have good knowledge of Italian cuisine, are passionate about great customer experiences and who are able to help us grow our restaurant team as we move to a la carte dining in addititon to our ever popular authentic woodfired handthrown Italian pizzas.  

The Chef roles

The roles to be filled are full-time, minimum 30 hours. Hours may be up to 50 hours a week during business periods. Restaurant is open 7 days, between 4:30 pm and 10:30 pm.

Suitable candidates will  be available to work on rostered shifts, including Friday – Sunday shifts and public holidays, on regular basis.

Key duties include; 

• Preparing ingredients, cooking and plating dishes, ensuring that the standard and quality of food service is excellent at all times. 
• Training opr leading junior kitchen staff, ensuring quality of food preparation and present is always of a high standard and meets customer expectations
• Planning and costing menu items, creating menus and running special 
• Breaking down and cleaning kitchen daily and ensuring the kitchen standards and hygiene are maintained at all times. 
• Ordering stock, engaging with suppliers and negotiating prices and ensuring supply and access to required ingredients
• Keep records for Food Control Plan and training staff to keep records correctly and record any incidents
• Managing inventory, rotating shock and ensure kitchen staff adhere to food safety policies and hygiene requirements
• Ensuring health and safety policy is correctly following, including training staff to report any incidents and record them correctly

Suitable candidates

Our work requires dedication, focus and teamwork. Suitable candidates will have an eye for detail to produce the best experience possible for our customers, every time.

The right person for the job will have a passion for serving excellent food, experienced in working at a high pace and maintaining attention to detail, and have a positive can-do attitude.

We deeply value our team and will provide the necessary training to encourage your career development wherever possible.

Minimum requirements for the role

You must have at least 2 years of experience as a professional Chef in restaurants or cafés. Ideally, you will have 3+ years of experience.

You must also have at least 2 months of solid work experience in Italian cuisine. This is essential as you should be able to understand the preparation of key dishes and be able to explain the dishes to our service team and to customers, and be able to hit the ground running from day one. 

Ideal candidates will also be experienced with pizza dough preparation and hand-thrown pizza  techniques and woodfired pizza oven baking, as at times we need cover for our Specialist Pizza Chef roles. This is not necessary, but preferred so let us know if you have this too!

Additional Skills need

Candidates should;

• have knowledge of standard food safety procedures and certification requirements
• have qualifications in professional cookery or food preparation (preferred but not required if you have good experience) 
• know how to break down a kitchen and clean it to standard -  you must be able to clean regularly and maintain or exceed industry standards for kitchen and restaurant hygiene

Overseas applicants are welcome to apply, but you must be sufficiently competent in English to communicate effectively with kitchen staff, front of house staff, management and customers. 

All applicants must

• Provide a CV and referees
• Have a clean criminal record required including MOJ check 
• Be drug free. Pre-employment drug testing and onsite testing may be required.
• Provide good references for work history, including one recent work reference.