Kitchen Day Podcast

Sophie Egan has hospitality in her bones. She started as a glassy at 12, spent five years at Caravan in London where she was running a restaurant by 23, then came home to lead teams at Onslow and Gilt. She is a brilliant front of house operator, a natural host, and someone who cares very deeply about the people on both sides of the pass. Now, after taking some much-needed time away from restaurants, she’s figuring out what the next version of a life in hospitality looks like.
This is such a fun, generous conversation about the craft of service and the pride that comes with choosing to make a career of it. We talk about hiring for personality, why you can teach someone to carry three plates but you can’t teach them to care, 500-cover brunches in London, two-minute martinis, burning menus, Friday-night fights and what happens when caring deeply about your work starts to cost you. Sophie also talks candidly about leaving Gilt, learning to put herself back on the priority list, and finding a new way to stay connected to an industry she very clearly still loves.
I hope you enjoy this episode, the very first of Season 3. I’m so happy to be back in your ears. And if you like what you hear, please subscribe!

THE KITCHEN DAY PODCAST IS PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY DROPPAH. See why Droppah is the leading choice for hospitality rostering.
Kitchen Day listeners can try Droppah for a month free. Click here!

WITH THANKS TO OUR SUPPORTING PARTNERS
💻 Andrew at Tevalis - Leaders in POS technology
🥂Angie Atkinson at Blanc Distribution
🚚 Anna, Sarah and the team at Goodman Fielder Foodservice

Episodes of the Kitchen Day Podcast were filmed at Apero on K'Road in Auckland, and Loretta on Cuba Street in Wellington.

Created, hosted and produced by Dominique Fourie McMillan
Film production and editing by Jono Tucker at Empire Films

Got a question? Drop us a line: hello@kitchenday.co.nz
Thank you for listening!

Eric Kong is 24 years old and runs Dragons, Wellington's most beloved yum cha institution on Tory Street in Wellington. But the story starts in 1908, when his great-great-grandfather arrived in New Zealand alone at 14, paid the Chinese poll tax, and started a fruiterers' guild that gave the Chinese community a foothold in Wellington. Five generations of hospitality has followed, and Eric has been part of it since before he could really choose otherwise.
In this episode Dom sits down with Eric to trace the whole arc. The fruit shops, the fish and chip shops, the fine dining restaurant his aunt founded, and the massive yum cha room Eric now runs with a team of twenty through weekend services of 600+ covers. This is a story about legacy, about family, and about a deeply held belief that service is the most honourable career you can have. 
A huge thanks to the rostering gods at Droppah for backing Season 2 of The Kitchen Day Podcast.
We also couldn’t do this without the support of the team at Coffee Supreme and Craggy Range . These guys love hospo as much as we do.

Melissa Lind didn’t plan to become the General Manager of one of Wellington’s busiest restaurants. She walked into Charley Noble with a single CV, no appointment, and asked for a job. Three months later, she was running the floor. Eight years on, Mel oversees Charley Noble and The Food Lab as GM of Knife Block Hospitality, leading huge services, managing teams of up to 75 staff, and navigating the beautiful chaos of modern hospitality. This episode is packed with the kinds of stories you genuinely couldn’t make up: clarified butter taking out the power during a packed dinner service, celebrity walk-ins, brutal restaurant reviews, impossible customers, and the line that won an entire dining room after one guest pushed too far.
In this candid and often hilarious conversation, Mel talks with Dom about what really goes into running a high-volume restaurant in Wellington, New Zealand. They get into restaurant culture, hospitality leadership, hiring for values over experience, post-COVID staffing shortages, and why the old-school “screaming chef” era had to die. Mel also reflects on the five-day stage she did at legendary Vancouver restaurant Chambar, an experience that completely reshaped the way she thinks about systems, service, and team culture in hospitality.
The episode also dives into the emotional side of the restaurant industry: how reviews affect operators, the pressure of maintaining standards at scale, and why great hospitality is ultimately about reading people. 
If you’re interested in restaurants, hospitality, food culture, leadership, Wellington dining, or what actually happens behind the scenes of a busy service, this is one of the most honest conversations we’ve had on Kitchen Day so far.
The Kitchen Day Podcast is proudly supported by Droppah. These guys make rostering for hospo feel like a walk in the park. 
A big thank you also to the team at Coffee Supreme and the folks Craggy Range for bringing these episodes to life.

Natalia Schamroth never planned to open a restaurant on the North Shore. She and partner Carl Koppenhagen had a list, they'd searched for a year, and the day they went to see the old post office in Northcote Point they'd already talked themselves out of it. But then they saw the steel-framed windows, and the rest is history. Twenty years later, The Engine Room is the restaurant everyone in this city has a story about, and this week Natalia tells us hers.
It's a conversation about what it actually takes to build something that endures. We talk about hiring for warmth and teaching everything else. Borrowing against the house, then borrowing against it again. And surviving the last five years when, as Natalia puts it, the business basically ran as a charity. And through all of it, never once compromising on the things that matters most. If you've ever wondered what real, genuine hospitality looks like from the inside, this is the episode. The Kitchen Day Podcast is proudly supported by Droppah. These guys make rostering for hospo feel like a walk in the park. 
A big thank you also to the team at Coffee Supreme ( and the folks at Craggy Range for bringing these episodes to life.

There are roughly 420 Masters of Wine in the world, and Wellington has one of them. This week on The Kitchen Day Podcast, I sit down with Stephen Wong MW, a Master of Wine, wine educator, consultant, and judge. If you’ve ever wondered what it actually takes to become a Master of Wine, this conversation breaks it down, from the famously difficult MW exam to the years of blind tasting, study, and repetition behind it (spoiler: it’s absurdly hard).
Stephen’s path into wine and hospitality started in New Zealand hospo almost by accident and evolved into an international career in wine education, wine judging, and restaurant wine list consultancy. We talk about the realities of working in hospitality, how professional wine tasting actually works, what wine judges look for in global wine competitions, and how New Zealand wine culture and wine service have changed over the past two decades.
We also get into blind wine tasting technique, building a palate, the difference between tasting like a sommelier vs tasting like a “detective”, and what makes a great wine list in restaurants.
Inspired by the Three Fates episode on the Not Serious Wine Chats podcast, we finish with a live tasting of Domaine Vincent Dauvissat Chablis 2019, putting Master of Wine-level sensory analysis into practice in real time. Pour yourself a glass of something tasty and join us for this deep dive into wine education, hospitality, and the Master of Wine journey.
The Kitchen Day podcast is proudly supported by Droppah - the go-to rostering software for hospitality. A huge thank you to the team at Coffee Supreme and Craggy Range for their continued support of our show.
If you enjoyed this chat, leave us a comment below, and don’t forget to subscribe!