Dedes Group has kicked off 2017 with two new appointments: its first group culinary director, Gavin Carfax-Foster and new Salaryman head chef, Alex Lynn, following the departure of Stephen Seckold.
Carfax-Foster joins as the group’s senior creative lead from est. where he has worked under Peter Doyle as senior sous chef for the past four years. Prior to that he ran the Selah kitchen for six years and was part of the Bather’s Pavilion launch team.
His brief for the newly created role is to mentor the kitchen teams across the group’s venues, which include fine dining harbourfront Flying Fish, Japanese-inspired diner Salaryman, as well as six other casual dining venues and event locations.
“Having worked in fantastic restaurant kitchens day to day for the past 23 years, I’m ready for a new challenge at a group level where I can focus more on the creative side of things and help mentor the amazing talent,” said Carfax-Foster. “Dedes has a fantastic roster of both fine dining and casual fine dining venues and being a boutique, family-run hospitality business means we can be versatile and dynamic.”
While Carfax-Foster has no immediate plans to implement significant menu changes he is getting stuck into setting up mini experiments in each kitchen.
“I love experimenting with fermenting, pickling, smoking and charcoal grilling so looking forward to seeing what we can do with those. We have a talented collective of chefs, I’ll work closely with to refine their menus and to push ourselves to be consistently at the top of our game.”
After almost a decade with the group, Stephen Seckold is leaving Salaryman, which late last year announced it would stop serving ramen, focusing more on robata. He’ll be replaced by new head chef Alex Lyn, who’s previously worked at Merivale’s Mr Wong and Ms.G’s.
Dedes Group owner, Con Dedes said “This is an incredibly exciting time for Dedes Group, a family business which has proudly operated premium venues in Sydney for 35 years. We’re ready to push our terrific offering even further to continue to deliver the best dining experiences in Sydney. Gavin and Alex are the ideal additions to our already outstanding team.”