The role

A family-owned winery restaurant on the NSW Sapphire Coast needs a second pair of hands in the kitchen for the summer — October 2026 through to April 2027.

The head chef grew up in Piedmont and came up through a Michelin kitchen. The cooking is gastronomic modern Italian on South Coast produce, three-course menus, six services a week plus weddings. You’d work under him and a chef de partie: prep, your own small section as you earn it, and everything else a three-person kitchen has to get through. It’s a learning season, in a kitchen where the standard is high.

What’s on offer

From $27.08 an hour — the award rate for a cook grade 1 under the Restaurant Industry Award, as at 1 July 2026. If your experience puts you a grade above that, it’s $27.97. This seat pays the award, and we’d rather you knew that now than find out on the call.
Full-time hours for the season, October 2026 to April 2027.
No accommodation. You would find your own place in the Sapphire Coast region — Bermagui, Tathra, Bega and the towns around them. The owners will help with local leads, but the house is yours to sort, and on a seasonal wage that is the thing to work out before you say yes.
Couples are welcome. There is casual front-of-house work on site for a partner, and the owners will work with other local businesses to build consistent hours.

Who this is for

Someone with commercial kitchen time behind them, or a real appetite to learn from a kitchen at this level. Reliable, on time, and steady when six services and a wedding land in the same week.

You’ll need:

The right to work in Australia. Working holiday visa holders are welcome — tell us your visa and the dates it runs when you register, and we’ll work out the length of the season with you.
A car. It’s regional — about twenty minutes to the nearest towns.

The area

The Sapphire Coast is the far south coast of New South Wales — Tathra, Bermagui and Merimbula, beaches and surf you can have to yourself midweek, national parks either side, and a run of wineries along the same roads. It’s about two and a half hours to Canberra, and the community is small.

How to apply

Apply through Wild Ops at wildops.com.au/find-work — register and we’ll be in touch.

About Wild Ops

Wild Ops is a recruitment agency for remote and regional hospitality in Australia. Cindy is a chef by trade and Jordan is a carpenter who moved into managing properties. Between us we’ve run remote and regional properties here for the better part of fifteen years. The owners have appointed us to run this search — we’ll tell you exactly whose kitchen it is before you go forward for it.