Dara Klein only started cooking professionally about four years ago. 

She grew up surrounded by food: “My mum’s Italian, so the first part of my life we spent there. She didn’t have a restaurant or anything, but she was always cooking. Then we moved to New Zealand, and my parents opened up a deli. They started their local Slow Food chapter in Wellington, and began this supper club thing at night because they didn’t have the license to be a restaurant. But later, when I was about eleven, they opened the restaurant.”

She grew up waitressing there, but never spent much time in the kitchen. Because for Dara, chef life was a no-no. “I grew up with a chef for a mum, so I always thought I’d never be one – no way, I’d hate it!” So instead, she went to uni and then did a brief stint at drama school. The whole time she was working front of house in restaurants, right up until she got “sucked in” by office life for a few years in Auckland: “I did admin, marketing, social media, you name it. Hated everything.” 

But then suddenly things started to come together. “My mum was semi-retired and I was working yet another miserable job. And I guess I’d always cooked but never considered it a career? Then one day I was just like, ‘mum, why don’t we do a pop-up?’”

They did it, and the rest is history. They got catering gigs off the back of it, and finally Dara was loving what she was doing. She headed to London the next year, where she cooked at Rochelle Canteen, Rubedo, Brawn, and then Trullo – also running her very own ‘Pasta Princess’ on the side during lockdown. It was at Trullo that she met Diarmuid Goodwin. 

“When I started, Diarmuid and I were the only two people in the kitchen that weren’t straight men. He really took me under his wing. He obviously became one of my best pals, but he also taught me so much: how to cook, how to be a good chef. Diamuid’s been cooking for about twelve years, he started when he was about fourteen and he’s worked for big names in very fine dining. So he was ready to be a head chef, you know? And I thought ‘You know what? Wherever you go next, I’ll definitely follow you.’”

And follow she did. Dara and Diarmuid are now heading up the kitchen at Sager + Wilde, Paradise Row. The move presents them with an incredible opportunity – they’ve been given almost complete freedom to play with the identity and cook the food they really want to cook. “At Trullo, we’d be going home from a sixteen hour shift together, sitting on the bus, just chatting away about having our own kitchen. And honestly? I feel like with all those late night talks about having our own kitchen, we manifested it into life.” 

The fact that this pair can work all day together and still chat on the night bus home is a testament to their relationship. And it’s still like that today. “We both live in the same area. The other night we finished at Sager + Wilde, and we’d been onboarding the new menu all week but there were still a couple of main dishes we weren’t 100% with. On the walk home, we completely ironed it out. Just riffing ideas. It’s so great. It feels like Diarmuid’s family.”

Despite the change in leadership, the majority of the S+W kitchen team have stuck around. “We spent all that first week just getting to know everyone; cooking their food and being in their space. Then we prepped the new menu and did a tasting for the whole staff. It was so nerve-wracking, twenty new colleagues sat at the table, inspecting your food! You’ve got to win over a whole crew of people that work together endlessly! But we’ve got the most amazing people. In a moment where the industry is in such a staffing crisis, we’re obviously ecstatic to have people who are eager to try something new and work together to bring that on.”

The new menu is still recognisably on-brand for Sager + Wilde, but Dara and Diarmuid are using their freedom to push it to include a wider expanse of Mediterranean cuisines. “Italian is obviously my wheelhouse, but we’re not afraid of veering into Spain and France, Provence and the Basque country – even the Middle East. Flavour profiles from these parts of the world work really nicely together. The first menu we’ve come up with happened quite naturally. It’s just food we really like.”

Talking to Dara, you’d never think she’d only been cheffing for four years. Her knowledge and passion is that of someone who’s been on the pans for a lifetime. And a happy lifetime, too – this is no world-weary industry vet keen to discourage anyone from setting foot in a professional kitchen. In fact, for her closing remarks, she opted for a recruitment drive:

“We need more chefs. Come on, people. Quit your office job. Come make the most reckless career choice you can make! It’s bloody fun.”

Photography by Aria Shahrokhshahi