BOH Opening Team (Multiple Roles) – Aqua 

Senior Sous Chef · Sous Chef · Junior Sous Chef · Chefs de Partie | Full-time | Aqua, Milsons Point | Reopening November 2026

FOUR REASONS TO APPLY RIGHT NOW

1. You are paid from the day you sign. Every hire, from Senior Sous to CDP, is placed straight into one of our operating kitchens — Ripples, Riva, Sails, The Nielsen, Ventuno, Noi — cooking real service while you train. You learn our specs, suppliers and people first, then walk into Aqua for opening week with a brigade you already know.

2. You build the kitchen. You do not inherit it. Every section and every senior seat is open. Menu development, section design, prep systems, ordering rhythm — the brigade sets them together in a rebuilt kitchen. Opening a room like this stays on your CV for the rest of your career.

3. The pathway is short and it is real. CDP → Junior Sous → Sous → Senior Sous → Head Chef → Executive Chef. SRG is fifteen venues heading to twenty. Every new kitchen needs a senior brigade, and we promote into those seats.

4. The standard is worth cooking to. Aqua is where Sydney books the nights that matter. The guests notice the detail, so every plate is held to it. The best chefs in this city want a room like that. This is the one opening now.

THE ROLES

Senior Sous Chef. Second in command to the Head Chef. You run the pass when the Head Chef is off, own the kitchen’s systems and numbers — food cost, ordering, rosters, HACCP — and lead the opening build side by side with the Head Chef. The last seat before your own kitchen.

Sous Chef. You run service. Brigade leadership, prep planning, quality at the pass on every plate, and the day-to-day coaching that turns good CDPs into future sous chefs.

Junior Sous Chef. Your first leadership seat. You run sections and shifts, support the Sous on ordering, stock and compliance, and step up to the pass when the kitchen needs you.

Chefs de Partie. You own your section — mise en place, execution under pressure, consistency on every plate that leaves it, and the standard of the commis working under you. Larder, pasta, grill, sauce, pastry. You pick your board.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

• Senior Sous Chef: proven sous chef experience in a hatted, awarded or high-volume quality kitchen, with real command of food cost, ordering, rosters and team leadership. Opening experience highly regarded
• Sous Chef: a track record of running service at sous level, or a Junior Sous genuinely ready to step up
• Junior Sous Chef: senior CDP experience across multiple sections and the appetite for your first leadership seat
• Chefs de Partie: CDP experience, or a Demi genuinely ready to step up
• Cert III Commercial Cookery or equivalent demonstrated experience
• Produce-led cooking — Italian or Modern Australian is an advantage, not a requirement
• HACCP, food safety, allergen management and stock control
• Composure on a Saturday night with a full book and a view that fills every table
• Available across evenings, weekends and public holidays — we trade seven days

We hire on attitude as much as technique. A chef who is clean, prepared, honest about mistakes and generous with the people coming up behind them beats a faster chef who is none of those things. Heart. Ownership. Craft. Together. That is how our kitchens run.

THE PROCESS

1. Phone screen – a short call to talk through your experience, availability and the role that fits you best
2. Trial shift at an operating SRG venue
3. Offer — contract issued, remuneration confirmed
4. Placement into an SRG kitchen immediately, paid and training toward opening week (November 2026)

THE LOCATION

Milsons Point, on the harbour, with the Bridge on one shoulder and the Opera House across the water.

Aqua opened in 2000 and spent twenty-three years as one of Sydney’s most awarded and most booked dining rooms — the room the city chose when the occasion mattered. We closed in 2023 for building works and reopen to the public the week of 30 November 2026, with a rebuilt kitchen and a new menu.

For a chef, an address like this changes two things. The guests care, so the cooking is held to a standard worth cooking to. And “Aqua, opening team” is a line on your CV that every Sydney head chef reads properly.

WHERE HOSPITALITY LEAVES ITS MARK

That is SRG’s line, and it is meant both ways — the mark we leave on guests, and the one this group leaves on the chefs who come through it.

Bill and Kathleen Drakopoulos opened Aqua in 2000. Everything else came after. Twenty-six years on, SRG is fifteen venues heading to twenty — Ripples, Sails, The Nielsen, The Fenwick, Ventuno, Riva, Akti, Noi, Summer Salt and the food and beverage across The Langham, Sydney.

What that means for your career:

• A ceiling worth chasing. SRG kitchens have earned Good Food Guide Chef’s Hats and Restaurant & Catering Association awards for excellence. The standard here is set high enough to be worth cooking to.
• Range you cannot get in one kitchen. Fine dining, waterfront volume, Italian, hotel F&B and forty-plus event spaces — all inside one employer.
• Still family-run. Led by Bill and Kathleen’s four children. The people deciding your next step know your name and your work.

APPLY

Send your CV via this portal and tell us which role you are applying for.

Applicants must have full working rights in Australia.

SRG Hospitality is an equal opportunity employer.

Aqua reopens in November. The brigade is being built now.