who we are
The Dinner Ladies are Katherine Westwood and Sophie Gilliatt. We got together at the school gate in 2007 and came up with the idea of preparing dinners for time-poor friends and family members so that they would always have good, homemade food in their fridges and freezers (and, incidentally, so would we). Between us we have seven children and two husbands of varying sizes, appetites and degrees of fussiness - there's not much we don't know about pleasing a tricky crowd.
We started cooking in the shed in Katherine's backyard on a converted trailer and two camp stoves. We'd shop on a Monday, cook on a Tuesday and then one of us would do the delivery run while the other fed and bathed all the kids.
We work out of a commercial kitchen in Matraville but we still cook every dish as if it was for our own families, using great, fresh ingredients and taking no short cuts. We buy our own fruit and veg fresh from Flemington Market and make everything here in the kitchen from scratch, every stock, paste and sauce. We even make and hand-roll our own shortcrust pastry. None of our dinners contains anything your grandmother wouldn't have recognised (provided she was a well-travelled and adventurous grandmother who knew her tamarind from her turmeric).
Our influences come from all over the world, from great chefs and street food, as well as home cooking learned from our mothers. What matters to us is that our food is honest, nourishing and full of flavour.
GOOD FOOD
lovingly prepared is always good for you