Hetty McKinnon – Arthur Street Kitchen

Hetty McKinnon is the creative force – and salad-making ace – behind Arthur Street Kitchen. Her one-woman business saw her taking lunch orders from locals, creating meals from scratch at her Surry Hills home, and personally delivering these salads every Thursday and Friday on her bike.

To pull this off, Hetty had to single-handedly cook 100 salads a week in her domestic kitchen, playing a game of ingredient Tetris just to fit all the required produce into her very normal-sized fridge. And even if it was plummeting with rain, Hetty would make all the salad deliveries herself – something she's been doing (without complaint!) since 2011.

During this podcast, Hetty also talks about life before her Arthur Street Kitchen adventures – such as her start in PR, and her macaron-making challenges for Remy & Lee's – as well as the cookbook she created after people kept asking for her much-loved salad recipes. The resulting publication, Community, has been a hit, but producing the title also led to Hetty's first-ever appointment with a physio – it was that gruelling! 

She also talks about the next chapter of Arthur Street Kitchen, which is moving from Surry Hills to Brooklyn; what it's been like to be a vegetarian for the last 20 years, and where she likes to eat and drink in Sydney.