The Copper Pot on Seddon’s Victoria Street is a recent addition, and most would agree a very welcome one.

Jointly owned by executive chef Ashley Davis, his wife Janine and fellow head chef Sascha Rust, the restaurant is very much Davis’ baby, and a chance to finally share his love affair with Europe.

Now 35, he recalls it all starting some seven years ago after venturing to London as head chef of Michelin-starred restaurant Hélène Darroze at The Connaught – an experience he describes as “a different world”.

“It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Suddenly I was in this room, I got the keys to the fridge and money was no object,” Davis recalls.

“There were two million pound paintings on the wall … it was about this level of elegance and opulence, and we had to design food that was good enough to sit side by side with this.”

After taking the established restaurant from one to two stars with 20 chefs working under his direction, he eventually returned to Australia to take up a position at Southbank’s Pure South before embarking on his own project.

Having grown up in Sunshine, for Davis, it seemed only fitting to return to his westie roots, and to what has over the years grown to be a multicultural melting pot.

After spending close to nine years in Europe, it’s the continent’s diversity that made the biggest impression on him.

“In Europe you can go from Greece to Germany to England all in a day’s work, and there are completely different cultures available there. That’s what I was going for at the restaurant – that mixed European experience,” he says.

“I felt a lot of people had done Greek really well, or Croatian, or German, but none had looked at Europe as a whole – it wasn’t really a thing in Melbourne.”

Executive Chef Ashley Davis and Head Chef Sascha Rust.


But The Copper Pot is not the chef’s own version of Europe, but rather an attempt to stay true to the roots of European cooking.
“It’s almost like a culinary ‘Best of’ of the things I tasted along the way and loved, and therefore I wanted to try and capture that and bring it back here to Seddon,” he explains.

While Davis is enthusiastic about the produce available Down Under, he admits to facing challenges in finding equivalent ingredients due to geographical location and climate.

“It’s difficult for us sometimes with certain produce to get anything close to what you will find in Europe, so sometimes you have to translate a dish because I can’t get the tiny baby squids that are like one centimetre long that I used to get from the south of Spain. So I use our squid and use a similar technique and flavours on it, so that it feels like something I had in the south of Spain.
“Or things like tomatoes. It’s difficult to find something like you would in Greece for example. You go there and you taste something and think ‘oh my god, that’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life’.”

But his dedication to local, fresh produce has brought him in contact with some great local producers.

“In summer we found this little organic tomato farmer just up the road, and what he put together was delicious. So it’s about trying to find something as close as possible.”


Though these days we’re used to seeing avocado and tomato on the menu all year round, it’s not something you should expect from The Copper Pot.

Rather than import his ingredients or try to run against “nature’s clock”, as he puts it, his philosophy is “cook what’s available rather than cook what we want to cook”.

“If you think of a little village in Europe, they don’t go ‘oh no, the market’s out of avocados, I’m going to drive to the next market and get an avocado’. They just say ‘oh okay, looks like we’re eating beans today’. And that’s how it should be and that’s what we try to do.”

This approach sees Davis and his staff in constant dialogue with local farmers and suppliers, who inform them of their best produce, and what he feels to be “a really organic way to write the menu”.

What undoubtedly adds to Davis’ ethics in the kitchen is his academic background in food and hospitality, having completed a Masters degree in Culinary Arts from the University of Brighton.

And so far his formula is proving successful.

In just six months of opening its doors, the restaurant has already been listed in the Australian Financial Review’s Top 500 restaurants in Australia.

Though Davis admits “we’re not trying to be Michelin”, there is no doubt that there is the same attention to detail and passion for quality. Cheaper than a ticket to Europe, The Copper Pot’s tag line ‘a foodie’s road trip across Europe’ rings true.

“There have been some pretty cool moments where someone’s gone, ‘oh my god, I haven’t had that like that since I was a little girl in Malta’. And that’s a nice compliment and a good feeling for me, because with food you transpose a feeling onto someone, and that’s pretty powerful.”

While other diners have the chance to create new memories.

“I believe good food is something that should be available to everyone, and that’s what we’re going for here.”

For more information and to make a booking, visit www.copperpotseddon.com