This time last year, and only five months after they opened in Richmond’s buzzing Church Street, café Top Paddock was awarded Best New Café in the Age Good Food Guide Awards 2013. Now, exactly one year later, Top Paddock has risen to the top, being named the Best Café at The Age Good Cafe Guide 2014 awards this week.
Behind the new best café in the competitive Melbourne café scene is Diamond Rozakeas, known as the mastermind – alongside her team – of some of Melbourne’s most successful cafés.
It was the popular Apte (A Place To Eat) in Alphington where it all began for Diamond eight years ago, where she worked as a waitress.
A year and a half into the friendship with Apte’s owner Nathan Toleman and his chef wife Sarah Foletta, they went into partnership from which many award-winning Melbourne cafés would be born in the years to come.
They went on to create Liar Liar in Hawthorn, Three Bags Full in Abbotsford, and Two Birds One Stone in South Yarra, which won Best New Café The Age Good Food Guide 2012.
“We love creating cafés and reinventing new spaces, we love the design element, we love to build a café from an empty space,” Diamond tells Neos Kosmos.
Last year when Top Paddock in Richmond opened, with the addition of new partner Sam Slattery, Diamond says she was uncertain how to top their previous achievements.
“Top Paddock is our most incredible creation to date, I can say. After Three Bags Full I didn’t know if we could actually top it; but Top Paddock has really stepped up and created a lot of benchmarks. We have a very innovative chef, who created an amazing menu – breakfast, brunch and lunch, with so many options. It’s a little fine dining in its presentation and its delicate dishes.”
The Age Guide editor Matt Holden agrees. For him, it was a tricky task to name the best café in Melbourne but in the end it was about top coffee, fabulous food, great service and spirit.
When asked about the magical formula of success in Melbourne’s competitive café scene, Diamond puts emphasis on getting the basics right.
“Top Paddock fits 160 people – on the weekends it’s full with a beautiful buzzing energy to it. And that’s probably one of the most challenging things to achieve – you can get all of your fundamentals right, but it’s that sort of pulse and heartbeat that needs to come from the owners; from the top it needs to filter down to the staff, and customers, and that’s the thing that is super exciting about this industry,” Diamond says.
For someone whose café has just been named the best in Melbourne, as long as there is love and passion, everything seems so effortless for Diamond.
“It’s not rocket science, it is a lot of hard work, and I can’t emphasise that enough. There is a lot of passion and love that needs to go with that as well. But it is a very competitive scene. Having started eight years ago I’ve seen how the industry has changed and it changed for the good, little cafés are popping up in local suburbs, servicing a lot of people.
“It’s about loving what you do, attracting like minded people, people who have the same ethos and passion that you share and that may not be their career choice. But the thing that I stress to staff is – when you are here, you need to be present and available to the person that you are serving. It’s a key. It doesn’t matter that this is a job for you to pay your rent – you have to be present. We are dealing with people every day. It gets quite challenging particularly on weekends when so many of them wait in the queue – how well can I talk to this person? How well can I serve them? Are they going to leave and feel amazed?
“It’s a reflection of me and of our business. It’s hospitality – you have to get that element right that you are there for them. As much as it is about the customer, it is about yourself and your reputation.”
The Age award is a beautiful reward for all the hard work of Diamond’s team, she says.
“There are so many great cafés out there, we won this award in great company. I am very grateful and honoured we received it, it is a reflection not just of hard work but of the people we appoint in our cafés, I couldn’t do this without a wonderful team. We constantly try and instil in them what’s important to us. It’s about love, joy and fun – if you are going to spend so many hours at work, we want you to enjoy yourself.”
But apart from the successful café owner who makes sure hundreds of her customers go home content every day, there is an individual and multifaceted Diamond who wants to do so many things; to pursue the spiritual side of her being through her favourite hobbies – singing and writing. With a few children’s books up her sleeve, waiting to be edited and published, Diamond says writing is something she wants to pursue this year.
“I feel truly blessed to be on this incredible journey. Though there is obviously hard work involved, it is also a platform for enormous creativity, which I relish. I’m also part of a unique working partnership – it’s lasted this long – with more exciting projects in the near future.
“With time so precious, I hope to finish my story telling too.”
And while Diamond is juggling her many talents, her successful partnership with Nathan Toleman, Sarah Foletta, Ben Clark and Sam Slattery will see one
more of their ideas come to fruition, when their new Cattle Black café opens in July. With the new café located in South Melbourne, just across the road from the Greek Consulate, Diamond says with a laugh that something Greek may sneak its way into the menu.
“With the new place there is always expectations and pressure – how is it going to be different? We have to step up yet again and that’s one more exciting challenge.”
For more information, visit www.toppaddockcafe.com