Ralph So takes over as executive chef at Etta and Daphne

Ralph So becomes executive chef of Melbourne restaurants Etta and Daphne on 27 October 2025, when his debut menu launches at Etta — the first concrete step in a revised culinary direction for the two acclaimed Brunswick East venues.

Restaurateur Hannah Green, who owns the venues, announced the appointment. Green and So first met while working at Rosetta, and the relationship built there underpins the hire.

"If there's one thing the industry has always known, it's that he [So] can run a kitchen seamlessly," Green said. "Now, after so many years cooking through the lens of Australia's leading restaurant groups, I'm excited for him to have the opportunity to explore his own voice through food."

Who is Ralph So?

So arrives with a resume spanning several of the country's best-known restaurant groups:

• Ho Jiak
• Supernormal
• Spice Temple
• Chin Chin Sydney

His Malaysian heritage and his experience across multiple cuisines will inform the new direction at Etta. Rather than a single-cuisine rewrite, the approach is explicitly hybrid.

"You have the freedom to bring together so many different influences that wouldn't make sense on any other menu," So said. "It's Melbourne's own regional cuisine."

What does the debut menu look like?

From 27 October, guests at Etta can order dishes from So's first menu, including:

• Coconut scallop toast with tom yum butter and green papaya
• Whole wood-fired flounder in mussel bisque
• Pork and water chestnut claypot

The list signals the operating thesis: Southeast Asian flavours applied to premium produce and wood-fire cooking, with formats — toast, whole fish, claypot — that span casual and premium price points on a single card.

New dishes will continue to launch at Etta, with the full revised menu rolling out in the coming weeks.

What stays on the back burner?

Fermentation remains a focus for the kitchen, which runs its own hot sauce program. The team also cures meats in-house, and whole-animal butchery is set to be introduced in the coming months — a move that typically shifts purchasing toward full carcasses and creates opportunities to menu secondary cuts.

One chef out, one chef in

So's arrival coincides with a departure. Lorcan Kan has exited the role of head chef at Etta. Kan is moving into the food science sector and will continue to focus on his pop-up, Things Palace. Etta has confirmed the move, and no replacement for the head chef position has been announced alongside So's appointment.

What does this change for Etta and Daphne?

For the venues, the appointment consolidates kitchen leadership under a single executive chef with group-level experience across high-volume, cuisine-specific operations. For So, it is the first position framed around his own culinary voice rather than an established group's template. The 27 October launch is the first test, with the full menu rollout in the weeks after expected to show whether the multi-cuisine approach settles into a durable identity for both Etta and its sibling, Daphne.