Arthur Street Kitchen is a community kitchen established in 2011 in Surry Hills, Sydney by home cook Hetty McKinnon. The concept is simple: local food for local people. From her tiny inner city terrace kitchen, Hetty dreamed up and cooked flavour-packed, hearty, seasonal salads which she delivered to locals on her bicycle.
While our menus are inspired first and foremost by the seasons, Arthur Street Kitchen also take cues from what we see, smell and experience from the world around us. At the heart of every dish is a core vegetable, around which a thoughtful culinary story is built, resulting in honest, inventive, hearty salads that deliver big, punchy flavours.
In 2013, encouraged of her loyal local salad eaters, Hetty McKinnon self published her first cookbook, aptly titled Community, Recipes from Arthur Street Kitchen. The book was released in November, and the first print run was sold out in three and a half weeks. In May 2014, Pan Macmillan released Community under their lifestyle imprint Plum Books and the book is now available nationally in Australia.
Arthur Street Kitchen kitchen is now based in Brooklyn, New York City.
Hetty McKinnon | Owner, Salad-Maker, Author
I was born and raised in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Growing up, I had two great passions - my mother's seriously delicious Cantonese cooking, and books written by Enid Blyton and Jane Austen.
In 2011, Arthur Street Kitchen, was born, with an aim to share my home cooking and salad obsession with my community of Surry Hills, in inner city Sydney.
I have been vegetarian for over twenty years, but I don't develop recipes for vegetarians. My plant-based recipes are truly egalitarian, for every person who enjoys a flavour-packed, vegetable-heavy dish. No labels required.
Along with cooking, my other great love is writing. On any day, find me in my home kitchen developing recipes and then writing about them. I have just finished writing my second cookbook, due for release in Australia in Spring 2016.
In 2015, my husband Ross and I relocated ourselves and our three children Scout, Dash and Huck to Brooklyn, NY, seeking new adventures and a few food capers along the way.