Words: Lara Pacillo // Photos: Bill’s Supper Club
On most days, William (Bill) Burden works as a doctor in the Emergency and Trauma Department. On weekends, he hosts dinner parties.
“It’s a creative outlet from work,” Bill says. “It’s a place to de-stress, if that makes sense. The chaos of the kitchen is actually quite therapeutic for me.”
Bill’s Supper Club, which he runs with his fiancée Mariah, grew from casual gatherings with friends during their time at university. Like Bill, Mariah also works full-time, as a lawyer.
“Friends would always pop into mine on their way to and from uni, just because of our location,” Bill says.
“I loved putting food on the table for everyone. We would have classic pasta nights, steak nights and Vietnamese nights, which played into my Vietnamese heritage. It became a recurring thing throughout most of medical school.”
What began as cooking exclusively for friends soon expanded to friends of friends, as word spread and interest grew.
The evenings became more structured, the locations more ambitious and, eventually, invitations opened to the public.
After a year and a half, and more than 30 dinners in, Bill’s Supper Club has built a waitlist of about 150 people hoping for a seat at the table.
Inspired by supper clubs around Australia, including Menace Supper Club in Melbourne (and now New York City), Bill and Mariah decided it was time to take the next step.
Bill’s Supper Club will host its first kitchen takeover at Bar Pin on Henley Beach Road on Friday 21 and Saturday 22 August. Across four sittings, Bill and Mariah will throw their biggest supper club yet, with a number of tickets available to the public.
Opened earlier this year by Nina Haigh and Hamish Gibson-Smith, Bar Pin has a people-first approach that immediately resonated with Bill.
“Their vision and my vision just met perfectly in the middle,” Bill says.
“They have the most beautiful, cute little intimate spot and a fun little kitchen. Nina makes absolutely banging cocktails too. I couldn’t look past Bar Pin.”
The neighbourhood bar makes a point of celebrating local producers and creatives, with kitchen takeovers always intended to form part of its program.
“Hamish and I both love collaborating, and it’s amazing to see how others can transform different spaces and menus,” Nina says.
“Hosting a space where people can feel comfortable being creative through food is very important to us. It’s shaping up to be a very fun weekend.”
Bill will be sharing the kitchen with his older brother Gabriel Burden, serving the highest-rated dishes from recent supper clubs – “highest-rated” is meant literally.
“The menu is essentially a showcase of the top-scoring dishes from our last 15 supper clubs. At the end of most of them, we hold a surprise voting,” he explains.
“Everyone ranks the dishes from one to nine, and then we do a MasterChef-style announcement revealing which came first and last. There’s always a lot of banter.
“From that feedback, we end up with recurring winners, recurring mid-tiers, and others that sit at the bottom. It actually gives us a good indication to say if it’s not the most loved dish, let’s swap it out.”
The kitchen takeover menu will be served as a nine-dish, family-style feast built around bold South-East Asian flavours and South Australian produce.
“Standout dishes include our prawn and corn wontons in laksa butter with fried curry leaves,” Bill says.
“Our Thai-style nam jim Kangaroo Island oysters, which are the perfect fresh start to the night. And our hero main course will be a slow-cooked South-East Asian-style short rib which just melts in your mouth.”
Mariah’s long list of roles includes event manager, social media manager and, in Bill’s words, “the queen of desserts”.
For the Bar Pin takeover, guests will get a taste of her current specialty: Vietnamese tiramisu topped with roasted coconut flakes.
“Bar Pin will also be pouring a mint yuzu Vietnamese-influenced cocktail as the welcome drink. It sets the tone so well for the night,” Bill adds.
Bill learnt to cook through passion, trial and error, drawing on the flavours he grew up with and his travels throughout South-East Asia.
“I was brought up with classic Australian steaks and roasts, then Mum’s wholesome Vietnamese food and my step mum’s punchy Vietnamese street food,” he says.
“It comes down to trialling flavours, getting the basics right, but at the same time, just having fun with it.
“It’s an absolute learning process. I’m not a chef nor do I claim to be one. I tip my hat off to chefs in the industry, they work incredibly hard in such a tough industry.
“We’re letting the cooking world take us where it takes us. We want to work with and meet more and more people in the food and wine industry, and continue to grow and cook for more and more people.”
For Bill, seeing the supper club’s following grow and the connections formed through it has been the ultimate compliment.
“Watching the space grow without forcing it has been super rewarding. Adelaide is such a word-of-mouth place,” he says.
“As cliché as it sounds, putting food on the table and watching people react to it is one of the things I love most. At the kitchen takeover, we want everyone to own the night, hear each other’s stories and enjoy good people, good food and good wine.
“It’s a social gathering of beautiful and wonderful people from different backgrounds, careers, age groups, etcetera, all coming together to enjoy a meal.”
Bill’s Supper Club: Friday 21 August and Saturday 22 August // Bar Pin, 146b Henley Beach Road, Torrensville 5031
