A restaurant director once told Sebastian Pasinetti that he needed to “man up” after he expressed the need for more compassion in HR. As a queer person of colour working in the restaurant industry, it was the latest instance of discrimination he had experienced.
“The industry does an excellent job of presenting a diverse and inclusive environment on the forefront, however, as you climb further up the chain, you realise there are fewer and fewer people from your community,” Pasinetti says.
OKO Restaurant is hoping to dismantle that narrative. Pasinetti debuted the restaurant in Fitzroy, in 2022, along with his mother and chef Luciana Pasinetti. The restaurant spotlights Mediterranean food, particularly dishes that reflect the Pasinettis’ Italian-African heritage.
While food is central to OKO’s identity, workplace culture is just as important. Diverse hiring and staff wellbeing are key to the restaurant ethos developed by the mother-son duo, who have nearly 35 years of industry experience between them. OKO is one of Melbourne’s only restaurants run entirely by women and LGBTQ+ people. The Pasinettis understand the demands of the job, especially the long hours and the isolation, and wanted to ensure their staff felt supported.
“Our objective is to create a mentally healthy workplace for all that promotes positive wellbeing,” Sebastian Pasinetti says. “To ensure clear, open, and honest communication across [the restaurant].”
Employees work no more than 45 hours each week and get two consecutive days off (OKO closes from Sunday to Tuesday). This is rare in an industry where staff work up to 14-hour shifts, seven days a week. Other initiatives include serving nutritional staff meals and employees acknowledging how they feel through a traffic light system; green for a good day, amber for not feeling 100 percent, and red for not being in the work mindset. Management and co-workers are better equipped to support their team members accordingly. If someone’s having a difficult day, another staffer might take their shift or set up a casual chat outside of work hours.
“From my experience, most hospitality businesses use this attempt of tokenism quite often but haven’t made tangible steps of changing the structure of the industry to allow for all types of people to feel supported and to therefore thrive,” Pasinetti says.
OKO’s policies were inspired by famed London chef Asma Khan of the all-women-run Darjeeling Express, as well as Kelly’s Cause Foundation. The latter is a hospitality-focused mental health and first-aid training organisation in London, where Sebastian Pasinetti worked for three years.
“I believe all companies should have a mental health policy to, at the very least, destigmatise the conversations around mental health within the industry,” he says.
The Pasinettis don’t subscribe to a top-down management approach. Sebastian Pasinetti believes the key to fostering an inclusive workspace is to seek advice from everyone on the team, to demonstrate vulnerability around your employees, and to be comfortable admitting when you don’t know the answer to a problem.
“There is no better way to learn than through the lived experiences of those around you,” Pasinetti says. To that end, OKO hosts bi-weekly meetings where staff are encouraged to raise concerns and to hold management accountable for any mistakes or issues within the workplace.
This focus on inclusivity extends from the staff to diners. The restaurant’s playlist, curated by the Naarm-based DJ Tinika spotlights queer and BIPOC artists. Diners are encouraged to share dishes such as buttermilk-brined fried chicken with spicy butter and zhoug, and shawarma-style mushrooms with hummus. It’s a reflection of the way the Pasinettis eat at home.
“Any special occasion or event was always focused around a table full of food with everyone gathered around laughing and talking,” Pasinetti says. “We really wanted to replicate this sense of community and nourishment from sharing food and the conversations attached to the experience of it all.”
OKO celebrates the LGBTQ community through events. The restaurant recently hosted a queer chef series in collaboration with We Eatin’ Good, an online platform amplifying the voices of queer and BIPOC hospitality workers. They invited seven up-and-coming chefs to take over the restaurant across four nights, including second-generation Vietnamese chef Ngọc Trần and Filipinx-Anglo food advocate Rio Ramintas. Due to the overwhelmingly positive response, the series will return in March.
Pasinetti feels it is crucial to support similar businesses advocating for diversity in the workplace. He is a regular at Shu, a queer-run vegan restaurant, and Sig.ENZO, a wine bar in Brunswick helmed by queer chef Lorena Corso. Sebastian Pasinetti believes inclusive restaurants like his will thrive when there’s solidarity within the community.
“We feel really passionately about empowering our community to take up as much space as possible and offer them as many opportunities as possible,” Pasinetti says.
