Our story
Two of us,
and one bad dinner.
Pack to Plate started the way most decent ideas do — at the end of a long day, staring at a pouch of something beige.
That walk is why any of this exists. Two mates, years in Melbourne kitchens between us, six hours in and thinking about nothing but dinner. What we had was a foil pouch of beige mush that took ten minutes to make and about thirty seconds to regret.
It didn't sit right. We'd spent our whole working lives cooking food people were glad to pay for, then walked into the bush and ate like none of that mattered. Everything else in the pack had been chosen carefully. Dinner was an afterthought.
So we started cooking. Ragù simmered for hours. Curry built off a paste we made ourselves. Then we freeze-dried it, weighed it, carried it up something steep and ate it somewhere cold to see if it still held up. Plenty of the early ones didn't. We kept going.
If it wouldn't go out at the pass,
Our one rule
it doesn't go in the pack.
These days we cook in small batches in Melbourne. Real meat, real vegetables, herbs and spice, cooked properly and then freeze-dried — so what you tip out at camp is the same meal that left our kitchen, just lighter.
We're not chasing the lightest pack or the cheapest pouch. We want the best part of the day to be the bit where you drop the pack, boil some water and sit down to something you'd actually order.
— The two of us, Melbourne
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