what i cook when...
Words Dani Valent
Photography Mark Chew

Coda's Adam D'Sylva whips up some Asian bites for friends.

Being a chef is hazardous: as well as the nicks and burns, there's the very real danger that your friends are too nervous to invite you home for a meal. "It's a shame," says Coda chef and co-owner Adam D'Sylva. "I don't get invited to many dinner parties because people are scared to cook for a chef." But D'Sylva promises he wouldn't be pernickety. "I'd be useful," he says. "I could give tips: turn the steak, season It, that sort of thing." In the meantime, D'Sylva is resigned to manning the pans even when he's off duty, in this case at the city apartment of entrepreneur Peter Bartholomew, father of Coda's co-owner Mykal Bartholomew. (Kate Calder and Sportsbet are the other partners in Coda.)

Luckily D'Sylva, 32, is happy to cook wherever he might be. "I actually feel uncomfortable if I don't cook," he says. "I'm so used to being in the kitchen, it's relaxing for me." So, unlike many hosts, who have the meal prepped before ine doorbell pings, D'Sylva starts cooking when guests arrive. "I'd rather play golf all day than slave at home to make dinner. I do food I can whip up quickly" Today's procession of little bites is classic Coda. "I like small tastes," he says. "I get bored with entree, main and dessert." But even though the menu caters to short attention spans, there's rigor to the flavours. "I don't go tor fusion," he says. "It's great to take something traditional and put a modern take on it but I respect each culture. You don't put soy and balsamic together just to be different."

D'Sylva has experience with culture mash-ups. His father is Indian, his mother is Italian, and the D'Sylva dinner table featured pasta, curry and rice, often all at once. "We're a foodie family," says D'Sylva. He hung out at his father's butcher shop: other times he'd help his maternal grandmother make sausages or gnocchi. "I was always part of it, always around food." He wanted to be a chef since he was little and, though he graduated from Xavier College, was more engaged by his weekend job at a pizza parlour. "I never thought I was going to do anything but cook." After apprenticing at the Hilton, D'Sylva worked at South Yarra's Cosi and Kew's Ocha, then cooked in Italy before returning home to a job at Pearl. He rose to head chef and won The Age Good Food Guide's young chef of the year for 2008.

Along the way he ducked off to Longrain for a year, training up on Thai at the Sydney flagship, then running the Muiboinne kitchen during its heady opening period in 2005. Last winter, Coda kicked off with a bang and D'Sylva hasn't had a quiet night since. He's relishing having his own place. "It's liberating to make all the decisions and I really like the casual feel of Coda. It's not stuffy. We wanted to create a place we would like to go to ourselves." And what about the clamour to eat his dishes? "It's a great feeling when people enjoy your food," he says. "It makes me happy and satisfied." But there's a bonus to cooking at home. "I get that immediate gratification," he says. "I get to sit down and enjoy it."