Perth-born chef Dave Pynt has built a career around fire. After working across Australia and Europe, he found the space in Singapore to turn those experiences into something distinctly his own.
More than a decade after opening Burnt Ends, the restaurant remains one of the city's most recognised dining destinations and the centre of a growing hospitality group.
For Australian chefs looking overseas, the traditional route often involves spending time in established kitchens, gaining experience and deciding where to take that knowledge next.
Dave followed that path, but his career also shows what can happen when those experiences eventually come together around a clear cooking identity.
After training in Western Australia, Dave worked at Tetsuya's in Sydney before spending time at restaurants including Noma in Copenhagen, Asador Etxebarri in Spain, Viajante and The Loft Project, and St John and St John Bread and Wine in London.
Each kitchen exposed him to a different way of thinking about ingredients, technique and restaurant culture. Over time, however, fire became the thread that would shape what came next.
From Perth to the world's kitchens
Dave was born in Perth and studied commercial cookery at the TAFE West Coast Institute of Training.
His relationship with fire started well before professional kitchens. Growing up in Western Australia, wood-fired barbecues were part of family life, but it was his international experience that changed his understanding of what cooking over fire could become.
His time with Victor Arguinzoniz at Asador Etxebarri proved particularly influential.
At the Basque restaurant, fire was treated with precision rather than simply as a source of heat. Different ingredients were cooked at different heights and temperatures, with the distance between the produce and the embers becoming part of the technique.
That thinking would later feed directly into Burnt Ends.
Dave has previously described the restaurant's oven setup as combining ideas influenced by Etxebarri with the principles of traditional wood-fired pizza ovens. Rather than copying one kitchen, he took what he had learned and adapted it to the way he wanted to cook.
His other international experiences added different layers. Time at restaurants such as Noma, St John and Viajante exposed him to very different approaches to produce, simplicity and creativity, but Burnt Ends would ultimately become his own interpretation of those years spent learning abroad.
Finding a home for Burnt Ends
The idea that became Burnt Ends first appeared as a London pop-up called Burnt Enz before Dave took the concept to Singapore.
Burnt Ends opened in 2013 in Singapore's Chinatown, built around an open kitchen and a style Dave describes as modern Australian barbecue.
It was never designed around recreating one particular barbecue tradition.
Instead, wood fire became the foundation for cooking a wide range of ingredients, with produce grilled, roasted, smoked or cooked over embers depending on what the kitchen was trying to achieve.
That flexibility remains central to the restaurant.
Menus are written daily, allowing the kitchen to respond to available produce while adjusting how ingredients are exposed to heat, smoke and flame.
In 2018, Burnt Ends received its first Michelin star, which it continues to hold in the 2026 Michelin Guide Singapore.
Building a kitchen around fire
Burnt Ends moved to Dempsey Hill in 2021, giving Dave and his team considerably more space to develop the restaurant.
At the centre of the kitchen is a custom-built four-tonne, dual-cavity oven alongside four elevation grills, all designed around the way the team cooks.
For chefs accustomed to gas, induction or precisely controlled ovens, working predominantly with wood introduces a very different set of variables.
Heat shifts, fuel burns differently and ingredients respond depending on their distance from the fire. Control comes from understanding the equipment, reading the heat and adjusting constantly rather than simply selecting a temperature.
That makes repetition and experience particularly important.
Burnt Ends has spent more than a decade refining that approach, but Dave's career has also moved well beyond a single restaurant.
Burnt Ends Hospitality Group now includes several concepts, among them Burnt Ends Bakery, Burnt Ends Bar & Lounge, Meatsmith and The Ledge by Dave Pynt at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives Ithaafushi.
The move from chef to chef-owner and hospitality operator adds another dimension to his career abroad. What began as a restaurant built around fire has developed into a broader business while retaining the cooking philosophy that established Burnt Ends in the first place.
What Australian chefs can take from Dave's journey
Dave's career offers a different perspective on the value of working overseas.
His international experience wasn't simply about collecting recognisable restaurant names.
Different kitchens exposed him to techniques and philosophies that he eventually adapted into something of his own.
That is perhaps the most useful lesson for Australian chefs considering time abroad.
Moving overseas can provide access to different ingredients, cultures and ways of working, but the value comes from understanding which ideas are worth keeping and how they can contribute to your own development.
Dave's path also shows that influence doesn't have to mean imitation.
The precision he encountered at Etxebarri can be seen in the way Burnt Ends approaches fire, but the restaurant isn't an Australian version of Etxebarri. Nor is it an extension of Noma, St John or any of the other kitchens in which he worked.
Those experiences became building blocks rather than a blueprint.
Dave travelled through some exceptional kitchens around the world. In Singapore, he turned those lessons into a restaurant that could only really be his own.
