Chloe Watts

Like a lot of young Gold Coasters, Chloe Watts felt she had to leave to learn and discover the best in her chosen field: food. She lived and worked in Europe, then Sydney and Melbourne, a few stints in New York, hyper-competitive cities and culinary cultures. The plan was, she says, “to learn food, learn flavours, learn what it takes to run a business.”

She was away for eight years. When Chloe returned, passing through her hometown on the way to a long-term career in Sydney, she discovered the place was transformed. The world, in her absence, had discovered the Gold Coast.

“The natural beauty was always here,” she says, “but not the core passion of hospitality. Then, after eight years, I re-fell in love. There was this melting pot of incredible passion for food. It blew me away.”

It felt, to her, like the Gold Coast had long surpassed being a holiday town. All around her, in this new version of her old city, there were entrepreneurs like her. In food and hospitality, in tech, people who had travelled the world and had arrived here — ready. She felt the Gold Coast was ready.

“The idea was to translate what I had loved in Paris, London, New York, and Sydney to the Gold Coast, to create an experience here and hope the Gold Coast loves it.”

Chloe decided to open something new in Burleigh, a Gold Coast version of leafy Parisian neighbourhood cafés. Both in the food and in the design of the experience, she wanted gentle spaces for lingering, a people-watching quality. The staff would, first, be kind, and second, be honest. Then the food: the right amount or Parmesan in scrambled eggs and the perfect number of strawberries atop what would soon become a locally famous muffin.

Covid arrived, and it happened that her new café, Tarte, would open in the middle of it. Her confidence wavered, but not for long. She felt the support immediately. “Gold Coasters follow passion — it's not about who you are or what you've done, it's how much passion you can emulate." Still, Chloe planned for the softest of soft launches. There was brown paper on the windows and minimal branding, “a few shots of me digging holes for the new grease traps.”

At 6 a.m. Tarte opened on day one to a 30-metre queue.

“That’s when I knew: people want this. And I also knew there was no question this is where I'll be for the rest of my life.”

Chloe understands what makes Tarte special and does not make sacrifices. They make just about everything on-site and source as much as they can locally and sustainably. Quality-control never stops. Chloe and her operations manager try everything, first. She frames her customers as the engine.

"People here are pushing us to be better,” she says. “The scrambled eggs aren't just scrambled eggs. They're the best [damn] scrambled eggs you've ever had, and you can have them on a Tuesday."

There are now two locations of Tarte, the Parisian-inspired location in Burleigh and the Hamptons-inspired waterside location in Currumbin. Chloe is a mother of two, and her family comes first, even with two busy restaurants and 130 staff. It’s normal, she says, even expected on the Gold Coast, to live both lives comfortably and to occasionally fuse them. “At Currumbin my boys swim while I have a coffee. Guests pull in off a paddleboard or a jet ski and sit down to scrambled eggs. This is one of the only places in Australia that can offer something that special.”

Chloe is still a world traveller, still keeping an eye on trends in the global culinary capitals, but like a lot of Gold Coasters she tends to return and to realise that thing she was looking for is already here.

“Living on the Gold Coast, doing this has taught me anything is possible. You can be whoever you want to be, do whatever you want to do — and be happy doing it. There aren't many places in the world like that. No matter what it is, if you do it right, they will come."