Chef’s table NZ

  I've opened restaurants before. I know how to negotiate a lease. I know how to design a kitchen that actually works. I know how to build a menu, manage food cost, hire a team, and keep a service running when everything is falling apart at once. I've done it. Just not for myself. That's the part nobody in hospitality talks about. The experienced ones — the chefs, the operators, the people who've spent decades inside someone else's business — are often the most hesitant to make the leap. Not because they don't know how. Because they know exactly how hard it is. And in New Zealand right now, the news doesn't help. Restaurants closing. Cafés shutting their doors. Pubs that survived Covid folding anyway. You read the headlines and think — why would I put my own money into this? But here's what I've learned from watching businesses succeed and fail from the inside. The ones that close usually made the same mistakes. They opened too big. They undere...

I've worked with hundreds of people in professional kitchens over the past two decades. Some of them were talented. Some were fast. Some could break down a whole fish in under three minutes or turn out perfect brunoise without thinking. But the ones I actually wanted to keep? They weren't always the most skilled. They were the ones who made the kitchen work. There's a version of this job that people imagine before they start. You show up, you cook, you learn some knife skills, maybe you get yelled at a bit, and eventually you become a chef. That's not how it works. The kitchen runs on people who do the things nobody asked them to do. Who see the low mise en place and fill it before service without being told. Who clean as they go not because the head chef is watching but because they understand why it matters. Who show up on time — actually on time, not walking-through-the-door-at-start-time — ready to work. That's it. That's most of it. Skills can be taught. I...