Chef’s table NZ

  Everyone wants to open their own place. Ask any line cook with two years' experience where they see themselves in five years, and half of them will say "my own restaurant." Ask them what it actually costs, and you'll get silence. I've opened venues for other people for over twenty years. Not my own name on the lease, but my hands on every single line item. So let me walk you through what the dream actually costs before a single customer walks through the door. The lease is just the entry fee A commercial lease in a decent location isn't just rent. It's bond, it's personal guarantees, it's a fit-out clause that decides whether you're allowed to touch the walls at all. Landlords in good locations know exactly what they have, and they price the risk of a first-time operator into every clause. You'll sign for a term longer than you're comfortable with, because nobody will give a new operator a short lease. That's five years of commitm...

  Everyone talks about the chaos. The screaming, the tickets stacking up, the pass looking like a war zone on a Friday night. That's the image people have of kitchens, and honestly, it's not wrong. But the kitchens that actually worry me are the quiet ones. I've walked into venues mid-service where nobody's talking. No calling out orders, no "yes chef," no chatter between stations. Just heads down, moving fast, saying nothing. Owners sometimes think that's a good sign. Discipline. Focus. A tight ship. It's not. It's a room that's stopped trusting itself. Noise Is Communication A loud kitchen isn't necessarily an out-of-control one. Calling out orders, confirming fires, checking in on a dish that's running late — that's the system working. It's how twelve people moving at speed avoid stepping on each other. When that goes quiet, it usually means one of two things. Either everyone's so overwhelmed they've stopped bothering...

  My first knife was a Wüsthof, and it had a bolster. I bought it purely because it was beautiful — to my eyes at the time, it looked like what a "real" chef's knife should look like. Looks were the whole reason. It took years of standing at a bench, ten hours a day, before I understood what actually makes a knife worth owning — and it's not what most buying guides tell you. You don't need a block of twelve knives. You need one. One knife, not a set If you're starting out, buy one solid chef's knife and learn it properly. An 8-inch (20-21cm) chef's knife will get you through 90% of what happens on a home kitchen bench — chopping, slicing, mincing, breaking down most things you'll cook. Everything else is a nice-to-have you can add later once you know what you're missing. My Wüsthof was a 21cm chef's knife, all stainless steel — but it did have a bolster, and looking back, that's exactly what I'd tell you to avoid. Skip the bolster M...

 I'm not a bartender. I've never pulled a pour or built a cocktail during service. But after twenty years running kitchens, I've sat in enough P&L meetings to know exactly why a $22 gin and tonic and a $38 pasta dish are doing very different jobs for the same business. Let me explain it the way I understand it — from the kitchen looking sideways at the bar. What I Know About My Side  I know food costing down to the gram. A pasta dish costs me $8–9 in ingredients and sells for $38. That's about 22–25% cost. A steak is tighter — closer to 35–40% once you factor in the cut, and worse if the protein price spiked that month, selling anywhere from $48–58. A starter runs $4–5 in raw product, sells for $20–24. Around 20–25%. These numbers are tight. Every dollar of food cost gets scrutinised, portioned, yielded, and recalculated. I've spent entire afternoons building yield tables just to shave half a percent off a dish's cost. That's the world I live in. What I...