Chef’s table NZ

  You look at the menu, see $44 next to a piece of chicken, and think — that's a lot for chicken. Fair enough. From the outside, it looks like a markup. From inside the kitchen, it's closer to a math problem with very little room for error. Let me break it down the way I actually break it down when I'm pricing a menu. Food Cost Is Only the Start The rule of thumb in this industry is that food cost should sit around 28-33% of the menu price. So if that main costs $44, the raw ingredients — the protein, the veg, the sauce components, the garnish — should cost somewhere around $12-14 to plate. That already surprises people. Where does the rest go? Labour Isn't Just "The Chef Cooking It" That $44 main was touched by more people than you'd think: Someone butchered or portioned the protein Someone made the stock or sauce base, probably days in advance Someone prepped the veg and garnish The chef who fired it on the pass The person who plated it The waiter who ca...

  I already wrote about why a cocktail costs $22 . This time, let's zoom out to the whole bill. What you're actually paying for When a diner looks at a menu price, they see one number. What they don't see is everything stacked underneath it: food cost, rent, wages, power, insurance, compliance, breakages, and whatever margin is left over after all of that — which, in hospitality, is usually thinner than people assume. Auckland makes this harder than most cities. Commercial rent in the right location is expensive. Wages have gone up, which is a good thing for the people earning them, but it flows straight into the price of your meal. Supplier costs move constantly, and a kitchen has very little control over what produce costs this week versus last week. Roughly what things cost right now Prices vary a lot by venue and suburb, but as a general shape of what you'll find across Auckland dining in 2026: A casual weekday lunch — a sandwich, a bowl, a simple plate — tends to l...

  I've already written about whether culinary school is worth the money. Short version: it can help, but it's not the only door in. Plenty of chefs I've worked alongside — some of the best ones — never set foot in a culinary classroom. Here's the actual path, if school isn't the one you're taking. Step 1: Get in, any way you can Nobody starts as a chef. You start as a kitchen hand or commis, washing, prepping, watching. The title doesn't matter in year one. Getting inside a working kitchen does. Apply everywhere. Cafes, pubs, hotel kitchens, catering companies. Don't hold out for the fine-dining dream job on day one — you're not ready for it yet, and neither is your CV. Step 2: Show up early, leave late, ask questions This sounds simple because it is. Kitchens run on trust before they run on talent. The person who turns up fifteen minutes early and stays to help clean down gets taught things the person who clocks in at the buzzer never will. Ask a ch...

  People use these two words like they're interchangeable. In a kitchen, they're not even close. The short answer A cook prepares food. A chef runs a kitchen. Every chef can cook. Not every cook is a chef. That's the whole distinction, and almost everything else falls out of it. What a cook actually does A cook follows the recipe, the spec, the standard that's already been set. They come in, work their section, execute what's been decided, and go home. That's not an insult — a great cook who's fast, consistent, and reliable is worth their weight in gold to any kitchen. Most of the people keeping a busy service running are cooks, not chefs, and it should stay that way. What a chef actually does A chef decides what the standard is in the first place. Menu, costing, ordering, training the team, tasting every dish before it leaves, taking the call when something's wrong at 8pm on a Saturday. A chef is responsible for the kitchen, not just for their own secti...

 Every few weeks someone messages me asking the same thing: "I want to work in a New Zealand kitchen — should I come on a working holiday or try to get sponsored?" There's no shortage of visa guides online. Immigration lawyers, migration agencies, travel blogs — they'll all give you the dates, the fees, the age limits. What they won't tell you is what actually happens once you're standing in a kitchen with that visa in your pocket. That's the part I can help with. Why I don't hire working holiday visa holders I'll be straight with you, because nobody else will be: most head chefs I know, myself included, actively avoid hiring WHV holders. Here's why. Your visa gives you twelve months in the country, but I only get you for three, maybe six, before you're legally required to move on. Training a cook properly — getting them fast on a section, trusting them with service — takes longer than that. By the time you're actually useful, you'r...

  I get asked this more than almost anything else. Usually by someone standing at a fork in the road — finish school and go to culinary school, or do something "sensible" instead. I'm not going to give you a yes or no. I'm going to give you what nobody gave me. The honest cost side Long hours. Weekends gone. Christmas and New Year's Eve — some of the busiest nights of your working life, not your personal one. Your feet will hurt in ways you didn't know feet could hurt. You will get burned, cut, and yelled at, sometimes all in the same service. The pay, especially early on, will not reflect the effort. I've written before about what chefs actually earn in NZ — the short version is that the title looks better than the payslip for the first several years. Relationships take a hit too. Not everyone understands a partner who's never free on a Saturday night. The honest reward side There's a version of satisfaction you only get from finishing a service w...

  Every few months someone messages me the same question. Usually it's a young cook, sometimes it's a parent worried about their kid's career choice. "How much do chefs actually make?" Google will give you a number. It's not wrong, exactly. It's just not the whole story. The numbers you'll find Search it yourself and you'll land somewhere around these figures: Commis chef / entry level: close to minimum wage ($23.95 an hour as it stands), maybe a dollar or two above it Chef de partie: roughly $25–$29 an hour on average, based on current job listings and payroll data Sous chef: roughly $29–$34 an hour on average Head chef: roughly $35 up to $49+ an hour, depending on the venue and city — a head chef salary of $85,000–$100,000 a year works out to around $42–$48 an hour on a standard 40-hour week Average chef salary nationally: sits somewhere in the mid-$70,000s to low $80,000s a year Those numbers are real. They come from job listings and payroll sur...