NZ DINING in 2021

New Zealand chefs and restaurateurs prove that opportunity can come from chaos as they reinvigorate the country’s dining scene, writes LEISHA JONES.

- LEISHA JONES

You don’t just wake up one day and open a restaurant. From concept to completion, planning can take a couple of years, and that’s without a global pandemic slowing you down. So when New Zealand went into a strict and sudden lockdown in March last year, projects at various stages of readiness came to a halt and the worry set in. Watching the rest of the world, we wondered what would become of dining out and if it would ever be the same again.

In an industry that is synonymous with burnout, those five weeks of isolation offered an uncharacteristic period of rest. Time to reflect on their food, their offering, what was important to them and, in the case of new ventures, time to consider what they wanted those places to look like in a new world.

Ed Verner, chef and owner of Pasture – a six-seater restaurant in Auckland where the unforgettable tasting menus are fuelled by fire, ferments and relentless evolution – says the biggest challenge of being a chef is finding time to be creative with the stress of running a business. For him and his partner, Hillary Eaton, the lockdown provided a moment of stillness to finesse the finer details of their new bar Boxer, which opened next door in July last year.

They swathed the walls of their apartment in butchers paper and indulged their wildest ideas, writing it all down, no matter how crazy it seemed. “It felt like creating our own world,” explains Eaton, “I think that’s why Boxer is so unique, it was very much coming out of that space of otherworldliness that we were all living in.” Some things never came to fruition, while others have now formed part of the experience, which is unlike anywhere else in the country.