9 May 2015

ConversatioNZ - MY CHALLENGES FOR THE NZ FOOD SCENE

No apologies for the length of this post - these are the issues I addressed at ConversatioNZ, an extraordinary event organised by Giulio Sturla of Roots Restaurant in Lyttleton last week.

"It is a real privilege it is to be in Christchurch and at the forefront of another exciting step in the gastronomic awakening of our country. We’re all here to discuss and rejoice in New Zealand’s bounty; most of us here understand, and believe, that we have simply the best food in the world. None of us lives more than 15 km from a farm, no one lives more than 200 km from a vineyard and in a country that is only 1200km long, we have an astonishing 19000 km of coastline. There is no excuse for not knowing what is fresh and what is good. We may not be the most intensive farmers in the world but we understand how to produce the very best food, or catch and forage for amazing produce – produce that is all raised or found growing in the cleanest air in the world as those breezes and winds never stop. We are so lucky.

So my first challenge; To think about why our New Zealand food stories are being told so poorly and infrequently. I had dinner at the French Embassy in Wellington last month and the Ambassador proudly told us the primary reason people visit France is for the food and wine. That embarrassed me. When did we see our official Tourism Department and the Minister of Tourism, John Key no less, exhorting people seeking an exciting culinary experience to visit New Zealand?

Yet without exception we all know visitors arrive, fall in love with our food and wine and tell us they did not know it would be so good. They have no idea before arriving!

Our economy is underpinned by food production with more than 50% of our exports coming from land and sea and yet it seems all we promote is extreme adventure, amazing scenery and Hobbits. I am sick to death of those bloody Hobbits. Do hobbits seek out delicious fresh food and aromatic zingy sauvignon blanc? I doubt it. Thankfully I did spy a Los Angeles camera crew in the Matakana market a couple of weeks ago. They had been commissioned to shoot a Facebook video campaign for the American market on New Zealand food and wine experiences. The motivation for this came out of a survey that the local New Zealand Tourism Bureau in LA had done on perceptions of NZ. Several people had enquired during that survey “Are there any roads in New Zealand?” Hopefully this food driven video or series that I fell across may go viral, but it is still just the thin edge of the wedge.

The print media is not much better than this shameful and neglectful attitude of creating our food tourism thrust. Where are the stories about our top chefs, our artisan producers, our farmers and the foraging and growing? Our food magazines are losing readers hand over fist and are filled with recipe features, with few stories behind the food or any explanation of the history of the recipes. They have not kept up with the appetite for the likes of Lucky Peach, Fool, Cherry Bombe, Toast and more with their insightful stories of food and producers.

Our newspapers mainly stick any food stories in the business section, and the internet isn’t cutting it. There may be a few food and travel bloggers out there, but right now we seem to be focussed on Zomato and Trip Advisor where a bunch of unqualified eaters post their gripes just to make your life miserable. Hopefully, they occasionally offer you a few kudos for great experiences.

Truly respected restaurant critics are few and far between as most give boring accounts of what they ate on a particular night and seem to forget dining out is an experience focussed on food but bringing so many other things into play. Few bother to research so they can tell the story behind the restaurant philosophy and provide information about the chef, the food sources and the atmosphere. On TV Masterchef and My Kitchen Rules serve up food as a competition, complete with tears, shouting and trips overseas to find food, much of which could and should be easily discovered and shot here. So hallelujah for Choice TV and for the Food Channel as they carry shows where the food stories and personalities are actually well worth watching and learning from, albeit shot on the international rather than local stage.

It took twenty years of imagination, ambition, risk and enormous sponsorship that is not easy to find for Annabel Langbein to succeed, and to tell our food stories here and take her series internationally.

Our supermarket scene, dominated by two companies, does not deliver shopping experiences that encourage customers to think about the provenance of their food and to be selective when they can. We are not really getting to grips with food stories. It is all very challenging.

My second challenge; What are the things that make our food so special, - special enough to possibly start us moving closer towards a unique New Zealand food culture? Can we identify anything tangible that sets us apart? What is New Zealand food? David Burton of Wellington who is undoubtedly our most talented and respected food writer published a scholarly book '200 Years of New Zealand Food & Cookery' in 1982. He revised it more than 25 years later and re-issued it in 2009 as 'New Zealand Food & Cookery', complete with updates and many more stories. I would like to think every chef in our country owned a copy or at least had a chance to read this book as David lays down the foundation of our food - the whitebait, lamb, kina and koura, scones and mutton birds, and a host of other uniquely kiwi stuff. His recipes are hardly cutting edge but the basics are all there. It is simply, New Zealand food.

My third challenge; To find a way to tell the world about our food. The media currently barely touch on it so we are going to have rely on chefs and producers to tell the stories. Chefs and creative artisans are always the people who set the trends in food. Today’s stunning idea becomes the nation’s dinner in about 3-5 years’ time.

The fastest way to do this is through menus and labels. So this is not just about putting uniquely New Zealand food on the menu or in the jar, but writing in such a way that diners and consumers are left in no doubt that this is the real deal they are eating and buying into. I love it when a menu gives the diner a sense of place by explaining where the food has come from, who grew it or who the artisan was who supplied the product. I am sure this will resonate with the growers too, as for far too long food has been a mere commodity and by telling the stories our farmers will take far more pride in their work. Facebook and other social media sites are the perfect vehicle for spreading the word. Be proud of what you do. Get it out there!

You can change the world: It was only about ten years ago that there were two sorts of oysters here; Bluffs and the rest. Now any restaurant worth eating in will provide the provenance of the oysters being served. Discerning diners are starting to notice that the taste of an oyster depends on where it was grown - Tio Point, Te Matuku, Clevedon Coast, Mahurangi, Orongo Bay, Bluff and many more. Other farmer/producer grown initiatives have seen the success of producers like Curious Croppers, Lot Eight Olive Oil, any number of artisan cheesemakers, and many more.

Also to bring attention to our food, be strong about being ‘local’. All around New Zealand specialties of the area can be found – it would be well worth ensuring that local restaurants have such specialised local foods on the menu and displayed on blackboards and walls, whenever and wherever possible. It would be a shame for a diner in Hawkes Bay not to be offered the local lamb with Gimblett Gravels syrah or lovely fresh stonefruit grown there with a peachy local chardonnay. In Marlborough it should be a given that mussels or salmon from the Sounds are on every menu, offered matched to local sauvignon blanc; while in the far North imagine not being able to try the local snapper and crayfish and the pinot gris that thrives there. I could go on and on but I am sure you get the picture?

The biggest challenge and final challenge is to develop cutting edge food that attracts the attention of the world. We are ideally placed to do this as we literally live on the edge of the world with very few of the food traditions like the Chinese, the French or the Italians are forced to adhere to.

If you look at who has garnered world attention with new startlingly original cuisine directions in the past fifteen years, it was first the Spanish who released a ton of newfound energy once they shook off the shackles of decades of domination under Franco’s regime. Ferran Adria became a name known on kitchens world-wide with his revolutionary techniques, and soon there were a host of other Spanish chefs literally tailgating him.

Then came the Nordic revival. Before Rene Redzepi, the food in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland was caught in a time warp, probably similar to the cookery as it had been for centuries. Along came Redzepi, foraging and producing a rather spartan but exciting new wave of food that others soon embraced and emulated. These countries were nowhere near the forefront of the world’s culinary calendar but look at them now.

Today we start a discussion to answer these challenges. We can look to the Pacific for inspiration as Robert Oliver and Michael Meredith have done and reflect on their work; (Michael’s demonstration of what a chef can do with a coconut at the South Pacific Food Forum in Fiji three years ago was one of the most original culinary workshops I have ever attended.) Robert’s book Me’a Kai showcases Pacific food but not as we knew it.

And we can look at the work of food heroes like Peter Gordon and Che Barrington who are embracing concepts of cooking; both food, techniques and the ingredients of our neighbours in South East Asia; reworking them with fine New Zealand ingredients. There are grand ideas to build on.

I remember sitting in Martin Bosley’s restaurant and being served just one oyster – nothing special about that, but it was spilling out of a perfect little flax woven Maori kete. The connection to gathering and the food was right there on the plate. It brought tears to my eyes.

I loved seeing the collaboration dinner as posted on Instagram between Michael Meredith and Matt Lambert in Auckland last week. Matt showed one of their courses: feijoa, horseradish and raw surf clams. As I read that you probably go “What?” But it looked amazing in the photo and I so wanted to try that. Pure New Zealand. That is the future we know we are chasing.

And we cannot look to the future without honouring the past and some of the original ideas of great New Zealand chefs who have gone before us, cooking up a storm. But the biggest storm may yet be about to be unleashed. I look forward to your questions but even more I am excited to hear today from so many of the exemplary chefs and food producers who may have the key to New Zealand becoming the next big food destination for sophisticated and hungry travellers."

Nga mihi.