A LA CARTE
A Dream Come True
I
Lesley Chandra sat down with Hospitality Business editor, Kimberley Dixon to discuss his style, culinary background and to share the secrets of his success.
became a chef because I fell in love with the kitchen culture, my first job was at a Mexican restaurant Hola Mexican after school, washing dishes, over a few weeks I watched the chefs cook and plate hundreds of dishes in the space of a few hours and the intensity of service got me hooked. I asked the owner if I could cook and he said yep but you still have to do dishes, so I did both. I then went and studied how to develop my chef skills at the Auckland Hotel Chef Training Centre in Newmarket because I wanted to further my career, from there I got my first commis chef job at a bistro then called the Maple Room (Remuera), which had won best new restaurant awards in Cuisine magazine a few years ago. It was there I learnt the foundations of cooking and that set me up for my future. After working and travelling around the world I finally decided that I needed to get serious and work for some of the best in New Zealand. My first break came in 2012 when I got a job at a new Italian place called Baduzzi, working for Ben Bayly. This was instrumental to my career, he showed me techniques and flavours that I had not seen before. I was there for nearly two years and was ready to step up and be on my way to a more senior position at Baduzzi when, one day in 2014 I received a call from chef Sid Sahrawat. At that time
Sid was a chef I had always wanted to work for, but his restaurant Sidart had a small team and it was very hard to get into. Sid said he got my number from Ben and that he was opening a modern Indian restaurant called Cassia and was looking for a head chef. He asked me if I was interested, I said yes straight away, I didn’t have to think about it. I learnt a lot at Cassia, not only about Indian cuisine but European as well because we applied techniques from both to create the menus, Sid helped me understand how a restaurant is run, not just the kitchen, as a whole, both front and back had to work together seamlessly. After Cassia I took a sabbatical and went to work in London for a year with my partner Lucia. I worked at a restaurant called The Typing Room in East London and I did a lot of trials at other places e.g The Clove Club, Kitchen Table and Fera, but the Typing Room’s food intrigued me the most and the chef Lee Westcott was great, as was the team. I gained a taste of working overseas which taught me things I never would have learned in New Zealand, especially because of the ingredients used. From here I came back to New Zealand and worked again with Sid at Sidart
in Ponsonby, a place where I always wanted to work. A year later Sid bought the French Cafe and appointed me as head chef of Sid at The French Café which was a dream come true. At French I learned more about refining and being precise. Then two and a half years later I became owner of Sidart, another dream come true. My style is a mixture of European and Asian I would say mostly Indian influenced but I do use Japanese and Thai flavours as well. I think there are different restaurants that cater for people.We cannot all do the same thing, that’s why there are places that do just a la carte and restaurants that offer tasting menus, and some that do both. It’s up to the diner to decide what they want and where they go. The move to plant based eating is big right now which is very interesting I cannot wait to see more places with a plant based menu. Our goal at Sidart is to use the best and locally sourced produce where possible, we are lucky here in New Zealand that most of our ingredients are made / grown here which is great for restaurants, the more we use local, the better it is for everyone. I love eating out, but I also enjoy cooking at home. I love having people over and making pizzas in the wood fire oven, you could say it’s my hobby. n
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