Top West Coast restaurateur is inspired by the authenticity of New Zealand’s food and wine – especially at its world-class luxury lodges.
Brian Canlis is a Seattle restaurateur whose family started the Canlis restaurant back in the 1950s and still run it today, three generations on. It is routinely voted among America’s top restaurants, particularly for its incredible attention to wine.
Recently, he spent a couple of weeks in New Zealand, taking in the incredibly varied, but very sophisticated food scene that New Zealand now offers. A particular highlight was The Farm at Cape Kidnappers in Hawke’s Bay on the East Coast – a 6000-acre sheep and cattle ranch surrounded by precipitous cliffs. At the center of the farm is a 22-suite luxury lodge that seems as old as some of the farm’s original farm buildings, though it was only built in 2007. There are hefty wooden beams and flagstone floors, plenty of leather and burnished timber: it is comfortably contemporary. As well, there’s an extensive collection of New Zealand art, gigantic wood-burning fireplaces and spectacular views out over the Pacific Ocean. It is a refined, rustic sort of sensibility – what a century-old farmhouse might have been like, had it had good New Zealand syrah and high thread-count sheets. At night, guests eat a tasting menu from chef James Honore that uses vegetables from the farm’s extensive gardens, matched with beef and lamb either off the property or from surrounding Hawke’s Bay estates. The menu, as a result, is largely determined by the seasons and what is available: it changes every day – garden leeks, say, matched with a slow-poached egg, pancetta and salsa verde, followed by a shellfish risotto with cavolo nero and tomato and fennel. And that’s not to mention the extensive cellar, which has some of New Zealand’s – and certainly Hawke’s Bay’s – most sought-after wines. The lodge has managed to secure wines from the country’s most sought-after boutique vineyards – vineyards that only produce a few hundred cases a year. “Everything on the plate was from within a stone’s throw of that kitchen,” says Canlis, “It was New Zealand to its core –a simple expression of pure flavours. It’s a refreshing way to eat.”
MasterChef star discovers remarkably fresh ingredients and a sophisticated approach to food in New Zealand.
“New Zealand has this mystique and this mystery about it,” says Christina Tosi, the owner and founder of the impossibly successful Momofuku Milk Bar and, as of this year, a judge on MasterChef.
Until you arrive in New Zealand, you can’t possibly imagine how you’re going to fall in love with being here,” she says. “Then when you sit down for a meal, it’s like something you could never imagine or expect.” In recent years, New Zealand has developed a sophisticated food and wine scene in its restaurants and luxury lodges, combining a refreshing honesty in approach with a level of sophistication that’s often surprising. “It’s beautiful,” Tosi says. “It has an infinite number of resources and then there’s this dimension of integrity.”
Local ingredients play a big role in this – at The Farm at Cape Kidnappers, a luxury lodge on the east coast of the North Island, Tosi was impressed by the fact that the food she was eating – even in dessert courses – was largely sourced from the property and its extensive gardens: a passionfruit brûlée, for instance, or something as simple as homemade ice cream and sorbet using home-grown pears and blackberries. “It goes on for miles, literally as far as the eye can see,” she says. “Watching where everything is grown and how it’s harvested; to pluck something from the ground and walk it indoors to make something…If you poll nine out of 10 chefs, that's the dream: to watch an ingredient grow, then take it, and then be able to work with it and serve it from start to finish is one of the most inspiring things to do in the kitchen.”
Eleven Madison Park’s Will Guidara Rediscovers the Meaning of Service at New Zealand Luxury Lodges.
“Somehow I’ve found the ability to relax and just be where I am,” says Will Guidara, co-owner of Eleven Madison Park and Nomad in New York, recipient of a combined four Michelin stars in the 2015 guide – a man who, as you would expect, is notorious for focusing on the small but important details.
Guidara first heard about New Zealand’s luxury lodges through the Relais & Chateaux guides, of which both Kidnappers and Huka are members, along with Eleven Madison Park. “It kind of celebrates the spirit of authenticity and connection and family, and people who derive significant and genuine pleasure out of bestowing hospitality on others,” he says. “That's certainly something I’ve felt since I’ve been here.”
At Huka Lodge, he got up early one morning to go fishing with a guide on the Hinemaiaia Stream, renowned for its rainbow trout, its cold clear waters fed by the Kaimanawa Ranges. It was peaceful: there was the swish-swizz of Guidara casting into the shallow river in the middle of a conservation area, surrounded by dense native forest. Afterwards, he and his companions were served local trout, just barely cooked over charcoal and served with a modern salad, mustard sauce and puréed sunflower seeds and tiny pieces of fennel and herbs, delicately plated up by Huka chef Paul Froggatt. Simple food, beautifully presented and cleanly flavoured, washed down with a sensational dry Valli riesling from Central Otago. “There’s something special about eating and drinking things sourced from close to where you are,” Guidara says. “There are few things that can replace that.”
Experience luxury in New Zealand.