Her Magazine is New Zealand’s only women’s business lifestyle magazine! Her Magazine highlights the achievements of successful and rising New Zealand businesswomen. Her Magazine encourages a healthy work/life balance.
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Name three great wines you love to drink: If money was no object … anything from Brookfields, Cloudy Bay or Church Road. I only drink New World wine … that sort of shatters my spiel on food miles doesn't it? It's not the best climate for great wines in the United Kingdom. However, cider is another story! If you weren't a chef, or in the food business, what would you be? A psychologist or therapist, but I seem to find this kind of work features in my job a lot. Cooking is the easy part … but managing staff is one of my biggest headaches. There is always a drama of some kind unfolding. I often have someone needing to talk as they are having issues they are trying to work out and need another perspective. I did apply to go to university over here after I had been here for a year, to study psychology, but the fees were extortionate. What's the largest group you've ever served, and how did you manage the preparation to get everything out at the same time? When we lived in Plymouth there was a function for BMW launching a new car. I had to do finger food, catering for 600. There were only three of us on in the kitchen. How did we do it? I have no idea, but there was quite a lot of complimentary BMW 'champers' kicking around. Have the tastes of customers changed over your career? I think people are more aware of good food now and more adventurous. Coming from New Zealand where there has been a great foodie culture for years then landing in the United Kingdom to find that this kind of scene was only really happening in London, was a bit of an eye-opener. A lot has changed over here in the last 10 years. There are so many cookery books, celebrity chefs, TV shows and food festivals. What I have noticed is that people enjoy all of this, but still don't do that much real cooking at home. Everyone loves the idea of great food, but don't want to go through the hassle of creating it themselves. This, of course, is good for other chefs like me and it keeps us gainfully employed! Has the heightened interest in celebrity chefs and cooking in general been good or bad for the industry? I think it's great for the industry, but sadly so many young chefs coming through now think they can be catapulted into superstar status without having to put in any hard graft. It is a hard profession to get into with long, anti-social hours. Sometimes it can be pretty relentless and kitchens are generally not climatically controlled sanctuaries of calm and beauty. They are hot, fast-paced, stressful, pressured, noisy, sometimes chaotic and emotional environments, full of different characters and attitudes. The celebrity chef scenario has made the profession more respected, rather than being seen as a servile job and that is a definite positive. There is no quick route to stardom, and Jamie Oliver is one of the very few who has managed to be talent-spotted from an early age. Are you affected by reviews at all? What is your opinion of food writers? A good review is a fantastic advertisement, but a bad review can be incredibly damning. Reviewers eat out all the time, so they are constantly comparing food from one restaurant to another. I think reviews can be important as a means of reflection. It is good to receive feedback, both good and bad. It is only by fixing the negative stuff that we can keep moving forward. HER MAGAZINE | February/March 2012| 77 courtesy of Greenbank Hotel courtesy of Greenbank Hotel