--- Watch double episodes of A New Zealand Food Story seasons 1 and 2, 5.30pm Saturdays on SBS Food. Episodes will be available at for 30 days after they air. ---
When chef Ben Bayly set out to discover ‘what is New Zealand food?’, things didn’t go exactly according to plan.
Part of that was COVID-related, with the pandemic punching a hole in his plans to open a new restaurant. But what makes talking to the award-winning chef, and watching his series A New Zealand Food Story, so interesting is what he discovered during his travels around Aotearoa, meeting farmers, fishermen, foragers and other suppliers.
“I thought I was going to have this Eureka moment and in a way, I have done,” he says – but it wasn’t exactly what he expected.
In 2018, Bayly left his job as executive chef of one of New Zealand’s leading restaurants. It was a huge financial and career risk. He wanted to establish a new restaurant showcasing New Zealand food, but to do so, he needed to fix in his mind what that was.
“I always cooked other people's food, other people's cuisine. I lived in Australia for a long time, lived in America for a long time, and in France and England for a long time. And I was cooking everyone else's cuisine and then I came home and I was wondering what our food was,” he explains, talking to SBS Food from across the ditch.
“Right now we have hangi, we fight over the Australians for the pavlova, but we don't really have dishes that are like 'wow, that's a New Zealand dish’.
Ben Bayly has worked around the world. In 'A New Zealand Food Story' he's focussed on his own back yard. Source: Mahi Tahi Media
“When it comes to running a restaurant or delivering a New Zealand experience, I think we're too heavily influenced by French or Italian cuisine,” he says in the series. To explore what New Zealand food might be, he took to the road, meeting suppliers and in many cases, getting hands-on with fishing, harvesting and hunting. Those trips, along with the development of the new restaurant, are captured in the first series of A New Zealand Food Story.
A lot of the people he visited were suppliers he’d already been dealing with. “I’ve talked to them, like, a million times on the phone but never actually met them. It's so busy in the kitchen ... I already had them sort of earmarked for our menu, but never had the opportunity to meet them.” Doing so was a key part of planning for the new restaurant.
“Where do you get the inspiration? For me, you've got to go visit the person who's growing it and doing it … And then you see not only where this product grows, you see what it eats, you see the environment. You are talking to the person, where the ingredient is harvested. All of a sudden you have a million ideas for how you're going to prepare this dish and honour this ingredient and then make sure that the people in the restaurant are telling the story of this ingredient and this person that harvested it properly. And then you get this engagement with the guests, with one of our amazing front-of-house staff telling the story of this ingredient.”
Kicking off with a visit to the South Island to learn more about koura (crayfish), the series travels with Bayly as he dives into everything from high country lamb, tītī (mutton bird) and wild deer to in-season fruit and vegetables. On some visits, he’s literally diving in: in season two of the show, for example, he goes spearfishing in French Pass, in the Marlborough Sounds.
Throughout it all it’s clear Bayly has a deep respect for the produce and people he works with, and an eye on the future of the land on which he lives.
Take another of his fishing expeditions – one that viewers who visit New Zealand could actually do themselves – where he heads out to fish in the cold waters of the Foveaux Straight, one of the key seafood harvesting areas of New Zealand. “This is exactly what my journey is about, discovering ocean harvesters like Nate Smith. Gravity Fishing is a true ‘hook to plate’. They fish to order using a hook and line, harvesting both ethically and sustainably, with little or no impact on the environment. One boat. One crew. One Hundred per cent transparency,” he says heads out to sea with Smith.
“Nate from is now doing Gravity trips,” Bayly says when we chat. “These are ‘money can’t buy experiences – except now you can pay money to go on them. He’s taking people out, like we went out on in the show. This guy is eco-tourism to the max. He's Maori from the area down there… his business is centred around the future. It’s like any supplier that we have here. I'm only going to choose a fisherman who's fishing for his grandkids - making sure his grandkids, his great-grandkids, his great, great-great-grandkids have fish to eat.”
Smith explains, as he fishes to fulfil a small customer order, that the business targets the kinds of fish that are in season right now, encouraging businesses to try lesser-known fish that are in abundance, and only sell whole fish, to minimise waste.
Visits like these give us an insight into how grassroots producers see food and ingredients – something we don’t always have easy access to as everyday food purchasers or restaurant diners. When Bayly visits Minaret Station, owner Jonathan Wallis talks about how New Zealand agriculture is moving from a quantity focus to a quality focus. In Colac Bay, Bayly and Ronald Bull – ‘the mutton bird master’ – talk about the importance of stopping to acknowledge the food they have cooked and where it came from, of having a small karakia (a kind of prayer, or offering of thanks).
And of course, there’s a chance to see New Zealand in all its glory, from the boat rides and helicopter flights to walks through green pastures.
Alongside the travels, there’s the work to get the restaurant ready in time for the planned opening date – until everything comes to a crashing halt. Pandemic lockdowns mean businesses are closing, not opening. “How am I supposed to think about a menu when, you know, I'm trying to think about how to keep my children safe?” says Bayly in the episode where everything changes.
His travels take Bayly to some remote corners of New Zealand. Source: A New Zealand Food Story
Do Bayly and his team make it through all those challenges and eventually open the restaurant? You can, of course, easily Google the answer to what he’s doing now, but if you don’t already know, we’re not going to spoil how it all unfolds. However, since there is a second season, it’s no spoiler to say that he’s still travelling the length of the land of the long white cloud, meeting people and learning about produce.
He says he’s hugely appreciative of being able to do so.
“I just don't take it lightly and I am absolutely bloody grateful for the time to have to think about this stuff.”
And along the way, he’s come up with an answer about how he thinks of New Zealand food.
“I realised that New Zealand food is all about the ingredients, and it's all about the people. And one day, there'll be dishes that are known all over the world that are Kiwi… But right now we can be inspired by the long history of Maori walking this land. Inspired by the migration and immigration into New Zealand. And be inspired by the way we look after the land and the sea, and the ingredients we can pull from that with an eye on the future. And that's what New Zealand food is right now for me.”
