NZ’s “actual badass chefs” battle it out for chance to showcase creative genius

Judges Vaughan Mabee and Melissa Leong: Looking for creative magic. Photo / Supplied

Vaughan Mabee is sweating. Our conversation will have to be quick, he says, because he’s on the job at “the world’s best restaurant – and bro, the people are paying like $3300 a head”.

Mabee, the executive chef at Queenstown’s Amisfield, is on the line from Copenhagen’s famed Alchemist restaurant,
whose owner, Rasmus Munk, has invited a group of chefs from around the world to work on a collaborative menu project called Conversions. When he says he’s “under the dome right now”, he’s referring to the 18m dome over the dining room, which creates a planetarium-like visual experience for diners to accompany the spectacular food.

Alchemist’s food-as-art philosophy is a link to Mabee’s role back home as a judge alongside Australian food critic Melissa Leong on Taste of Art, an elimination show in which teams of professional chefs are tasked with creating dishes that not only taste superior but meet the artistic theme they’re given each week. He has previously been a MasterChef NZ judge but Taste of Art is, he says, very different.

“This show is more real. These are actual badass chefs who are creative – some of them trained in Michelin-starred restaurants around the world ‒ competing against each other. And the food is way more creative and vibrant and exciting.”

Indeed, if you were looking for a comparison, it wouldn’t be a cooking show but Lego Masters.

“That was actually my little take on it,” says Taste of Art’s producer Simon Fleming, who has worked on MasterChef NZ, Lego Masters and My Kitchen Rules. “It’s Lego Masters for cooking.”

As head chefs, or working under other people, this is their chance to get outside the box and showcase what they’ve got. Photo / Supplied

It’s also a first: the format is created and owned by Screentime and the show was shot at the company’s Remarkables production studio in Queenstown, where A Remarkable Place to Die was also shot (perhaps making this A Remarkable Place to Fry). It’s a very Queenstown production.

“It was a scary show to make because it’s so fresh,” says Fleming. “MasterChef was like, you’ve got two hours to make a duck dish – this is, you’ve got six hours to do whatever you want.”

The challenges of putting together an entirely new show with no production bible are apparent sometimes – the first episode looks to have been made in a hurry with the editors perhaps not getting all the shots they needed. But the competing chef duos (see next page) are a real strength, not least for their personal stories.

“When I decided to become a chef my mum didn’t speak to me for two months,” explains Ankita Chakravarty in the first episode. The decision “was actually hard for my family”, who didn’t regard being a chef as a proper job for a woman.

There are also intriguing glimpses into the rapport between the chefs. Their words to each other are the truest dialogue in the show.

“You’ve got to be really linked to someone to work well with them,” says Mabee. “In most successful kitchens, everyone has a strong love for each other and respects everyone. When you unite together with that kind of vision or drive and you go into the same creative, that’s when the magic happens.”

Several of the chefs have worked under Mabee in the 16 years he’s been executive chef at Amisfield and they are all, he says, “younger-generation chefs; they’re head chefs or they’re working under people, so they don’t get a complete chance to get outside the box and show their creative genius. And this was a chance for them – they were super excited to showcase that.”

Fleming says, “It’s giving creative people this massive creative space. You’ve got six hours to cook something incredible. It’s a bonkers show.”

No one really screws up a dish in the first couple of episodes, but over seven parts, says Mabee, “everyone had a few mess-ups. And you know what? We all do. That’s all part of it. The more times you mess up, the better you are.

“An old chief once told me, until you serve someone a slightly raw chicken, you never cook a perfect chicken.”

And with that, he’s back to making some art in a kitchen.

Kitchen creatives: The contestants in the first season of Taste of Art. Photo / Supplied

The Chefs

Ankita Chakravarty & Tan Duy Tran, Tamarind No 5, Queenstown

Josh Phillips & Bailey Mckenzie, Aosta, Arrowtown

Giulio Barducci & Pier Italiano, Toast and Oak, Queenstown

Tommy Hope & Dani Puskar, Tala, Auckland

Yahsan Yu & Roy Hwang, independent, Queenstown

Taste of Art begins on TVNZ 1, at 7.30pm on Thursday, February 19, and streams on TVNZ+

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