Hiakai was once the country’s most famous restaurant. Chef Monique Fiso talks to Kim Knight about the years since its closure and her upcoming collaboration with an equally famous wine label.
Monique Fiso is synonymous with hāngī cooking – but the six-star Mincher Garden is safe from her spade.
“I
did toy with the idea for a hot minute,” admits the chef who operated Wellington fine-dining Māori restaurant Hiakai for five years.
Ultimately, she says of Mincher, “it’s an incredibly beautiful six-star international garden of significance. I’m just happy to be cooking in the space. We want people to experience it as it is”.
Next month, Fiso and her partner Katie Monteith will present a literal moving feast at the Coatesville garden. The Cloudy Bay Circle event will feature dishes developed in response to six wines (including a 20-year-old magnum of Pelorus) served to guests as they wander around the 8ha property.
Time magazine once named Hiakai one of the World’s 100 Greatest Places. What does life look like away from that kitchen?
“I’m just enjoying a sunny day in Pōneke,” says Fiso. “Katie’s out in the garden with the dog, with the music blaring . . . it’s almost feeling like summer, although it was zero degrees overnight!”
The pair closed the bricks-and-mortar Hiakai in 2024 to evolve the business into what they now describe as “Aotearoa’s leading kai creative”.
Fiso (Ngā Rauru, Ngāti Ruanui, Samoa) says two concepts drive their current māhi – kai motuhake (restoring control of food systems to iwi, hapū, and communities) and the sharing of ancestral knowledge.
“Kai connects us all. It’s a communal language. Eating more locally, really thinking about the source of your kai . . . really looking at the back of the packet . . . it’s better for the local economy and it’s just better for us, not having it travel halfway across the world.”
Monique Fiso and partner Katie Monteith have evolved Hiakai restaurant into a “kai creative” allowing them to take on projects like an upcoming collaboration with Cloudy Bay.
Hiakai’s most recent projects include the release of Disney Moana: The Official Cookbook, and literal groundwork for the book it expects to publish next year, How to put down a Hāngī.
The Disney movie tie-in included more than 50 recipes and drew on Fiso’s memories of her grandmother’s cooking. Think oka, pani popo, fa’alifu taro and more.
“What was really awesome was being given the opportunity to write a book about kai Pasifika for a global audience,” says Fiso. “A whole lot of information to do with ingredients, history, culture, presented in a way that could be an entry point to anyone who was interested in the cuisine of the Pacific whether they were in the US, here, or sitting somewhere in the UK.”
Hāngī – the earth oven backbone of the pop-ups Fiso worked on before opening her Pōneke Wellington restaurant – continues to be central to her world.
She’s saving the most recent specifics for next year’s book, but happily shares details of the feast for around 400 people in Ōtautahi Christchurch, laid down in hāngī pits adjacent to the Town Hall.
“We were lucky enough to use them for two separate events and it was so much fun and quite incredible to do it in such a public space,” says Fiso.
“So many people walked past and asked questions on their way to school and work . . . they were just entranced by what was going on. And I think that speaks to how special Māori culture is and how much people do want to learn more.
“It would be really cool if every city did have a central hangi pit that could be used for different occasions . . . you’d almost feel like it’s something that we should already have?”
The new book will be an instructional guide to “the past, present and future of hāngī”, says Fiso, promising a practical “how to” for anyone who wants to understand and experience cooking in an earth oven.
“It’s an interesting technique. Especially if you’ve trained in a more traditional kitchen where you’ve got temperature probes, a glass door that you can see through, all the different other ways of checking whether something is on its way or where you want it to be.
“With umu and hāngī it’s in and now you just have to wait and know that everything you know is going to lead to it being successful – hopefully!”
It’s intimidating, she agrees. But also: “It’s quite freeing. Because you just have to trust your skills.”
Chef Monique Fiso foraging for Hiakai restaurant back in 2019.
Fiso’s skills are formidable.
She was one of just 24 chefs from around the world selected to compete on Netflix’s The Final Table. When Gordon Ramsay came here to make his television show Uncharted, Fiso took him to Rakiura Stewart Island to hunt goat and dive for pāua.
In 2021, Fiso won an Ockham NZ Book Award for Hiakai: Modern Māori Cuisine, a book that expanded on the philosophy of the restaurant – the 30-seater that served a degustation-only menu featuring foraged food and experimental techniques (consider the bread course: Toasted rēwana, wakame-spiked butter and tītī oil).
Fiso was described as “the country’s most important chef” and “a modern day food warrior” – but her first year out of the restaurant was not straightforward.
“2024 was a wild ride, so to speak,” Fiso says. “Just after closing the restaurant, I was hit by a car.”
She doesn’t want to talk much about the accident but remembers it was a beautiful evening in Pōneke Wellington. She remembers smiling at the person crossing the road towards her. And then she was in hospital with a concussion, fractured knee and a sprained elbow.
“I had scrapes and bruises head-to-toe.”
She considers herself lucky.
“Vehicle versus pedestrian accidents are way more common than you think and I’m incredibly grateful to still be here.”
Fiso was back in the kitchen not long after the accident, food styling for television’s Hui Hoppers.
“It was a real test for me physically. I was still in recovery, but didn’t want to miss the opportunity to work on a wāhine-led kaupapa Māori series.”
Cooking outside the confines of a restaurant has made room for projects like Hui Hoppers – and the upcoming Cloudy Bay Circle lunch at Mincher Garden.
Mincher Garden, the privately owned property in Coatesville where Hiakai chef Monique Fiso will cook next month.
“It’s a bit more of an open canvas,” says Fiso.
The menu for the $140-$170 Cloudy Bay lunch will be wine-led (“each varietal has a ton of character which makes our job easy in a way”) and uses the location’s edible herbs, florals and greens.
“It’s also Katie and I going ‘what do we feel like cooking right now?’ We wanted to capture the feeling of summer – luscious kōura rolls on arrival, juicy tio, kawakawa cured hāmana . . .”
The dish Fiso is most excited about is one she’s dubbed “Lamb Bone Thugs” utilising caul fat sourced from a small independent farm and old-school sausage-making techniques.
“If you’re cooking in a restaurant every night, you have somewhat of a set concept that you’re working to, day in and day out. With this, you’re really catering to that occasion.”
Hiakai chef Monique Fiso is promising “juicy tio” on her Cloudy Bay Circle menu.
Recent hospitality liquidation headlines have highlighted how increasingly hard it is to earn a living from a restaurant. Fiso’s advice to other chefs looking to exit the industry?
“In brief, there’s a whole world out there. And there are so many different ways to be a chef and there are so many different ways to express yourself. You’ve just got to follow your heart and your passion.”
Hiakai would, arguably, have been a sitter for a star in New Zealand’s first Michelin Guide, only announced in June this year.
“I just don’t aspire to that with my māhi,” says Fiso. “I think all things happen as they’re meant to. I really believe that.
“Things happen for a reason and they happen when you’re ready for them, and you might not recognise it at the time but then when you look back you go, ‘yeah that was the right move’.”
Cloudy Bay Presents: Lunch at Mincher Garden with Monique Fiso at Coatesville’s Mincher Garden on November 14.
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Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016 and is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk, with a focus on stories about food and the hospitality industry.