From burger queen to spaghetti and a disco ball: An Auckland hospo legend is heading back to the restaurant floor and she can\u2019t f***ing wait. <\/p>\n
One steaming bowl of pork broth and rice. Two bibimbaps (beef and snapper). One dish of daikon kimchi. A second dish of cabbage kimchi.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the problem with going out with me,\u201d says Mimi Gilmour Buckley. \u201cI\u2019m always, like, I want to try EVERYTHING.\u201d<\/p>\n
The restaurant table as a metaphor for life?<\/p>\n
Every story about Mimi must begin with her hospitality pedigree. Her mother Emerald founded some of Auckland\u2019s most infamous venues \u2013 Clichy and Club Mirage and, later, Tatler and Spectator bars.<\/p>\n
As children, Mimi and her sister Sophie stole coins from the till for the jukebox and asked the chefs to cook them \u201cchicken fries\u201d coated in stock powder. Years later, Mimi would open the first of her Mexico restaurants in the old Clichy space. She sold her stake in that chain in 2014 and launched Burger Burger, the brand that began with a 50-seater in Ponsonby before expanding around the country and into multiple Auckland sites.<\/p>\n
Now: \u201cI want to go back to my roots and create a space that embodies everything I love about hospitality. For me, those values come from my family \u2013 especially my Mama \u2013 who taught me that cooking is love, and great hospitality is about making people feel seen and lifted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mimi\u2019s empire is being variously franchised, sold and reimagined.<\/p>\n
Among the changes: next year, Takapuna\u2019s Burger Burger will halve in size to accommodate a Greek restaurant. Next month, the Newmarket store will become Mama, the pizza, pasta and comfort Italian food restaurant Mimi is opening with longtime friends and collaborators Mike Slaven, Joe O\u2019Connell and Leisha Jones.<\/p>\n
Newmarket’s Burger Burger is about to become an Italian restaurant called Mama – opened by friends and collaborators (from left) Leisha Jones, Joe O’Connell, Mimi Gilmour Buckley and (not pictured) Mike Slaven. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
We\u2019d be doing this interview at Mama but, early September, it\u2019s still a construction site.<\/p>\n
Five large skylights have just gone in. Test pot paint colours stripe one wall. An antique cabinet, salvaged from the mechanic who used to own this space, is now a front counter. A floor buffer operates at full noise and, in the kitchen, a ragu is a work in progress (at home, Mimi is trialling at least three different types of focaccia).<\/p>\n
Decamp to Dweji, the next-door Korean where the speciality is pork soup with intestinal add-ons and the manager gently jokes about our entry-level white people selection.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to consider myself a true foodie,\u201d Mimi tells him. \u201cBut I do have a slight challenge with offal … Maybe I just didn\u2019t grow up on it. I have had crispy tripe, which is quite good, but I can\u2019t eat braised tripe. Am I being boring?\u201d<\/p>\n
Her neighbour is curious about the Burger Burger refit. She tells him it just wasn\u2019t doing the dine-in numbers for the floor space, that delivery apps have changed the way people dine (and hot chips don\u2019t always travel well). But she also thinks the economy is turning, and she\u2019s predicting a real-world hospitality renaissance born of a backlash to social media and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople gotta eat,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople gotta eat,\u201d she agrees.<\/p>\n
Restaurants, she tells Viva, have got to adapt.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the last five years, we\u2019ve had Covid, obviously. Then we had this huge hike in wages. Floods. We couldn\u2019t get a leaf of spinach to save ourselves. A shortage of CO2, which they use for weird things that you don\u2019t think about, like sealing fresh chicken. This year, the price of beef has gone up 50-60%. And then we\u2019ve had a massive recession, which means everyone\u2019s spending has decreased.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were losing tens of thousands of dollars a week there for a while. We\u2019re lucky that we had a really solid bank account. I\u2019m grateful that a lot of our landlords have been incredibly understanding …\u201d<\/p>\n
But something had to give. And it was very nearly Mimi.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just had this day where I felt like I couldn\u2019t breathe. And I never don\u2019t know what to do. I\u2019m a person who thrives in chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mimi, 41, has recently accumulated a list of Big Life Events that would floor anyone. Her father died. A friend committed suicide. She experienced post-natal depression after the birth of her son, Augustus (now aged 2), and was diagnosed, officially, with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Her skincare line and wellness app<\/a> became embroiled in an intellectual property stoush. She downsized and moved house<\/a>. And she worried, constantly.<\/p>\n \u201cThe last year has been, like, on my knees desperately. How can I keep doing this?\u201d<\/p>\n Eight years ago, Mimi and husband Stephen Buckley\u2019s first child Olympia was born with a brain injury. She was diagnosed with quadriplegic spastic cerebral epilepsy and her parents were told she would not walk or talk.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s so beautiful and so special. But it\u2019s definitely not without its challenges. It changes you. It changes your life, it changes your marriage. We are part of the furniture at Starship [Children\u2019s Hospital] where we have an amazing team.\u201d<\/p>\n Octavia, her second child, is six. For years, she had a recurring dream of a teenage boy carrying his oldest sister in his arms. She thinks, perhaps, she manifested Augustus.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s the last little perfect piece to our family. But it almost killed me.\u201d<\/p>\n On that day when she couldn\u2019t breathe, Mimi phoned a friend. He told her: \u201cYou\u2019ve got a million ideas in that brain. Sweat those assets. Get busy. Do what you do best.\u201d<\/p>\n And, at the Korean restaurant where she has ordered far too much food for two people, she says, \u201csometimes you have the right conversation with the right person at the right time. I was like \u2018oh my God. He\u2019s f****** right\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Restaurants are in her blood, but when Mimi left high school, she studied photography at Auckland University\u2019s Elam School of Fine Arts. Her doctor father told her, \u201cthis is the last time in your life you\u2019ll get to be free\u201d.<\/p>\n Today: \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019d ever be an artist, but I think it made me a better thinker. You have to create something that stimulates a conversation or expresses something that might be on your mind … It\u2019s kind of what I do in restaurants, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n She is fascinated by the way humans perceive and influence each other. She remembers other art students asking if she was rich. She photographed family friends in their big houses and big ball gowns and big jewellery and then super-sized the shots. <\/p>\n \u201cLike, if that\u2019s what you want to see \u2013 here. Is this real? Does it matter? They were so big, it would almost make you feel uncomfortable and, I don\u2019t know, stimulate conversation? Also, like f*** it \u2013 here they are. They\u2019re awesome. They earned it. Why judge?\u201d<\/p>\n What you see is what you get. A breath of hurricane force air in black Issey Miyake (top, bottom and bag), Marle and LA Tribe. Unfiltered. Quite brutally honest.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve just realised I haven\u2019t been looking at you. That\u2019s another thing about my ADD. If I need to concentrate, I can\u2019t look at your face.\u201d<\/p>\n Her own face, she says, has \u201ca really overactive forehead but you can\u2019t tell because I\u2019ve had a lot of Botox\u201d.<\/p>\n In a 2015 interview, she summed herself up in a single word: \u201cFearless\u201d.<\/p>\n Has life tempered that descriptor?<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d she says, immediately. \u201cIt\u2019s my strength and my weakness. But you have to remember, I\u2019m not doing this blind. I\u2019ve been doing this for a long time, I\u2019m surrounded by good people. I\u2019m never afraid to ask for help.\u201d<\/p>\n She admits her own mother has questioned whether Auckland needs another Italian restaurant.<\/p>\n But, \u201cthe last time I went out for a big night, we ended up at a bar and I swear to God I felt like I was double everyone\u2019s age. Why is there nowhere for mature humans to go and have a slight boogy and a cocktail and not be in a club surrounded by drunk teenagers?\u201d<\/p>\n Mama will be that place. It will have a disco ball and dancing on the tables will not be discouraged. People need this, she says, pointing to the annual customer surveys she conducted at Burger Burger.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just kind of mind-blowing to me, the social isolation. People saying \u2018I find it hard to meet friends\u2019 …<\/p>\n \u201cForever and a day, humans have sat around a table and shared food. Conversation is critical to building a strong community; Well-mannered, capable children who aren\u2019t riddled with anxiety, because they know how it is to be a little bit uncomfortable … I always quote this American chef who said \u2018when you sit at a table, we are all created equal\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course\u201d the new restaurant\u2019s name is symbolic.<\/p>\n \u201cMothers are the centre of the home, or communities, or of bringing people together. That\u2019s what I want to keep doing and try to do really well \u2013 build restaurants that are accessible, fun and consistently really good.<\/p>\n \u201cI came from my mother. I am a mother. What do I want my kids to see? I want them to see a mother who gets up when the times are tough and creates beautiful things and teaches them work ethics and creates a place that people come together.\u201d<\/p>\n Also, she was sick of looking at spreadsheets.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like I\u2019m going through a rebirthing of me as a restaurateur.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just fulltime back in the hospo game and I\u2019m f****** loving it. I can\u2019t wait. I can\u2019t wait to zoom around that floor.\u201d<\/p>\n Kim Knight is a senior journalist on the New Zealand Herald\u2019s lifestyle desk.<\/p>\n More to savour<\/p>\n New chefs, trends – and a Wellington restaurant review<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From burger queen to spaghetti and a disco ball: An Auckland hospo legend is heading back to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[51,1863,30642,36598,36595,2068,36599,156,36601,35838,311,71,36597,33443,36600,2198,1739,3223,5035,36596,111,139,69,3366,2539,3953,5273],"class_list":["post-40438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-auckland","tag-back","tag-ball","tag-buckley","tag-burger","tag-cant","tag-disco","tag-entertainment","tag-fing","tag-floor","tag-founder","tag-from","tag-gilmour","tag-heading","tag-hospo","tag-italian","tag-launches","tag-legend","tag-mama","tag-mimi","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-queen","tag-restaurant","tag-spaghetti","tag-wait"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What Mimi Gilmour Buckley did next: Italian restaurant, Mama, is a work in progress in her old Newmarket Burger Burger site. Photo \/ Babiche Martens. <\/p>\n
Flashback to 2015 and the opening of Burger Burger in Newmarket, Auckland. The site will soon be home to an Italian restaurant, Mama. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n