Guests will arrive in the candlelit dining room with live violin music and there will be a four-course menu shaped by fire-led cooking and seasonal produce from St George\u2019s gardens.<\/p>\n
Head chef and owner Francky Godinho said he learned to cook 40 years ago on his family\u2019s farm in Goa, India, where \u201celectricity was a luxury\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother and my father fed seven kids day in, day out, cooking on a fire, so it is just going to be natural for me.\u201d <\/p>\n
Godinho said everything except the refrigerator would be switched off for the event and diners could expect a cosy, candlelit meal \u2013 although he was tight-lipped about what was on the menu.<\/p>\n
But he said about 90% of the produce cooked was grown metres away from the kitchen in the restaurant\u2019s garden.<\/p>\n
A plate from St George’s Restaurant in Havelock North. Photo \/ Natalie McNally<\/p>\n
The restaurant\u2019s wood fireplace would help keep diners warm on a June night.<\/p>\n
Godinho said the evening would take attendees back to how communities used to live and help them better connect with their dining partners.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be very romantic as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said it was important to hold the event on World Environment Day because \u201csmall things help\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally, you don\u2019t see restaurants do this sort of thing. So I think it\u2019s a different idea, it\u2019s a little bit of a unique approach as well, but for us it\u2019s a natural.\u201d<\/p>\n
Godinho said spaces for the evening were filling fast and encouraged anyone interested to book their seats via Humanitix or through the St George\u2019s Restaurant website.<\/p>\n
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke\u2019s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guests will arrive in the candlelit dining room with live violin music and there will be a four-course…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[37364,7793,31424,6217,4381,5972,22503,273,2082,2070,13800,22220,47034,1976,25140,111,43,139,529,69,2539,10270,2552,25809,66931,22187,377],"class_list":["post-438909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-appliances","tag-bays","tag-candlelit","tag-cooking","tag-customers","tag-day","tag-dining","tag-environment","tag-for","tag-full","tag-giving","tag-going","tag-havelock","tag-hawkes","tag-lights","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-restaurant","tag-restaurants","tag-service","tag-turning","tag-unplugged","tag-unusual","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438909","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=438909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}