The renowned Craggy Range Restaurant was given the highest possible rating, winning three hats.<\/p>\n
Mertens started cheffing 20 years ago and moved to Hawke\u2019s Bay from Auckland in 2020 after Covid-19 closed the restaurants he worked in.<\/p>\n
He moved to Waipawa, where he still lives with his wife and children, and started working for local restaurants like Wallingford Homestead and Vinci\u2019s.<\/p>\n
After living and working in Auckland and the Michelin circuits in Tokyo and New York, Mertens said he still considered the 30-minute journey to work a breeze.<\/p>\n
He joined Elephant Hill in June 2025, which he described as a building-from-the-ground-up situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went in and it was like I had to change everything, from the food offering to getting new staff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conor Mertens won the Innovation and Design Award at the Cuisine Magazine Good Food Awards 2026 for his work at Elephant Hill Winery.<\/p>\n
He said many things were broken in the kitchen, but recalled those times as \u201cfun\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of like that charm about a place where stuff\u2019s not working 100% because you have parameters.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, if I have everything that I need, it\u2019s hard to think. Whereas when you\u2019ve got little constraints, you have to be more creative.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mertens used a lot of fermentation in his cooking and said it was six to eight months before he had the restaurant\u2019s pantry the way he wanted it.<\/p>\n
Mertens resigned earlier in August after the vineyard was placed on the market for the second time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a shame. But I think it kind of caught up in the family wanting to move the business on.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said, given the situation of leaving Elephant Hill, winning the award felt \u201ca little bit bittersweet\u201d, but he was grateful to be recognised for his work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just feel quite humbled and happy by it all. I\u2019m just happy to be recognised.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a Facebook post, Elephant Hill said its kitchen service was \u201cpaused at the moment\u201d, but was still open for wine tastings.<\/p>\n
As one door closes, another opens, with Mertens set to start work in the kitchen at Black Barn Bistro from Thursday.<\/p>\n
Black Barn co-owner Kim Thorpe said executive chef Reinar Christiansen was excited about Mertens coming aboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it feels like a brilliant combination and I\u2019m really excited about it as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mertens said he eventually hoped to one day start his own restaurant.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that\u2019s definitely a process.\u201d<\/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":"The renowned Craggy Range Restaurant was given the highest possible rating, winning three hats. Mertens started cheffing 20…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[74,30857,2346,2546,47035,9218,118795,7022,169,221059,4513,5732,156,2550,35702,47034,5420,31037,4521,287178,111,139,529,69,2539,684],"class_list":["post-583332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-after","tag-appoints","tag-award","tag-awardwinning","tag-barn","tag-before","tag-bistro","tag-black","tag-chef","tag-conor","tag-cooked","tag-elephant","tag-entertainment","tag-even","tag-exit","tag-havelock","tag-hes","tag-hill","tag-meal","tag-mertens","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-restaurant","tag-there"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583332","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=583332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}