A Michelin star, a new season of his television show – and a humbling moment in China. Chef Ben Bayly talks to Kim Knight about a very big year. <\/p>\n
Turns out not everybody loves raw venison.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThey weren\u2019t really impressed with the tartare,\u201d says a rueful Ben Bayly. \u201cWith
\n New Zealand venison, they prefer it cooked.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
On a reconnaissance trip to China, the chef and owner of Michelin-starred Auckland restaurant Ahi was learning a valuable lesson.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you go to another country to cook New Zealand ingredients, you want to adapt to their flavours. How do New Zealand products integrate with their culture, their seasonings, their flavours?\u201d<\/p>\n
To put this another way, he says, \u201cDon\u2019t take sand to the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m such an idiot. We grow a lot of chillies in the Ahi garden. I make my own sauce, right? And I brought this chilli sauce to go with the tartare. And here I am sitting in Chengdu, famous for its hot pots, famous for its chillies – and I\u2019ve bought chillies from New Zealand? Like, what a donkey.\u201d<\/p>\n
A year later, Bayly was back. Last November, he travelled to Shanghai with p\u0101ua, whitebait, salmon, beef, lamb \u2013 and a film crew.<\/p>\n
The newest season of Bayly\u2019s A New Zealand Food Story (screening on TVNZ from October 31) features everything from salmon attacks in T\u0101kaka to kimchi ice cream in Auckland and culminates with an Ahi restaurant pop-up at luxury hotel W Shanghai \u2013 The Bund.<\/p>\n
Organised after a chance meeting with Tribal Brands Asia (a New Zealand-owned and China-based food and beverage marketing agency), the trip was the first time the show \u2013 a deep dive into the ingredients that drive Bayly\u2019s menus at Ahi \u2013 has filmed episodes overseas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe apparently grow food for 40-45 million people and we\u2019re a country of five million. Where does our food go? Who\u2019s eating it? What story are we telling the world? That fascinates me,\u201d says Bayly.<\/p>\n
Chef Ben Bayly in action at the Shanghai, China pop-up version of his Auckland restaurant Ahi, for season five of A New Zealand Food Story. <\/p>\n
In Shanghai, the menu included Fiordland whitebait fritters with hairy crab, Lumina lamb \u201csteak \u2018n\u2018 cheese\u201d with Yunnan truffle, Gisborne kingfish with burnt cucumber and ponzu avocado sorbet and Northland k\u016bmara with sichuan, mascarpone ice cream, flambe marshmallow and Whittaker\u2019s chocolate crumble. Guests included New Zealand trade, diplomatic and business representatives and five artists whose work was featuring in the 15th Shanghai Biennale of Art.<\/p>\n
\u201cFood production builds a lot of wealth for this country, and I just want people to be proud of that,\u201d says Bayly. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis thing had a life, and someone looked after it and tended to it. There are a whole lot of people behind the scenes you never get to see, and they\u2019re just phenomenal human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n
Actually, says the chef: \u201cThey\u2019re as mad as me, often – that\u2019s the cool thing. You\u2019re in different spectrums of the food industry, but you\u2019re both just really passionate about what you\u2019re doing. Sometimes you don\u2019t know why you\u2019re doing it, but you love what you do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show is a \u201cpassion project\u201d, says Bayly. It\u2019s self-funded, with some financial assistance from the producers who feature, and has screened in around 90 countries worldwide.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s currently working on season six, and treats the 30-40 days a year it takes him out of the restaurant as research and development, marketing, and a handy induction tool for new employees.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got to be able to write a good menu, so I need to go visit these people. You have to invest in the knowledge. We just get to film it too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Has he seen New Zealand\u2019s food story change over the decades he\u2019s been cooking?<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember visiting a lamb farmer. He didn\u2019t know how he was going to put diesel in his tractor, the lamb price was so low. There was a drought in Australia, they\u2019d culled a lot of animals and flooded the international market and then New Zealand lamb prices had come down … What I\u2019ve seen is the struggle. Whether it\u2019s a weather event, or events out of our control.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bayly says if you make a product better, you can sell it for more. But if you can tell its story better, then, he is convinced, that\u2019s reflected in how it tastes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see a lot of farmers, for example, who really care about their land and really care about what they do. They know they\u2019re just custodians for a short time. Living and working in a city versus having the opportunity to get out to the countryside and see the engine room of New Zealand – it\u2019s very inspiring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chef Ben Bayly at the source of the T\u0101kaka-hatched salmon that features on the menu at Ahi. <\/p>\n
The new season covers everything from Hastings\u2019 meatball festival to a Wonky Box depot in South Auckland where rescued produce is sorted and packed for delivery. At a salmon hatchery in T\u0101kaka that uses water from Te Waikoropup\u016b Springs, he\u2019s terrorised by 40kg breeding fish (\u201cthey were like sharks!\u201d). And at a factory on the North Shore, he tastes kimchi ice cream and decides to put Little \u2018Lato Gelato\u2019s raspberry lamington flavour on Ahi\u2019s dessert menu.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s coming soon,\u201d he promises. \u201cThe first time we did it was on camera and the meringue was burning. But I kind of like that. You want to show your mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bayly first encountered Little \u2018Lato at a supermarket in the Coromandel, near the patch of land his family camps on in summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy brother\u2019s got this old Nuffield 1953 tractor … we put the kids on the back of the tray and I\u2019m driving … it\u2019s just like the Kiwi dream for me. You go down, you get an ice cream … that\u2019s New Zealand food to me. You don\u2019t realise it when you\u2019re growing up, but it\u2019s those memories of the food you had.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat experience I had as a kid, having a 50 cent popsicle? To the day I die, we\u2019ll have that as our refresher course. We could write a book on how many ice blocks we\u2019ve made here with whatever fruit is in season.\u201d (For the record, guava has recently replaced kiwifruit).<\/p>\n
Chef Ben Bayly’s travels for the new season of A New Zealand Food Story included a trip to the Hawke’s Bay where he met The Limery owner Dianne Downey (right). <\/p>\n
Bayly was filming Food Story\u2019s Shanghai episodes when the news broke that Tourism New Zealand was bringing the Michelin Guide here. Seven months later, at the inaugural restaurant awards, Ahi was among the 14 that received one star. Meanwhile, Bayly\u2019s second Auckland restaurant, Origine, made the \u201cselect\u201d list and Queenstown\u2019s Aosta received a Bib Gourmand.<\/p>\n
Ahi was originally conceived as a casual restaurant. Today, it\u2019s firmly in the fine dining space. It offers a la carte, but the signature New Zealand Food Story menu (four snacks and four courses) is $195 a head, with an optional $150 beverage pairing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s naturally gone like that,\u201d says Bayly. \u201cHolistically, it\u2019s just gone in this direction and sometimes you\u2019ve got to stay out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Post-Michelin, he\u2019s had to change Ahi\u2019s booking system to ensure loyal customers can still get a table and has also cut back on the number of diners served (from 130 a night to between 90 and 100) to ensure standards remain high. In turn, Origine has shifted its French focus to become \u201ca bistro by Ahi\u201d (think chicken and beef cheek main courses under $40, and luxe ingredients like p\u0101ua more judiciously reimagined as a school tuck shop \u201ctopper\u201d).<\/p>\n
Chef Ben Bayly at Ahi. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
\u201cI love p\u0101ua so much,\u201d says Bayly. \u201cIt\u2019s probably one of my top three or five ingredients. Kind of like a mushroom, super umami, the colour of it … there\u2019s no other seafood like it … but it\u2019s so freakin\u2019 delicious, especially when you cook it right.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Shanghai, the Ahi team served it with vinegar purchased with help from a local chef.<\/p>\n
\u201cI go \u2018Right, we need a vinegar to balance this dish – in this crazy wall of vinegars, which should I choose?\u2019 I used Chinese flavouring equivalents … going through the markets and finding their version of what I use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bayly was not going to make the chilli mistake twice. The greatest compliment, he says, was when a guest told him, \u201cOh, I thought there was a Chinese chef cooking\u201d.<\/p>\n
More fine food <\/p>\n
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016. She is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk with a special interest in food and hospitality reportage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Michelin star, a new season of his television show – and a humbling moment in China. Chef…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1443,315524,1975,169011,15361,169,607,156,564,2082,315525,13635,40484,54677,4505,111,139,69,14444,6926,3747,1305,2737,301,417,437,303,6923,379],"class_list":["post-643581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-about","tag-ahis","tag-at","tag-bayly","tag-ben","tag-chef","tag-china","tag-entertainment","tag-food","tag-for","tag-humbling","tag-knight","tag-learned","tag-michelin","tag-moment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-popup","tag-season","tag-shanghai","tag-show","tag-star","tag-talks","tag-television","tag-tv","tag-very","tag-what","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643581","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=643581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}