Sidart\u2019s final service was last Saturday. Chandra says all five fulltime staff have been paid out and have new jobs. He is now a chef for hire. This weekend, he\u2019ll be helping out at Michael Meredith\u2019s Britomart restaurant Mr Morris.<\/p>\n
Chandra confirmed that, as he was facing the decision Sidart would have to shut, he learned he\u2019d made The Best Chef Awards\u2019 list in Milan, Italy. He was among 421 other chefs, including three others from New Zealand (Tala\u2019s Henry Onesemo, Forest\u2019s Plabita Florence and Jack Cashmore from The Chef\u2019s Table at Blue Duck Station) to receive a \u201cone knife\u201d accolade. Zennon Wijlens (Paris Butter) gained \u201ctwo knife\u201d status and Vaughan Mabee (Amisfield) received the top \u201cthree knife\u201d award at the same competition, described by organisers as \u201cthe biggest global culinary event\u201d.<\/p>\n
Chandra did not attend the awards which were \u201ca huge surprise and very humbling … The confidence [boost] of getting that and then like, \u2018oh, I\u2019ve actually failed – does it really make a difference\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n
Chandra was financed into Sidart by former employers, Sid and Chand Sahrawat. He says he still owes them money and \u201cI have to work something out with them\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lesley Chandra (centre) flanked by former Sidart owners Sid and Chand Sahrawat who helped finance him into the restaurant in 2021. Photo \/ Dean Purcell<\/p>\n
He took over the restaurant in September 2021, but a long Covid lockdown meant he didn\u2019t open for service until December.<\/p>\n
\u201cTimes were great, everyone was going out, the first year was really good, the second was good. Last year and this year, it\u2019s been going down and down and down.\u201d<\/p>\n
He blamed the decline on multiple factors.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are obviously watching their pennies and we\u2019re at the higher end of the market. If you\u2019re going to go out, you\u2019re going somewhere cheaper \u2013 cheap and cheerful. A lot of people used to come for celebrations and anniversaries. That whittled down. And the tourist market was big for us, 60% of our revenue, and that was really, really down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI steadied the ship for as long as I could, but there comes a time when you just say \u2018okay, is this right to keep going?\u2019 My mental health was not doing so well. My creativity \u2013 I was not the chef I wanted to be, and because I\u2019ve got a young family, I had to think about them as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fiji-born Chandra moved to New Zealand as a 10-year-old. He has three children, aged 8, 6 and 3. His first cheffing job was at The Maple Room in Remuera, Auckland. More recently, he had worked at Baduzzi, Cassia, The French Cafe and Sidart.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to say \u2018don\u2019t open a restaurant\u2019 because I think everyone should try. There is a risk to everything and if you do well, the rewards are there.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut this was my first place and I think I was very inexperienced … If I do open another place, it will maybe be much smaller, maybe not even fine dining. There\u2019s a lot of lessons learned from this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sidart is the latest in a string of high-profile Auckland restaurant closures. In 2024, that list included internationally famous chef Peter Gordon\u2019s Homeland and, after 32 years on Ponsonby Rd, SPQR.<\/p>\n
Chandra had attempted to pivot the Sidart menu into a cheaper, Italian-focused offering, but \u201cthe spend was even worse for us\u201d and he\u2019d returned to fine-dining after a three-month trial. He understood the restaurant had been a tough proposition for some diners. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to plan for it, you\u2019ve got to save money for it. Some people were fortunate enough to not have to do that, but we also saw those clients spend their money elsewhere – like going overseas, instead of staying in New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n
He believed it had become \u201charder and harder\u201d for restaurants at the top end.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think now, probably because there\u2019s not many left, those places will probably be doing better now. Summer is coming and it\u2019s been said many times, but hopefully things will get better for hospitality … if you\u2019re in hospitality, you\u2019ve always got to think positively, right? Once you start thinking negative, it\u2019s all over.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s gone backwards for so long, we have to go forwards at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chandra says he\u2019s never been an \u201cInstagram chef\u201d but he hopes his dishes at Sidart created – and evoked – memories.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dream was owning a restaurant. I mean, I did it. I didn\u2019t do it all the way, but I tried. For me, putting a dish out there and someone eats it and they\u2019re like \u2018whoah, this takes me back to my childhood, or a special trip, or flavour\u2019. If I can put that on a plate, I\u2019ve done my job. That\u2019s what I wanted to do. Make people happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016 and is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk. She is a former restaurant reviewer and holds a Masters in Gastronomy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sidart\u2019s final service was last Saturday. Chandra says all five fulltime staff have been paid out and have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[74,51,2346,9248,169,53988,18509,61172,22503,156,3052,6204,61171,2739,10136,111,139,69,26890,2539,4514,60018,3010,686,6027,377],"class_list":["post-78995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-after","tag-auckland","tag-award","tag-chandra","tag-chef","tag-chefs","tag-closes","tag-diner","tag-dining","tag-entertainment","tag-faced","tag-fine","tag-lesley","tag-liquidation","tag-named","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-ponsonby","tag-restaurant","tag-same","tag-sidart","tag-top","tag-week","tag-win","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78995","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=78995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}