Apparently I am anti industry competitions. Apparently thru my blogs I have conveyed the impression that I don't rate competitions as necessarily being of relevance!

It would be quite true to say that I have been known to have the occasional rant about the self importance that various publications attach to their pronouncements over who 'they' rate to be the 'best', and it would be fair to say that the occasional cuss has been heard to escape my lips when I read various commentaries on restaurants.

But!

We have been here a long time, and NZ is a very small country and we go back along way with a number of journalists and sometimes our cynicism for the whole process is simply based on a weariness for the self promotion that is more often than not attached to the release of any 'Top Restaurants'.

It is our longevity that affords us the luxery of being able to stand back from the whole process, and quite deliberately opt out. Over the years we have built up a customer base who like us enough to want to come back and who recommend other people to come too, so we get our fair share of the local dining out trade, without having to advertise our wares, and I am enormously grateful for that fact, becos it wasn't always that way.

When we started out, we were as keen as any new business to get our name out there - to make potential customers aware of our presence. That was back in 1986, back before the internet even, and word of mouth, while a very effective way of spreading word about a business, was in those days very slow. There were no blogs, or twitter or facebook to spread information virally. Word of mouth meant, literally, word of mouth.

Thanks to Keith and Pauline Mayhill and the local chapter of the then Food and Wine Society ( with whom ironically, a decade later I had a spectacular falling out with! Not the Mayhills - they remained friends for ever, but the subsequent people within the Society who deigned to tell me how they felt I should write a menu for one of their functions and correct a few of my other percieved faults...), we were finalists in a National award very early on.

We felt a little bit like pretenders going to the awards dinner in Auckland, in the company of restaurant owners who had been around much longer than us, but we coped, and there is no doubt that the subsequent local newspaper commentary lifted our profile.

And then we got to feature in the Listener/Montana Awards that ran for a number of years,  which divided NZ into regions, and licensed and BYO restaurants - all of which we got certificates for, and which I duly hung on the wall, becos thats what you did with certificates.

Later, there were Beef and Lamb, and Cuisine - and more certificates.

And then one nite in the restaurant, I happened to overhear a customer leaving who commented on the fact that the certificates were all rather old and that got me to thinking.

There were no recent certificates amongst those on the wall, becos by that stage we had decided to opt out of the competition process. And it occurred to me that it was therefore a bit tragic to have certificates hanging around, that really we attached no relevance too. So they came down - probably the same nite, becos when I get a bee in my bonnet, I tend to need to act there and then, and I would be very surprised if you will ever see another certificate on the wall at Somerset.

Grant Allen, who now writes for the Sunday Herald, and who used to be one of the partners in 'Pierres' restaurant in Wellington, where Rick worked prior to our coming up to Tauranga, told us once that the problem with winning restaurant awards, was that the resulting publicity would bring a wave of people to your door, who weren't your normal customer base, and their attitude could be best summed up as a need to prove their superiority. The restaurant may have won an award, but these people were out to prove that it wasn't actually that good, therefore by definition proving the superiority of their critical faculties. Or so they figured.

And it was true. You would end up with 2 types of mismatch. Those sorts of people that Grant alluded too, and also other people who came becos they'd read about you, but then didn't like what you did, becos there were no french fries to go with the mains, or the wine list had unfamiliar wines on it, or...we were outside their comfort zone, and serving them and making them happy was a major mission.

Sometimes it worked. Sometimes you would get people who came with attitude, and who we were able to turn, and who ended up actually relaxing and enjoying themselves, and even returning. And in other instances, they were just so spectacularly horrible ( one or two people are seared on my brain for ever!), that nothing we could ever do, would ever make them happy, becos they really didn't want to be made happy.And those people you don't actually want back.

So competitions and awards have always been a mixed blessing to us - our focus has always instead been on building a customer base grounded very much in the local community. We never wanted to be a tourist restaurant - one that saw a constant flow of new faces every nite, of people just passing thru.
We do get tourists, and with the internet and our website, more and more are finding us, and becos not every seat in the restaurant is occupied every nite, I am always very happy to see those customers. They add to the mix, and are more often than not a delight on all sorts of levels.

But we will not go in competitions so as to attract people to come to us.

However. That said about us, I do understand that for any new business, or a winery in the overcrowded local market, a positive result in a competition and the resulting publicity will attract attention. Attention that is otherwise very expensive to create - either by advertising, or by getting on the road and trying to flog your wares. It is hard to stand out and draw potential customers to you. And we all need customers....

So when I got an email last week from a journalist wanting to track down the Ellsgrove olive oil people becos they'd just won an award, I emailed Sue and Trevor, who are Ricks Aunt and Uncle, wanting to know how come we hadn't heard about the award. And was mortified to be told on the phone subsequently by Sue, that she knew my attitude to competitions and therefore hadn't been intending telling us.

Hoisted by my own petard! I begged to differ with Sue, and told her that I thought the award was great recogniton for all their hard work over the years, and their scrupulous adherence to producing a magnificent single estate extra virgin olive oil. And we were genuinely delighted for them.
We trumpet their oil in the cookschools constantly - have done for years. Good friends of ours here in the Bay of Plenty also produce a beautiful olive oil which we sell, and I get approached regularly by other producers, and have to regretfully say no, becos, just as with the wine list, you have to sometimes know when  enough is enough, although its never especially easy.

But below is the press release from the competition, confirming just how good Ellsgrove is. We didn't need the judges to tell us that, but if it makes some other people out there decide to try their oil, then so much the better. And that is where competitions can be very useful!

 

The ghastly weather of the weekend has encouraged me to spend most of the time curled up with my old diaries, as I plow my way thru the past 25 years. Made very heavy going of the 2000 and 2001 years, with copious amounts of reading  to absorb. I wrote lots and lots over those months, becos there was alot going on back then, and my diaries have always been where I let stuff loose, so I guess it stands to reason that I wrote as much as I did.

Having a day off today though from all the reading, cos am a bit over myself at the moment... and need to live a bit more in the present!
 
We have a large function on at the restaurant tonite for a special person's birthday, and are having to turn bookings away, which is never a process I derive any satisfaction from I have to say, but Tonys party tonite, will commandeer the entire restaurant, and hopefully the deck and courtyard, if the blue skies we are currently enjoying, continue to stay around.

We don't actually close the restaurant off for private functions, preferring to do them as outcatering jobs, and leaving the restaurant for a la carte dining, and that was the original intention with this party. But as numbers grew the decision was made that not everyone would fit in the house where the party was to be held should another cyclone decide to head our way, and it would be safer all round to use the restaurant.

And with some people, with whom you have the kind of length of association that we do in this instance, then you just don't hesitate, and a,"No, we don't close of the restaurant for private bookings' becomes, without any effort at all, ' Of course, we can".

One of the aspects that makes this business a bit tricky on occasion, is that you simply can't and shouldn't treat all people with the same template of programmed responses. But getting that right all the time, and knowing when to be accomodating, and when it isn't going to work, are all what makes life varied and interesting...

As I sit doing some work at my desk, photos I've downloaded onto the computor flick randomly across my screen as a screen saver, and being the prolific photo taker that I am, they are many and varied and go back a few years now. A couple of our recent trip to the South Island, have just come up, which got me to thinking about one other aspect that I meant to get back to mention in a blog.

Prior to leaving Tauranga, I'd arranged a meeting at the Akaroa Salmon processing factory, becos we were interested to have a look at the source of the salmon that we use in the restaurant. We were also going to go out to Akaroa itself to get taken out to the fishery, but the weather wasn't playing ball, and the sea cutting up too rough for that to be feasible.

So the factory it was, and we arrived just at the tail end  of the days catch being processed. We buy our salmon from them as whole fish, minus the internal organs obviously, and do the filleting  and pin boning ourselves, but it would appear that we are in the minority and most of the fish, that goes out of the factory has been filleted, and sent out fresh, or smoked through either a hot smoke or a cold smoke. And that entire process is done by hand - extraordinarily labour intensive. They even have a 70 year old man who spends his day slicing the sides of smoked salmon, one after another, after another. He is apparently referred to as a 'legend', and nice to think his extraordinary  focus is celebrated.

Reminded me of the best chapter in Anthony Bourdains latest book 'Medium Raw', when he describes the working day of the fish filleter who spends his time exclusively breaking down and filleting the range of fish used at Le Bernadin, one of the top fish restaurants in America. Th glowing terms with which Anthony eulogised over this mans skill level, captured the essence in my mind of what craft is all about. Looking in from the outside, such repetition can seem boring, but the degree of skill that these people build up, should really be considered aweinspiring.

They smoke over manuka chips, and  I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by both the taste and the texture of the cold smoked, becos what I've eaten previously has never appealed. So much so that whenever we have our own smoked salmon on the restaurant menu, we always insert the word 'hot' to differentiate it from what I've considered an unappetising alternative. I learnt something - cold smoked salmon is acutally very pleasant, or at least, it can be.

Akaroa is a small operation compared to some of the others in NZ - Tom did  give me the figures of processed fish in a year, and I diligently wrote them down, somewhere, and have subsequently misplaced them, but the whole operation gave the distinct impression of being focused on quality and hand processing.

A great pile of faxes were coming in from food business's all over NZ, with their weekly or daily orders... We find alot of restaurants specify Akaroa salmon on their menu, just as we do here at Somerset, and that has significance to us when we see it in other restaurants becos we know that the salmon is going to be of superb quality.

Regretably one of the trends we have observed over the years we've been here is that salmon has dropped away in popularity quite considerably - and the comment we most often hear from people is that 'its too oily and strong tasting and leaves an unpleasant residual taste in the mouth.' And alot of the salmon you eat these days does exactly that.

We use it periodically in cookschools, and I jolly people along in every class, to get them to try the Akaroa, telling them if they've screwed up their noses at the idea of salmon, that they're going to be pleasantly suprised, becos Akaroa salmon tastes like salmon used too. Its a rich fish but it doesn't have that intense oiliness of some, that is go offputting.

I am told it is to do with the feed, and what the export markets want. Akaroa don't export so they concentrate on the requirements of the local market, and it shows in the end product.

We smoke over rice and oolong tea  with other flavourings, in a wok in the kitchen becos we don't do especially large quantities at any one time, but Tom gave us a bag of manuka chips to bring home, and along with the wood fired stove, I think a small smoker has been added to the wish list for this year... Gotta have those dreams!

Their operation is very slick, and anyone can order direct from them, and have a polybin of salmon delivered direct to their door by overnite courier. They indicated they were very happy to process domestic orders as well as commercial.

As people who have been coming to cookschools are aware, we have been using the ricotta, the yoghurt and the mozzarella from Clevedon Buffalo for some time now.

We were introduced to Helen at the Clevedon market last year, and she encouraged us to go out to the farm, meet her husband and have a look at the buffalo. As I mentioned in a blog written at the time, we drove away from the farm, hugely impressed by the vision of the two of them, and their tenacity to go the distance, and with a distinct sense of obligation to support them by buying what they produced.

That means that every week now, we take delivery of buffalo yoghurt, glorious little balls of mozzarela and also the ricotto.

This link is to a Country Calendar documentary on them, that I thought made fascinating viewing.

We don't carry enough stocks to onsell the products, but I know Culinary Council in Gate Pa do, as does Catharine at The Village Pantry in Te Puna.

The ricotta is drier than most of the others we've tried - we're using it in parcels at the moment, that are flavoured with thyme, and served with the mushroom soup in the restaurant, and as an accompainment to the quinoa salad in the current cookschool series.

The mozarella, Rick has used with caramalised onions on a cream cheese pastry base,  for the restaurant menu,  which has been enormously popular, and has been a nice side step from the more conventional treatment of matching mozarella with tomatoes and basi.

And the yoghurt, which is thick and unctuous and divine, gets used in anything we need yoghurt. Its simply the best.

We are having a nice Saturday nite at the restaurant - and by that I mean we're full ( which is always a positive start to proceedings!), and there is a lovely low hum of conversation, from relaxed people who are enjoying themselves.

Last nite I came back over to the house twitchy, becos we'd had difficult customers in - people who did things like get up, mid way thru their meal, when their BYO bottle of wine was drunk, and headed over to the supermarket across the road to top up with another bottle; a man who complained that his medium steak wasn't, when in fact it was a textbook example of medium; another table who'd booked as a 9 and turned up as a 6, without any thought to ringing ahead to say their numbers had dropt; and people who were just generally demanding in a way that left us all feeling drained...

The contrast between the 2 nites just serves to remind me, that it doesn't matter how much money you have spent on your decor, or how fabulous your food or wine list is - if people don't appreciate what it is that you do, then it is just going to make you miserable. And even for a restaurant as long established as us, we have nites when I come back over to the house wondering quite why it is that I own a restaurant! Fortunetly though, they are few and far between. Most of the time it is like tonite - a  lovely feeling emanating from the floor - that wonderful confluence of happy people enjoying themselves. And that after all, is what it is all about.

 I tell the staff in their initial training manuals, that we are not about maximising the spend per seat; we are instead all about ensuring that people enjoy their visit enough that they are going to want to come back. Return trade is what makes businesses' like ours viable.
And interestingly tonite - of the 18 tables that we have,( 19 in fact cos one is being turned;) I personally only know the people at 3 tables,  which for me is a very low percentage. Usually I would know at least half, but tonite I don't and I'm not sure if thats becos we have lots of out of towners, or what the reason is- but I look on it as positive becos any business needs new blood coming thru the door all the time. As much as I love my regulars, and we have some formidably loyal customers, I am also acutely aware that we need to be expanding our customer base all the time. Nites like this prove to me that we are, and that is all good.

Tonite was the last nite in awhile that I'll walk over to the restaurant in daylight, given the clocks go back overnite,  which is cause for some sadness, becos as much as I enjoy the change in the seasons and the variation that it brings,( I'm now eating feijoas for breakfast which I love!), I have to say I've postively luxeriated all this week in the glorious late autumnal light that we've been getting in the evenings. Its been beautiful, and I don't feel quite ready to say goodbye...

We've had a good catchup kind of week becos we're between cookschool series which frees up our days considerably, and our last major wedding for the season is over. That has meant lots of free time,  so have put my feet up and read a couple of books, and gone up the Mount an extra couple of times during the week, and am just now at the point where I'm starting to do some more focused work at my desk.  Whereas Rick has mowed things, and cut things and sprayed things - making the property look spic and span! For now!  Stuff to plan for going forward, and I'm finding the energy and enthusiasm to start thinking about it all.

I mentioned in the February newsletter that we were going to be getting 2 pig carcasses a month from Free Range Farms, and that having already tried the pork, raised organically and free range up in the Kaimais, we were feeling pretty good  about this new direction, even though we were going to be required to learn some new skills to use all the pork on a carcass up, and in doing so, make it viable. Picked up on a Neil Perry recipe in the latest Vogue Entertainer, which looked lovely  - and one we might try for friends who are coming home for dinner on Monday nite; and Rick has put pork croquettes on the menu, done in the Spanish style, which is all intended as ways of using up the pork, that we don't otherwise roast or braise or...
I can even feel a special evening coming on - just focused on pork in all its glory! Hmm...

Sally from the farm has also informed me that the Village Butchery in Katikati will be stocking their pork from now on, so if you want to source the very best of NZ pork I suggest you try there. They are having an introduction on Thurs 9 April from 1 pm, with free hot roast pork samples, and I think Rick and I will mooch out in the afternoon to say hi, and offer our heartfelt support for what they are doing, becos we think its pretty awesome!

Will head up the Mount in the morning and brunch afterwards, as you do! - and then drive up to Auckland for a late lunch with my extended whanau which promises to be interesting, as family get togethers always are.. We're hoping to carry on to dinner at Jeremy Schmidts new restaurant in Mt Eden  before we head for home, and 2 indignant dogs who will not have enjoyed been left by themselves all day. They see it as their god given right to have human company...

This link is to an article in Life and Leisure magazine on Jennifer Boggiss and her family and the growth of their vanilla business, Heilala Vanilla.

We have been using their vanilla since the very  early days, becos we like and respect them enormously ( always a good place to start I find!), and love the vanilla itself.

We go thru an amazing amount of vanilla and spent lots of time in cookschools convincing people that its worth using the real thing. Recently I've been converted to their paste, which is an even more convenient way of getting my much loved vanilla hit!

 Rick and I were over at the restaurant this morning, sorting thru some of the myriad detail that we need to get our heads around , for the upcoming cookschool trip to France, when Rachel from Flaveur bakery dropt off our Friday delivery of bread. We get a delivery twice a week - on a Wednesday and Friday to coincide with cookschools, and the loaves we don't use in the cookschool we onsell to people who appreciate the difference of naturally produced, artisinal bread.

Normally I'm in the cookschool when the bread arrives, so no time for a chat - but today we were able to have a catchup up on what is happening in our respective worlds. She was saying that they are trying to get a baker from France to come and join the business and help them grow the next step - after 2 years of doing all the baking between the 2 of them, they're realising the necessity of sharing the load a little. Something I can strongly identify with. Interestingly they've had no problems generating lots of interest from bakers keen to shift to NZ - the difficulty now lies with convincing the immigration powers that be, that a baker trained under a master baker for years in France, has a level of skill and expertise, that just isn't found on the local labour market. Because we simply don't have the layers of  heritage in producing bread in the true artisinal fashion.

Flavuer bread delivered this am, and still warm to touch from the ovens.

We make our own bread at the restaurant, and have always done so. In the early days it was becos there simply wasn't any good bread commercially available, so we played around with doughs and starters and learnt all sorts of things along the way. We are now strongly identified with the olive bread that we make and serve at night, that isn't quite a foccacio - more correctly it should be called an olive flat bread. 3 loaves are made every day, and we serve it with olive oil from Ricks Aunt and Uncle in the Hawkes Bay- Ellsgrove Oil- and butter( which from this week on, will be our own homemade butter! - (see previous blog on our butter making endeavours.)

The bread we make.

I have often talked about a desire to open a bakery, and make proper bread - an idea my husband has always pooh hoed, as unrealistic, and I hate to concede that he is probably right. ( I'm never keen on conceding anything really!)

There is a balance to be maintained in a business like ours, between making as much of what we sell ourselves, and in doing so, defining who we are - but in also realising that you can't realistically be totally self sufficent. Taken to a literal extreme it would be impossible really. I guess where individual restaurant operators draw the line depends very much on their personal interests, their perception of costings, and their level of expertise.

It has always been important to us to make as much as we can on premise. For that reason we buy in virtually nothing prepackaged. We make our own stocks, sauces, icecreams, pastries, terrines and pates. Some other charcuterie we've bought in - things like black pudding, simply becos we have no expertise in making it. Cheese we buy from good producers, and naturally wine and other alcoholic beverages we purchase from people expert in that field. We don't roast our own coffee, nor make our own tea - although I do like the idea of getting into some herbal tisanes and using herbs from our garden.

I am very capable of getting fired up about an idea or concept, and rushing around with it for awhile, until the more mundane practicalities of how it is going to  sit with our day to day realities and committments, kind of hits me. Sometimes we are able to work out ways  of fitting it in ( and I'm seriously hoping at this stage that the homemade butter experiments of this week, fall into that category.), or I get one of those looks from my husband which tells me that he is not sharing my enthusiasm. Surprising as it may seem to some people, that is usually enough to knock back the idea, becos I am always very aware that any great ideas need to be followed up by the tedium of being made all the time, over and over again. And if Rick doesn't think that is going to work for the kitchen, its not for me to override him. Not unless I'm prepared to be the one to do the work.

I've also become increasingly aware over the years of the importance of a business like ours to support other food businesses, who are making product of a superior quality, and trying to establish a market for themselves.Small artisinal food producers are a relatively new concept in NZ - and the growth in the oldfashioned idea of food markets, coupled with the very modern accessibility of the internet, is breaking new ground  in terms of the public being able to access these products. But the public has to be made aware of the importance of this type of food, and just why it is worth making that little extra effort to source artisinally made food, rather than grabbing stuff off the supermarket shelve during the weekly shop. In the cookschools that we run, we talk alot about where we get product and why we believe it to be superior, and sometimes we take people with us and sometimes we don't - but when I get told ( as I have done twice this week) that coming to the cookschools has completely opened peoples eyes to a whole new way of looking at food and cooking, then I figure we must be doing something right.

It also sits very comfortably with my business ethos to be able to support other like minded businesses -without there having to be any financial gain in the process for us. If you want to be really hard nosed, you could argue I guess, that the more people become food aware, then the less crap they are going to tolerate, and the better for a quality focused food business like ours. But I prefer to think that I'm doing it simply becos it feels like the right thing to do.

We buy bread on a Sunday from the supermarket for sandwiches for our daughters school lunches during the week. It is not unusual for that bread to still be feeling soft 3/4 days later. Whereas with the Flaveur bread, becos there are absolutely no additives or preservatives in it, it goes stale relatively quickly. I find it infinetly curious that people see that as a negative. We don't. I find the concept of bread that stays unnaturally soft over a protracted time frame to be the scary thought - and I have no problem with the idea of buying bread fresh, freezing it if need be - or toasting it the day after.  Certainly that requires a titch more effort and thought - but so does any good cooking, and it is that notion that we all have to learn to re-embrace. Putting time and effort into the food that we eat, is not a bad thing. We have just been subjected to a concentrated advertising campaign over the last 20-40 years telling us that we're silly to bother, when we can buy a ready made product instead. Maybe there was a time when we were inclined to believe that message, but I know for a fact that a vast number of people have become increasingly sceptical and are more and more willing to invest a little time. And its a trend I feel very comfortable about.

Even Courteney, our youngest, who has a tediously boring palate, which I'm seriously hoping she will grow out of one day, loves that on Wednesdays on Fridays there will be a loaf of fresh Flaveur bread waiting for her on the bread board. Its chewy, flavoursome, substantial bread - absolutely superb,  and she devours it with relish. Giving me pause to hope that  we will one day have a break through with some of the other food stuffs that she turns up her nose at!

We are having an exceptionally quiet nite in the restaurant - an annual occurence becos of the Field Days in Hamilton, this week every year. It used to send me into major spins - thinking that no-one loved us anymore, and as a result we were doomed to destitution, but I've learnt to become a little more pragmatic, and just accept it as one of those cyclical trends that happen, which is just the way it is, and no huffing and puffing on my behalf is going to change!! We did a cookschool today,and I sat down tonite and did a box of envelopes ( ie addressed them) for the next newsletter which is due to be printed next week, so doesn't feel like a complete waste of time

We have a major cocktail function to cater for tomorrow for 300 people, so the guys in the kitchen have used the gaps in time tonite to get 380 tiny beef and guiness pies baked, and 400 lamb empanadas assembled, and 400 prawn tails denuded of the hard tail shell, so time has been used fruitfully!!

But the purpose of this blog is to talk about vanilla -which I think it would be fair to say is my all time favourite aroma. We have a large jar of B grade pods here in the bar, in amongst the other product that we sell, and I love it when someone opens it to extract the number of pods that they want ,becos that incomparable aroma gets released into the air, and I get to savour it all over again. As I mention in every cookschool that Rick uses vanilla pods in - I have the scrapped out pods in either a bottle of vodka as my replacement vanilla essence, or in the can of sugar that I use for baking, and I swear that every time I open that can, I smile, becos the smell of vanilla just makes me want to smile - I love it that much!

We're using it in the current c/school series and people are starting to finally twig on to what a difference the real article makes. We are in the very fortunate postition where people we know well - Jennifer and Garth Boggiss of Reunion Food Co - sell us their vanilla , which they grow in Tonga as part of a joint venture with a village there. They sell it to us at a very reasonable price which means that we are in turn able to pass that on to our customers - $1.40 a pod is pretty good value I figure. We pass a pod once Rick has scrapped it, around in classes, just to let people feel and understand that when they buy vanilla it should be soft and malleable - proof that it is still fresh and therefore still has flavour to extract. Similarly we always stock it in glass, which we believe is the only way to ensure that the air is kept off, and it therefore remains worthwhile purchasing.

I read a book on the subject of vanilla - Vanilla, Travels in search of the Icecream Orchid, by Tim Ecott, which brought alive the whole history of the plant and also the reality of people growing and purchasing it in todays world. Made for fascinating reading, and makes me appreciate even more the way the Boggiss' have allowed us to access such an exceptional product at such exceptional value.

(The last customers have now left  the restaurant - and Rick and I, somewhat unusually are here to close up, and my husband is indicating in no uncertain terms that he's ready to go home, so time to sign off, and depart).

There are 2 grades to vanilla - A and B grade. We use B grade in the restaurant, they are slightly smaller than the A grade, but have the same level of vanillin ( the flavouring), and are incredibly good value. I hate to say it, but once you've encountered the real article there is just no going back - everything else tastes a little bit false, a bit off, a bit like a bottle of corked wine, if you catch my drift!!