Chef celebrates our Kiwi flavour Five months after closing Roots suddenly, chef Giulio Sturla wants to extend his food philosophy into Kiwi homes, writes Emily Brookes.
On a recent Thursday night, the kitchen at new Wellington restaurant Atlas was abuzz. There was a star in town: Giulio Sturla, storied chef and the former owner of seminal Christchurch restaurant Roots, which closed abruptly earlier this year after six years in business.
Speaking in advance of the evening’s event, a collaboration dinner focused on Canterbury ingredients, with wine pairing from North Canterbury vineyard Black Estate, a relaxed Sturla insisted the decision to close was not financially motivated.
His marriage, and business partnership, had broken up, and he wanted to spend more time with his daughters.
‘‘It was about wellbeing rather than about the business. It’s about the whole story of the family and [as] the family is not there any more it couldn’t continue, and that’s the integrity of who we are and our philosophy, and our way of doing things.’’
But there’s more to Sturla’s philosophy and now, no longer chained to a restaurant pass, he has a message for New Zealanders.
Sturla, Chilean-born and raised in Ecuador, has been key in championing unique local produce, insisting on knowing the provenance of everything he puts on a plate. And now he wants that to extend to all Kiwi kitchens.
At Roots, the first restaurant outside of Auckland to be awarded Cuisine magazine’s maximum three hats and Restaurant of the Year in 2015, Sturla followed methods popularised by restaurants such as Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark, or Asador Etxebarri in Axpe, Spain: a tasting menu of quirky, experimental dishes that showcase locally sourced and unusual ingredients, using techniques such as fermentation.
Roots featured vegetables and herbs foraged by Sturla and his kitchen team, seafood sourced sustainably and ethically from Lyttelton Harbour and free-range meats reared by local farmers.
It was radical, it was innovative – and it worked. Once the restaurant took off, diners could wait up to two months for a booking to become available. Contemporary hotspots such as Wellington’s Hiakai or Auckland’s Pasture owe a debt to Roots.
So does Atlas, which opened two-and-a-half months ago under the stewardship of head chef James Pask, formerly of now-defunct fine-dining restaurant, Whitebait.
‘‘A lot of the produce we use, we source from specialist suppliers,’’ he said of Atlas’ menu.
‘‘All of our fish is line-caught. Our herbs come from all over the country, and most of them are are organic.’’
And he doesn’t consider Atlas to be fine-dining. In fact, he said, ‘‘most chefs are [going organic where possible] these days. It’s nothing new.’’
Atlas offers an a la carte service alongside the tasting menu which, Pask said, only made up about 15 per cent of orders.
‘‘If you want to come in and spend [only] $70 a head, you can do that here.’’
For the collaboration dinner, Sturla had provided some ingredients that he had foraged in Christchurch and brought with him.
‘‘I think there’s probably 30 or 40 different varieties of herbs that he’s brought up that are going through the dishes,’’ said Pask, ‘‘anything from wood sorrel to ice plant [and] pickled seaweed.’’
The menu for the evening, which comprised five courses plus snacks and a palate cleanser, included the likes of cucumber with elderflower capers and a goat’s milk cream topped with elderflower, a tulip stuffed with Chatham Island crayfish and doused in shellfish sauce, and a lamb belly tartare served with sourdough bread and a butter made from the lamb fat.
A guide on the menu told diners the elderberries came from 5km away, the goat’s milk from 128km, and the butter from 0km (it was made in-house).
Four or five years ago, Pask said, customers wouldn’t have cared about this, but now they wanted to know ‘‘that we have taken the time to investigate the practices and the quality of product and where it comes from.’’
This extends to wine, too, said Nicholas Brown of Black Estate.
These days wine consumers were ‘‘looking for a little more detail or interest,’’ he said.
‘‘For us, being certified organic and using biodynamics, we’re also finding that our customers are wanting to know more about that, the effect on the land, the effect on our staff, the effect on their own health.’’
Demand for quality local ingredients is so high that Black Estate now runs a restaurant.
‘‘Originally, the concept was a tasting room,’’ Brown said. ‘‘But a lot of local producers were finding amazing cheese, venison, lamb, organic produce, beer, and then we had customers who not only wanted to taste wine, they wanted to sit and linger and try food and so that sort of built. Now we’re a restaurant that’s open seven days a week serving local seasonal food.’’
This interest is also reflected in the rising popularity in Kiwi restaurants of chef’s tables, which allow diners to see directly into the kitchen and see what happens to their food before it hits the