‘People’s priest’ was a pioneer of fine dining
CSir Des Britten priest, restaurateur, author b December 27, 1939 d February 13, 2020
harismatic restaurateur, TV cooking personality, disc jockey – Father Des Britten did it all over his long and illustrious career. But it was his work with the church and its flock that defined him.
Britten, who was made a knight in 2012, spent 17 years as the face and driving force of the Wellington City Mission, where he was a father figure to hundreds of people a day who came for fellowship, to be fed or in search of financial advice at the mission’s rooms in Newtown.
He became City Missioner in 1993 and the tiny staff he inherited swelled to about 36 during his tenure.
His life as a vibrant restaurateur helped when it came to raising money for the mission thanks to a contact book bulging with names of high flyers and big spenders.
When he left the mission at the age of 73, Britten was still a striking figure as recognisable as he ever was when, in 1964, he opened one of Wellington’s most memorable restaurants, The Coachman, in Courtenay Place.
Anyone who was anyone in Wellington would traipse up the stairs to The Coachman and stumble down again back in the days of drinking and dining excess.
There were ‘‘good things like cream’’ in almost everything, Britten said in one interview. ‘‘They were the days when people sometimes had two entrees, a main course and a dessert, sherry before dinner, wine and liqueurs and then some port. You’d think, ‘goodness me!’
‘‘And in those days portions were huge. We’d send out two pieces of huge fillet steak or half a duck, or half the side of a chicken.’’
The very good wine was served in very good glasses. The best wine was served in the finest crystal. The food was served on expensive, white Thomas china.
For a long time, he kept one of those plates in his cupboard at the City Mission, as a reminder of the affluent old days.
Desmond John Britten was born in Hawke’s Bay in 1939, the son of a sheep farmer.
He was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps but he found the recipe pages in the Farmers Weekly more interesting than the tips on ryegrass and docking lambs.
He grew up with the church. God had always been on his radar. When he left Napier Boys’ High School with no certificates at all to his name, he inquired about entering the church but was told he’d need at least a university degree.
He spent a few years reluctantly working on the family farm but an interest in drama and radio led him to a gig as a disc jockey, first in Napier, then Hamilton, followed by a stint across the ditch in Australia.
Two years later he returned to New Zealand after securing a job in Wellington with the NZBC, where he was a radio announcer for 2ZB. It was here he first coined his signature phrase, ‘‘See you round like a record’’.
Britten was a hit. Thousands of kids would regularly turn up to his Coca-Cola Hi-Fi Club radio show dances in the Town Hall.
But television put paid to his radio career and Britten returned to his love of food, getting work at a mate’s Oriental Bay restaurant, The Copper Room.
It was thanks to a ‘‘dear aunt’’, who gave him £1000, that he was able to start his own restaurant with his wife, Lorraine, to whom he was married for more than 50 years.
With oak tables from Kirks’ closeddown tea rooms and a load of ten-shilling chairs, they opened The Coachman in an old dance studio in Courtenay Place.
Running a fine dining restaurant in 1960s Wellington came with its challenges – gaining a liquor licence being the main hurdle.
Britten recalled his diners swilling booze out of fruit juice glasses, and a brush with the courts, before they were finally granted one.
Lorraine, who died in June 2018, was the stiletto-clad and impossibly glamorous front-of-house. Britten, the head chef, was renowned for his convivial engagement with his customers.
His bonhomie caught the attention of New Zealand’s only television station at the time, and he was soon in front of the cameras. He cut an elegant and charismatic figure on his two prime-time cooking shows, Thyme for Cookery and Bon Appetit in the 1970s. His catchphrase ‘‘Let’s have fun in the kitchen’’ was a true reflection of the man behind the apron, he once said.
By then God had come calling again when, in the last years of the 1960s, the Anglican Church relaxed its rules on entry to the priesthood.
Britten trained for seven years to be a self-supporting priest.
He would gather with a small group of fellow students at his restaurant every Monday night, much to the consternation of the bishop at the time.
He continued his training till 1983 – Lorraine did the last four years with him – when he was finally ordained.
Britten, who went on to become the vicar of St Barnabas Roseneath, said one of the reasons he wanted to be ordained was ‘‘to show people that a priest was not too scared to say damn, shit and bugger occasionally; that we are ordinary people’’.
Serving God and working in the restaurant scene had their similarities, he used to say. A restaurant and a church were both ‘‘people things’’.
‘‘I ain’t no theologian and I don’t profess to be. I am a people priest.’’
The crossover was evident on a practical level, with The Coachman sending regular supplies of soup to the City Mission, where he and his parishioners would help out at its day room.
‘‘From the restaurant, we used to take the prized onion soup that people would pay a fortune for. We’d take bucket-loads of it to the mission,’’ he once revealed.
His work serving the poor and the needy hit closer to home after the stockmarket crash of 1987.
Britten had invested heavily in new premises for The Coachman – away from a then-grubby Courtenay Place to The Terrace. Overnight he lost it all.
‘‘We lost the restaurant, the car, the house,’’ he said in a 2009 interview.
‘‘It took two years, but the decline was relentless. The crash changed my life. It was a big disappointment.’’
By then an ordained minister, he threw himself into that work.
Britten contributed many column inches to The Dominion and The Dominion Post as a food writer, and was a regular food and wine commentator on radio. Lorraine was his plus-one when he was reviewing restaurants and he would memorably refer to her as ‘‘The Redhead’’ when she was delivering her verdict on the meal.
He penned several cookery books, including Cooking with Des Britten and Thyme for Cookery.
In 1995, he was honoured by the Food Service Association for his outstanding contribution to the industry with admittance to the association’s Hall of Fame.
Following his retirement, he was made a Canon Emeritus in the Wellington diocese and was named the 2011 Wellingtonian of the Year. He retired from the City Mission that same year.
To some he was a man of fine food, of fine wine, but ultimately Father Britten was a man of the cloth.