Fab fare in the middle of nowhere
Home is where the heart is for Jeremy Rameka. The Pacifica owner-chef lost his dad during lockdown, and recently had the sale of his award-winning eatery fall through, but he has big plans for his hometown of Ka¯kahi, he tells Marty Sharpe.
Jeremy Rameka would really rather live without the attention. Leave him with a few kitchen utensils and an armful of ingredients, and he’ll make a simple but striking dish that will make critics gush. Give him 14 years in a humble weatherboard house in the provinces, and he’ll make it one of the country’s best restaurants.
But don’t expect him to be voluble about his achievements. It just isn’t in him.
It’s fair to say Rameka’s Pacifica restaurant, which he runs with partner Natalie Bulman in Napier, is now a firm feature on New Zealand’s culinary landscape.
magazine recognised it as the country’s best regional restaurant in 2015, 2016 and 2019, and best restaurant overall in 2017.
‘‘Stripping things back to what is important’’ is, essentially, the mantra by which Rameka, 49, is guided.
It’s partly due to this ethos that, for the past five years or so, he’s felt a growing draw to his home, the tiny King Country settlement of Ka¯ kahi, between National Park and Taumarunui.
He and Bulman own a small plot of land on its main street and plan, one day, to move there and build a restaurant.
A move was looking quite likely before lockdown, when they’d found buyers for Pacifica. But the buyers had to pull out due to unforeseen circumstances.
Ka¯ kahi was once a bustling sawmill town and home to 3000 people, with a cinema, three pubs, a school, post office, pool hall, butcher, and baker. There’s not much there now, other than a general store, and about 100 people.
It was home to Rameka’s parents, Willy and Judy, from the 1950s. They met as teenagers. They raised three kids there, Willy working on farms and driving trucks, and Judy as a care worker.
Judy passed away two years ago. In April, two weeks into lockdown, and a few days short of the second anniversary of his wife’s death, Willy, 70, died at home of a heart attack.
It has made the pull to his tu¯ rangawaewae greater than ever for Rameka and Bulman. But a move isn’t imminent.
‘‘Timing is very important. Everything needs to fall in place,’’ Rameka says. ‘‘When all these little bits are in the right place, then it’s time.
‘‘Sometimes when you try to push these things, there’s something missing. You need to make sure it’s all working properly, not just with us.’’
Pacifica remains for sale, but they don’t see it selling soon.
‘‘I think we’ll be here for a while yet because I don’t see who would be nutty enough to buy a restaurant in the current climate. But there is a bit of a buzz now that people are out and about, so who knows,’’ Bulman says.
‘‘We were very close to selling. But I’m actually glad for [the buyers] that the deal didn’t go through. To have come and established a new restaurant at that time would have been terribly hard.’’
They have a fairly good idea of what the Ka¯ kahi restaurant would look like.
‘‘It’ll have a barbecue in the middle. There will be no individual tables.
‘‘It will have a round table around the barbecue, which will be the heart and soul of the place,’’ Rameka says.
‘‘The idea is to scale back, to take out everything that is unnecessary in hospitality, and make it as honest and straightforward as possible.
‘‘That’s what Pacifica is known for, but this will be a step further.
‘‘I always knew Pacifica was part of the learning curve toward the next step. Initially I didn’t see it involving Ka¯ kahi. I came round to that,’’ he says.
Opening an intimate, bespoke degustation restaurant in the middle of nowhere seems a bold step, but it’s not as bold as some might think, says Bulman, and Rameka would not be the first wellknown chef to open a restaurant in a remote location.
‘‘I imagine diners would initially likely consist of people who already travel large distances to dine at Pacifica. For a lot of our customers, Ka¯ kahi will actually be closer to them. I think a lot of people will look forward to [going] to a different place,’’ she says.
Being a short drive from the likes of National Park, O¯ hakune, Tu¯ rangi and, at a stretch, Taupo¯ , certainly makes Ka¯ kahi a viable location.
The youngest of three, Rameka was a ‘‘mischievous kid’’. He left Taumarunui High School at 14, and spent five years in and around the area working on farms or in the bush, before heading to Australia, where he cut his teeth and honed his craft in myriad kitchens and cuisines.
‘‘It’s been a long journey to get home because, for many years, I didn’t want to go home. It had nothing for me. Farming and forestry didn’t interest me,’’ he says.
His brother Peter moved back there a few months ago after decades in the mines in Australia, and his sister Kerry lives a short distance away in Piriaka.
‘‘We have a lot of family there. We’ve always felt a strong tie to home. I can’t say I like all the memories I have of the place, but I do love it,’’ he says. ‘‘It’s a little gem,’’ says Bulman, who hails from the coastal town of Aberystwyth in Wales.
‘‘Getting back there has been in our minds for a long time, so we’ve given it a lot of thought,’’ she says.
‘‘But until we get there, we’ll be putting all our concentration into this,’’ she says, pointing around Pacifica.
‘‘It’s not something you can do with less than
100 per cent focus. The lockdown was a great time to think about these things, but it also created its own difficulties, and we’re in a position now where, like others, we have to dig deep to keep going,’’ she says.
‘‘While we are fortunate to have a very loyal following, locally and domestically, that obviously includes people who have themselves been affected [by the lockdown]. The international market vanished overnight, of course.’’
‘‘On the bright side, now that we’re in level 1, we expect the number of diners will get to about 70 per cent of what it usually was.’’
Rameka’s not one for doing things by halves. A few years ago, he taught himself to swim properly by watching YouTube clips and practising in Pandora Pond, an estuary near Napier.
That led to him doing a few small triathlons, then he met a bloke who’d competed in the Taupo¯ Ironman, which involves a 3.8km swim, a 180km cycle and a 42km run.
Rameka signed up. He’s competed in the 2016,
2018 and 2019 events.
‘‘He is very extreme,’’ says Bulman.
‘‘He’s one of those freaks who don’t need much sleep. That’s how he fits everything in. He’ll get home from work at one in the morning, but still be up by five to get on his bike and cycle for 2-3 hours’’.
His bike is set up on a machine in their living room. He and fellow riders in living rooms in Europe and the United States meet in a virtual world and cycle the great race courses.
‘‘I’ve always liked sports. I’m not good at it. I just do it. It takes me away from everything. It’s probably the only thing that can take me away from thinking about other things. Especially when you’re in the water. You have to be concentrating on how to breathe, or you drown.’’
A lot of that thinking lately has been about his dad. A stern man, he had softened in last few years, and the pair were closer than they’d ever been.
‘‘Sometimes it’s better the devil you know. Dad was strict. He raised us so we knew what we could and couldn’t do.
‘‘Then he changed in the last few years. He became Mr Nice Guy. It took us a while to learn how to deal with that, but it was good. Real good.’’
‘‘My brother and I were talking recently about how dad used to be. We didn’t realise how important the things he taught us were until we got older. He was very self-disciplined. He was harder on himself than anyone else. We see that now, but we didn’t see it at the time.’’