PERFECTLY SEASONED
Simon Gault talks to Kim Knight about the toughest year of his life — and why he’s going back to where it all began
Lunch is done. Short ribs stripped to flat, bare bones; oysters slicked live from their shells. The harbour is a fresh flute of money. Shiny, sparkly, spangly. Chairs pushed back, third bottle on the way. No one is checking the time. Simon Gault has zero time. Skinny legs in skinny jeans walking fast past the bars, the restaurants — the competition.
Once, Gault was the King of the Viaduct. When the Whitbread Round the World Yacht races stopped here in the 1990s, there were two restaurants to namecheck: Kermadec and Gault’s on Quay. You know his face. He was a judge on
MasterChef NZ, he sells chicken stock and Kiwi seasoning in Countdown and pots and placemats in Briscoes. He started the food import business Sous Chef, because he wanted buffalo mozzarella and a whole wheel of parmesan. He’s partnered with retirement village behemoth Metlifecare and flogged joinery for Fletcher Aluminium.
Nourish Group liked the look of his brand so much they signed him as their executive chef. He did 12 years with the Jervois Steakhouse, Shed 5, Fish, The Crab Shack — nine restaurants in total, including waterfront jewel, Euro.
In June, 2015, Gault quit. He said he had not been pushed: “I can categorically tell you that is absolutely not the case.” He said he wanted to have his own restaurant, “my best yet”.
Two years later, at the Viaduct, in the corner next to Soul Bar and Bistro in the space that used to be Mecca and the Bubble Champagne Lounge, Gault is opening that restaurant. At the behest of his daughter, he has called it Giraffe.
It’s six sleeps from first service. Gault is walking and talking. Yesterday, he was told four pieces of kitchen equipment would not be here for opening night. On the day of this interview, the supplier revised that figure upward to 12 — and then left the country. That kind of stuff never happened, says Gault, when he was with Nourish.
Inside Giraffe it is gib board and total chaos. Extension cords are piled like spaghetti. The only thing glinting in the sun is construction dust. “This would make great television,” I say. “Wouldn’t it?!” says Gault. But there are no cameras. Gault, unfiltered and on his own.
“You’ve always got something to prove, haven’t you? I want it to be great, I want people to love it.” Get knocked down. Get up again. “I don’t know if I’ve been down. I don’t feel like I’ve been down. I’m doing this for fun.”
No one opens a restaurant for fun. Also, Gault has recently experienced the hardest 12 months of his 52-year-old life.
In April 2016, he confirmed to media he had split with his hairdresser wife Katrina Van Dam, the woman he famously wooed with Euro desserts.
“It was the toughest year of my life, basically. But I feel I’m out the other end of it. And I think everybody who has been through a separation will absolutely know what I went through and I’m no different to anyone else. I went through the same stuff.
“When it first happens, you’re busy telling everybody how bad it is. You know what? People don’t want to hear that. They don’t want to listen to you go on and on and on about it. I went online, and read something about marriage break-ups and it said that’s what you do — and I thought, ‘that’s exactly what I’m doing’. And the minute I stopped doing that, the minute everything started to get better. It’s that simple.”
The split was not, he says, his decision. It was “pretty surprising, yeah”. But the number one priority: “Our daughter. We will work together 155 per cent to make sure that little girl gets the most awesome upbringing.”
Hazel is 3 ½ years old. There she is, on a video on his phone, making a clay pasta bowl at the Ramarama pottery studio that’s producing tableware for Giraffe.
“I was never going to be that guy who was