Fresh approach to landmark dining
‘‘It is about . . . real food, real flavour, treating people well.’’
Jeff Scott Foster
Since the Rutherford Hotel was built by DB in the 1970s on the former Nelson Breweries site, it has been through many changes, and has been turned into the destination it deserves to be.
Dining at the Miyazu Japanese Restaurant was my introduction to the beautiful, clean and fresh flavours of sushi and sashimi, while eating at the teppanyaki table was one of the first times diners in Nelson could watch their food being cooked in front of them.
Move forward 20 years, and the evolution of the hotel has continued, with a conference facility added and a restructure of the ground-floor meeting rooms and cafe to meet the demands of a modern hotel.
Last week I met with the reasonably new head chef, Jeff Scott Foster, to talk about the next step in that evolution: bringing Oceano Restaurant and the food it serves – for room service, functions and the cafe – into the 21st century.
Jeff is using his extensive experience to move the restaurant from a hotel restaurant to a restaurant in a hotel, just like Miyazu is. My first taste of his food and the style he is bringing to the Rutherford was at a recent winemakers’ dinner, where he used beautiful local ingredients to pair with outstanding wines from Clearview Wines in Hawke’s Bay.
‘‘There is some amazing food in restaurants in Nelson, and we want to be part of the Nelson food landscape – we want to give people a different experience,’’ Jeff told me.
‘‘When I arrived in Nelson, I thought there would be some good things, but was totally blown away by the variety and quality of food and beverages produced in the region. Much of it really is worldclass.’’
Jeff is very well placed to say that. After growing up in Torquay in southwest England, he moved to London when he was 16.
‘‘Dad was a baker, Granddad was a chef in top places in London, and my love of food stems from that. My father wasn’t keen on me following the family food trail, but he said, ‘If you want to do it, make sure you are up there with the best and it’s not just a job you fall into’.’’
It’s advice he has followed throughout his career. ‘‘I have a passion for doing this and trying to be a little bit different to the rest somehow. It is hard to do that – you have to copy, you have to give what guests want.
‘‘Food is like a big circle in style. We might try a few things, but we always come back to the classics. It is about real food, nothing pretentious, just using local products in innovative ways – real food, real flavour, treating people well.’’
When Jeff started, he worked in a regimented hotel kitchen where no-one knew how to make a whole dish – just part of it – because the chefs were scared someone would copy them.
‘‘I found out things about myself and people around me working in that environment. I worked out who I want to be as a chef and person.’’
He walked away from that restaurant and went to work at the Grafton Hotel under head chef Jean Claude Sandion.
‘‘He told me everything about each
dish, almost everything I needed to know to create the dish. I learned something – imagine if I could tell the next guy and teach him the same way? The next generation can be better than me.
‘‘If you inspire by teaching, your job is easier and you have more time to create new stuff.’’
After his time at the Grafton, Jeff travelled around, working in various restaurants and learning from people like Antony Worrell-Thompson, Marco Pierre White, and Phillip Howard at The Square, before he moved to Denmark for 20 years to rediscover the sun and continue learning.
‘‘In Denmark, Michele Michaud, of all the people I have ever worked with, he was the most inspiring. He was considered the godfather of the Danish food revolution and inspired a whole new generation of chefs. He changed the whole industry, and my view on things changed, too.’’
Jeff ended up with his own restaurant in Szendborg called Restaurant 5. ‘‘I started thinking about my philosophy of cooking . . . I wanted to take away the snobbery that had evolved around food in the 1990s and early 2000s.’’
After about 10 years running Restaurant 5 came the move to New Zealand, initially to Auckland before he settled in Nelson.
Jeff says food doesn’t have to be complicated. ‘‘We want the menu to encourage people to sit around and enjoy each other’s company with good food, and we will support local as long as it is quality, and most of it is.
‘‘Small artisan producers think differently – they are small companies, so they need to be good or they won’t survive, and we want to support them.’’