Kiwi leads big-city dining revolution teaching foodies to season properly

An award-winning NZ chef and restaurant owner is championing sustainability in London’s hospitality, as Alice Peacock reports.

Chantelle Nicholson has been recollecting summers in Alexandra, cooking for Gordon Ramsay, and the inception of her new sustainable restaurant Apricity when she muses that she’s come ‘‘full circle’’.

‘‘I guess I’ve come back to my roots in some ways,’’ she says.

‘‘Because New Zealand, at least back then, was so isolated, we ate what was in season because that’s what was there. I remember when I came to London, I would go to Marks & Spencer and be awed at how everything was there, all year round.

‘‘At first, I was like ‘this is amazing’. But then, I started to think it wasn’t so amazing. If you walk into a supermarket in London, there’s nothing that tells you, ‘this particular thing is in season’.’’

The 41-year-old Hamilton-born chef, restaurant owner and cookbook author is now gearing up for her biggest career move yet; the opening of her first solo venture Apricity on Tuesday, in the hustle and bustle of London’s Mayfair.

The meaning of the name, which Nicholson says symbolises regeneration, warmth, generosity and light, will be reflected in a seasonal ‘‘vegetablecentric’’, but not vegetarian, menu.

Dishes like koji-glazed barbecued mushrooms will sit alongside plates of venison paired with pickled walnuts, wild garlic and pickled rhubarb, while the drinks menu will feature drops such as the beetroot negroni, flavoured and coloured by the vegetable’s off-cuts.

With its upcycled tables and chairs, and lampshades constructed from orange peel and coffee grounds, the fit-out will reflect Apricity’s ethos as much as the menu.

‘‘We’re reusing as much as we can from what was on the site beforehand,’’ Nicholson says.

Nicholson spent childhood holidays playing and working on her aunt’s fruit orchard in Alexandra, where her family produced cherries, apricots, peaches and nectarines over the summer and apples in the winter.

Separate from the orchard, her uncle had what would now be known as a ‘‘kitchen garden’’, Nicholson says, growing things like potatoes, carrots and onions.

With the family raising sheep in the off-season, the farm was self-sufficient; the original farm-totable way of living. Having this experience growing up has clearly played a part in cultivating Nicholson’s love of food, and understanding of how a meal comes to be on a plate.

Nicholson studied law at Otago before landing a hybrid finance and law job with the Banking Ombudsman in Wellington. But another door opened a little more than a year into the role, when she entered a Gordon Ramsay scholarship competition ‘‘for fun’’ and met Josh Emett, who was one of the judges.

Recognising her talent despite a lack of professional training, Emett shoulder-tapped Nicholson from the finalists and offered her a job at London’s Savoy Grill. He was head chef at the time under Gordon Ramsay, who owned the restaurant in partnership with Marcus Wareing.

Having worked in the kitchen of boutique Dunedin hotel Corstorphine House through her university years, followed by a short stint there fulltime, Nicholson knew her way around a set of chef’s knives, but heading into a new job at 24 at a Michelin-starred restaurant abroad was a shock – shifts typically started at 7am or 8am and end at midnight or later. ‘‘Obviously I knew who Gordon Ramsay was,’’ she says, ‘‘but I didn’t know very much about anything else, really – which I’m very thankful of, in hindsight.’’

Emett says the reality of cooking in a commercial kitchen was ‘‘very, very different from the romantic idea of it’’.

‘‘Especially back in London in those days.

It wasn’t for the faint-hearted, that’s for sure.’’

But Emett quickly came to realise that Nicholson was someone he could rely on and a ‘‘great person to work with’’.

‘‘Wanna get something done? Chantelle would take the task and tick it off, do anything and everything right – maybe that’s that law background,’’ he says.

Nicholson eventually moved on from Savoy Grill with Marcus Wareing. She was overseeing the opening of his restaurant Tredwells as operations manager in 2014 when she took on a short-term gig as dish developer and consultant for Burnt, a feature film starring A Star Is Born actor Bradley Cooper and Layer Cake actress Sienna Miller.

She instructed Cooper, who played a volatile, award-winning chef, on how to cut and pan-fry a piece of sea bass as one would in a professional kitchen, and gave Miller a lesson in the art of frying scallops.

‘‘Sienna got really stuck in,’’ Nicholson recalls. ‘‘She was fearless’’.

Alongside her work teaching the stars, Nicholson has also been on a long-running mission to fix a ‘‘disconnect’’ in British school children’s understanding of food. She works with UK charities such as School Food Matters to teach kids about seasonality and where food comes from.

Now, Nicholson is now best-known as the chefpatron of Tredwells after she took full ownership of the modern British restaurant, much-loved for dishes like harissa-glazed aubergine and lamp chops, in 2017.

Nicholson was at the helm when it was last year awarded one of the Michelin Guide’s Green Stars – an award introduced in 2020 for restaurants leading in sustainability, who ‘‘hold themselves accountable for both their ethical and environmental standards, and work with sustainable producers and suppliers to avoid waste’’.

The Michelin accolade came after Nicholson ramped up Tredwell’s emphasis on circular cooking – a style where the same ingredient is used in multiple ways.

‘‘When I got that independence, it was a time for me to think, ‘right, what am I actually about?, rather than doing it for someone else.’’

While Nicholson was thrilled with the recognition, she says making the restaurant and its principles align with its functioning in a big, clunky London building had become akin to ‘‘fitting a square peg in a round hole’’. So in 2021, after looking for a new location, Nicholson decided instead to shut the doors of Tredwells and launch herself into a new project.

Along with a focus on treating the environment well, Nicholson says Apricity will have a focus on the wellbeing of its people. Staff will be offered mental health support and the restaurant will operate Tuesday to Saturday, giving the team more of a break than would be typical in an industry known for tough conditions and long hours.

‘‘Obviously it’s got to be profitable to be able to maintain itself, but it’s also about looking at the people aspect of it, the planet aspect of it, and actually having a purpose; trying to do things in a better way and trying to give more than we take,’’ Nicholson says.

Despite being very established in the UK, Nicholson won’t rule out starting a restaurant in New Zealand, which she still calls ‘‘home’’.

‘‘Because your childhood shapes you, doesn’t it. Your childhood shapes what you know, and then that next chapter shapes who you become. It is all quite interconnected.’’

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Chantelle Nicholson’s cheffing career has gone from strength to strength in the UK after learning her food ‘‘roots’’ at her aunt’s fruit orchard in Alexandra, far left, and her kitchen craft at Dunedin’s Corstorphine House with head chef Craig Redmile and sous chef Dean St John, left. Now, her new Apricity restaurant will feature a ‘‘vegetable-centric’’ menu including these mushroom and rhubarb dishes.