High cost of tools down for top chef
Every week Hiakai was closed meant another 120 people had to be called. Siobhan Downes reports on what it means to the award-winning chef-owner to reopen her beloved restaurant.
At the start of 2020, Wellington restaurant Hiakai was booked out three months in advance with hundreds of diners on its waiting list. It had just been named New Zealand’s Best Specialist Restaurant in the Cuisine Good Food Awards, featured in Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 greatest places of last year, and recommended by Forbes Magazine as one of the 10 coolest places in the world to eat.
Then coronavirus happened, New Zealand closed its borders, and went into lockdown. All kinds of eateries – from takeaways to fine dining – had no choice but to close their doors.
But few restaurants in New Zealand had built up so much momentum as Hiakai. So what was it like to come to such a screeching halt?
Hiakai chef-owner Monique Fiso took one week off to process it all.
‘‘After we packed down the restaurant I was absolutely exhausted,’’ she says. ‘‘I think [New York chef] Gabrielle Hamilton said it best.
‘‘It was like all the adrenaline wore off and suddenly all the years of never taking a break, and the suddenness of the pandemic and the craziness that went with it – she said she just crashed. And I felt like I did the same in week two of lockdown.
‘‘Then after that, I was like, all right, time to get back up.’’
Fiso – who describes herself as a natural overthinker and planner – got straight to work with her operations and front of house managers, trying to come up with solutions for every possible scenario.
They thought about how they would be able to change the layout of their dining room to allow for social distancing, and figured they would need to have people sitting on every second booth. Then they decided they would need to do two seating times, at 5.30pm and 8.30pm.
‘‘There were just so many things,’’ Fiso says. ‘‘Even the menus – everyone gets a menu when they come in, but it’s like, well, we can’t reuse that for the second turn, so we’ll need to redesign that as well.’’
Despite having no idea when they would be able to reopen, the aim was to be as proactive as possible.
‘‘Instead of waiting around for the announcements to be made, we tried to guess as best as we could and plan for all of those. So when we’d get the official statements from the Government we’d be like, OK, we’re going to scenario B.’’
One of the biggest tasks was having to cancel two months’ worth of reservations. Every week the restaurant was closed meant another 120 people had to be called.
Then there was the challenge of coming up with a new seven-course menu and having to show it to her kitchen team over Zoom video calls.
‘‘The first few brainstorming sessions with the new menu it was like, ‘here’s a picture I’ve drawn’,’’ Fiso laughs.
‘‘They’re like, what is that?’’
The team have also been keeping sharp by doing quizzes every week on native ingredients, and practising their Ma¯ ori pronunciation.
‘‘We have a whole new menu based on Matariki, which means a whole new set of te reo to learn,’’ Fiso explains.
‘‘When you haven’t been in service for two months it can be quite a shock to your system.’’
While many restaurants rely on part-time workers, Fiso has a team of 10 fulltime staff, which she says she likes because it means things stay consistent. But such a close-knit crew has meant extra worry.
‘‘The team’s been really great – and they know we’re not in the clear yet – and that we all need to work really hard over these next few months to hang on.
‘‘We’ve made it through this part, but there’s still another phase of things to come that are beyond our control, to do with the economy, maybe to do with a second wave of Covid. There’s so many things that could happen, so that’s why we’re trying to keep everyone focused, like this is not the end of it.’’
The next period will be crucial, she says.
‘‘I won’t go into too much detail, but there’s definitely targets we need to hit, because we had no income for two months – none. When I say the number out loud, I’m just like, I can’t believe how much this has cost us. It’s not a small sum, is all I can say.’’
Something else that made her ‘‘really nervous’’ was the lack of international tourists for the foreseeable future.
‘‘But the amount of local support has been amazing,’’ she says. ‘‘It’s been kind of surprising that the borders being closed haven’t hurt us too much.’’
Fiso says they ‘‘ummed and ahhed’’ about doing a takeaway offering at level 3, but ultimately decided it would be better to focus their energy towards being able to reopen at level 2.
‘‘The last thing we wanted to do was be burnt out by the time we reopen.
‘‘The last two weeks have [gone] like a blink with the amount of stuff we’ve had to do to get prepared. So I’m really glad we didn’t.’’
On Monday Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced restaurants would be able to reopen from Thursday, but Hiakai will wait until next Wednesday to open its doors again. Fiso says the team will spend this weekend doing a few practice runs so they can open feeling confident, ‘‘rather than rushing in and not taking the time to get it right’’.
‘‘It’s like riding a bike – you have to get up on the bike a few times, and we’d rather not do that on the public,’’ she laughs.
‘‘When we get back in, it’s going to be great to be back together as a team, with an awesome new menu that we’ve been working on for weeks, all this cool stuff – we’ve embraced these changes and we’ve made it something we’re really proud of.
‘‘But it’s still just going to be like, we have to be smart about these next few months.’’