KEY POINTS:
- Jones is the brainchild behind the secret pop-up restaurant Kitchen Takeover and chairwoman of Flavours of Plenty food festival.
Ask food-obsessive Stacey Jones what her favourite item to buy from the supermarket is, and she struggles.
As a culinary addict, it's impossible for her to pick just one thing - and also, she notes, she prefers shopping at a farmers' market.
"I am completely and utterly crackers about food," she says.
Born and bred in London, Jones' mum Caryl is
a cordon bleu chef, and it wasn't unusual for her to serve Jones and her two sisters smoked salmon mousse and pavlova for afternoon tea.
Dad Tony was an actuary but also had a chocolate business.
Now in New Zealand for 11 years, Jones, 40, has brought luxury touches to the Bay of Plenty as the founder of Kitchen Takeover.
Her not-to-be-missed secret pop-up restaurants sell out within days; sometimes hours.
Four years ago the Oxford University graduate and London blue-chip marketing executive who worked on the Devil Wears Prada movie premiere came up with a decadent plan to bring the "big-city" experience to Tauranga; temporary restaurants with themes, communal tables and flashy six-course degustation menus at $149-a-head, designed by one of the country's top chefs, Shane Yardley.
Jones' contagious confidence for pushing the boundaries has seen guests enjoy obscure cooking methods with goat, octopus and nightshade berries.
She's served community garden weed lollipops and sherbet made from electric daisies.
Liquid nitrogen has also been used so that dishes "smoke and steam".
It's all very adventurous and high-end but not surprising when her favourite restaurant is Asador Etxebarri Achondo in the Basque region; she lists the tastiest food she's ever eaten as smoked butter - "the simplicity and complexity blew me away in one go"; and the weirdest food: sardine ice cream, by celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck in Bray, west of London.
So popular is her own Kitchen Takeover - nominated for Best Lifestyle Event and Best Arts and Cultural Event in last year's New Zealand Events Awards - that it's now her full-time job, attracting nearly 2000 diners per pop up (three a year), each over 10 weekends.
Guests pre-purchase a ticket on their selected date and get a text two hours before revealing the location. Each edition only runs for a short time, and when it ends it's never to be repeated.
It's the only one of its kind in New Zealand and diners are sworn to secrecy so that they don't spoil it for the next guests.
Kitchen Takeover planned to celebrate its 10th pop-up restaurant this year with The Edible Exhibition, digging into New Zealand's culinary history from the 1950s until the present day.
The event was set to take place this month but has now been cancelled.
"I don't want to be all doom and gloom, but I do think part of this story is that hospitality is really hard at the moment," Jones says.
"It costs thousands of dollars to get our events up and running. The financial risk (of being shut down at any time) is really big now, and the pressure is on."
She's adamant that Kitchen Takeover will continue, but possibly with smaller numbers and the pop-up restaurant erected for a shorter time.
"I don't mind working under pressure, in fact, I think I thrive on it. The thing that I don't thrive on is unpredictability (but) in times of great adversity, it causes you to flex and change."
One less stress is that another smaller Kitchen Takeover event - Hangi with Kasey and Karena (Bird) - can go ahead. The Tauranga event from April 8 to 10 is part of a four-day inaugural Flavours of Plenty food festival, of which Jones is chairwoman.
The cuisine festival, featuring headline events Vegan Vibes and the Ohope Local Wild Food Festival, is a collaboration between food, education and hospitality sectors, keen to identify commercial and community opportunities that build on the region's land and sea produce.
Kitchen Takeover is an example.
Jones cheffed her first secret dinner herself with help from a sous chef (a nine-course Vietnamese tasting menu) for 24 people - 18 of them friends and six paid guests.
By the fourth pop-up restaurant, more than 450 people attended. That's when she knew she'd not only "cracked it", but was grateful to have secured a professional head chef.
As luck would have it, her best friend's husband is best mates with Shane Yardley, who was Simon Gault's right-hand man at Auckland's Euro and Fish restaurants and has been a guest chef on MasterChef. He's now a chef tutor at Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology.
Jones and Yardley met in 2018 to discuss her venture and hit it off.
"I think his drive was similar to mine in that 'there's this amazing produce kicking around (in the Bay), how do we harness that?'"
Her business model is based on supper clubs she attended in London.
"The waiters and waitresses were dressed up in insane outfits, ridiculous make-up, but they hadn't put the same level of effort into the food.
"I wanted to flip that on its head."
She comes up with the themes and styling - Hunter Gatherer, Christmas in the Caribbean and Eat Your Memories to name just a few. Yardley takes care of the menus, with help from Al Brown's former executive chef at Federal Delicatessen Rob Forman.
Taiao: Food of the Gods was Kitchen Takeover's first collaboration with celebrity chefs Kasey and Karena Bird.
When planning the now-cancelled Edible Exhibition, Jones interviewed food writers, chefs and historians to discover Kiwis' collective trek to becoming adventurous foodies.
Then she went back to Yardley: "[I said] 'Here are the six most important moments in time I've observed'. He brings back food, we taste it, and that gets tweaked.
"I've been to quite a few fine dining restaurants in my time and one of my take-outs was to extend the food experience with a story.
"I'd come from London, knew what the big city looked like from a cosmopolitan perspective and felt there was a gap in the fine dining scene.
"I would say now it's much better," she concurs, adding that Tauranga has just had three restaurants nominated in Cuisine magazine Good Food Awards (Clarence Bistro, Somerset Cottage and Sugo).
The accolade links to some of the work Flavours of Plenty has been doing in Tauranga - lobbying change-makers in the food industry to take note of Bay of Plenty restaurateurs, growers and producers.
Jones has been working with Tourism Bay of Plenty since 2020 helping to bring their horticultural provenance strategy to life.
Oscar Nathan, general manager of Tourism Bay of Plenty, says she's made an invaluable contribution and gathered a steering group of like-minded experts to help create the world's first Lime scooter foodie trail - and now, the first Flavours of Plenty food festival.
As for Kitchen Takeover, which also encapsulates truffle hunts, forager workshops, food gift boxes and Kitchen Takeover at Home (a cooked dinner party in a box), future plans include expanding her pop-up restaurants to other New Zealand regions.
Jones takes pleasure in knowing diners are connecting over their shared adventure.
"I know that over that time we've brought a lot of joy to a lot of people," she says.
She's seen romances and friendships blossom and says her favourite occasion was when sixty diners got up for a spontaneous mass selfie.
"What brings people joy is superbly unique, interesting, intelligent dining. When you share a meal together, beautiful things can happen."
• Flavours of Plenty Festival will take place from April 7 to 10, with more than 20 events. Programme and tickets can be found at flavoursofplentyfestival.co.nz
• Kitchen Takeover's Hangi by Karena and Kasey, will take place from April 8 to 10, 3pm to 6pm, as a flagship event for the festival. Tickets go on sale March 3. www.kitchentakeover.co.nz/hangi
