Josh Emett and wife Helen outside Gilt, their new central Auckland restaurant which opens in October. Photo / supplied
As they announce a new restaurant in central Auckland, chef Josh Emett and his wife Helen host Shayne Currie for lunch to talk about food, love, Gordon Ramsay, MasterChef, and their own dining habits.
“Hey listen, darling!” Helen Emett pleads with husband Josh, as they go back and forth debating with increasing hilarity about which year they met.
“We get this wrong a lot. I always have to do this with him … I love it,” she grins.
We move between 2006, 2007 and 2008, before Helen steps in firmly to lay down some facts. The couple settle on 2007 as the year they first met and January 2008 for their first date.
“Write that shit down!” Josh says, laughing.
So, January 2008, in mid-town New York. He the Kiwi-born chef at Gordon Ramsay’s Michelin-starred restaurant in the Big Apple; she the English-born senior manager at wealth management firm Merrill Lynch.
They’d met and spoken the previous year at a mutual friend’s party; Josh was still married at that time. She remembers him saying he was a chef and her thinking he might have been in the kitchen at a small bistro on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
By the time of the first date, he was single, amicably separated.
“We met at MoMA [the Museum of Modern Art], it was freezing cold. I had a massive coat, like a fur thing, and Josh wore just a shirt and trousers. I was like ‘who is this crazy man?’ But now that I’ve been to Fieldays I know that’s what Kiwis do. They just rough it!”
After MoMA, they ventured to a nearby restaurant.
“We were like chat, chat, chat. They said, why don’t we just do the wine and pairings – the set menu. We said yes which, in hindsight, probably wasn’t the greatest of ideas because it was something like eight courses with eight wines,” says Helen.
Josh: “We got quite drunk.”
Helen: “We got drunk.”
The date and a second one – a few days later with hotdogs at a Knicks NBA game – ignited a bond and a love story for which food still plays a critical, central role.
“I might choose for you,” Josh says, as he pores over the meticulously planned and presented menu at Onslow, the top-of-the-town Auckland restaurant that he and Helen opened in 2020.
This is a pure gift. A little like Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift saying they might sing for you.
“Josh is known to be a feeder,” says Helen. “Please be aware a lot of food will come but you are not obliged to eat it all.”
“We’ll go nice and light,” says Josh, before ordering Fiordland crayfish eclairs, chicken liver parfait, Oscietra caviar and Onslow fried chicken for “treats”; roasted butternut, twice-baked cheese souffle, and tuna carpaccio for starters; cavatelli, beef eye fillet, brussels sprout gratin and butter-poached market fish for mains. There’s also the Riwaka truffle supplement, and Josh teases desserts.
We’re enjoying a slightly later lunch – 2pm on a Friday. Onslow has a relaxed, simmering hum and it’s not long before two adoring women, sharing a joint birthday lunch, approach the table.
“We love you,” says one of the women. “This is my favourite restaurant. I send my husband here; I send my son here.”
And then after a couple of minutes: “Can we take a selfie?”
“We love a selfie,” says Josh, genuinely, as he and Helen briefly excuse themselves from the table for a location with slightly better light.
Josh, who turned 50 just this week, is labelled a “celebrity chef” in many quarters but his culinary credentials and skills have been deeply embedded for more than three decades, well before television and social media catapulted him into stardom.
Waikato-born and raised, he grafted hard early on in kitchens in New Zealand and Australia, before spending 11 years in Gordon Ramsay’s Michelin-starred restaurants, in London, New York and Los Angeles. Ramsay brought him back Down Under, to Melbourne, in 2010, before he came home to own and operate some of New Zealand’s best-loved restaurants.
He’s published several books, appeared as a judge on MasterChef New Zealand for five seasons, and is now a social media phenomenon, with 248,000 Instagram followers, including the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, lured by mouth-watering recipe videos shot at the couple’s east Auckland home.
His warm, personable behaviour, deep-thinking approach and undeniable good looks break the mould of the irascible, pan-flinging, abusive chef of lore, traits often exhibited by Ramsay.
“I love Gordon. I spent 11 years working for him – at that stage I was 35 years old, so a third of my life was with him.”
Before that he spent two years with an even more forceful chef, Donovan Cooke, in Australia. He had “a couple of bust-ups” with him. Cooke was, he says, “intense, crazy, incredible”.
“So Josh already knew what it was like to be up against someone who was quite tough,” says Helen, explaining her husband’s career with Ramsay. “He was just shoulders back, ‘yes chef’.
“There was never a point at which Gordon said, ‘what the heck are you doing?’”
Josh: “[My attitude was] I’m just going to work harder, faster, better than anyone else, and Gordon could see that.
“I didn’t even ask how much I was getting paid. I had no interest in what I was getting paid to be in a good kitchen. Work me as many hours as you like; I’ll do the best job I possibly can.”
He learned a lot under those two men, he says. “I don’t regret that.”
But, he says of the broader issue of yelling and screaming, there is, “no room for treating people that way”.
“There was, I guess, an underlying culture that was pretty heavy sometimes, but we were never taught to run our kitchens in any way. Here’s the opportunity - go and do it.”
His own style is a lot different, more empathetic. He wants an organised, disciplined and well-run kitchen, but with warmth and a happy crew.
Helen says her husband is patient with people unless they keep making the same errors.
“He doesn’t have much time for people making repeated mistakes or having an attitude if their focus is not on the business.
“The only time that you might get quite tough with someone would be when it’s like ‘it’s the third time we’ve talked about this – you want a promotion, but you were late again’.
“The rest of the time, it’s pretty kind.”
Josh has a renowned work ethic. “I like hard work, I like discipline, I like organisation, I like routine.
“I’m also very creative; I love the creativity part of the kitchen. I just really love that discipline in kitchens and their energy, buzz and camaraderie.
“I love the idea that you’re throwing a big dinner party and there’s the pressure – you go into service and there are very different elements every single day.”
Helen describes it as “going on to a stage every night”.
The big news today is that the Emetts are creating another stage – a new central Auckland restaurant, adding to their portfolio of Onslow and Waiheke Island’s Oyster Inn.
The new restaurant will be an upmarket eatery – Gilt Brasserie – occupying the bottom floor of the Auckland District Law Society building in O’Connell St. The name plays on that location, as well as its proximity to the High Court up the hill and myriad law practices and legal chambers on Shortland St.
It’s designed to be a bustling, vibrant restaurant. The place, for example, to grab a signature sandwich – Josh has been trialling a tongue-in-cheek toastie, with ox tongue and beef cheek. “The idea is simple food, it’s not fussy food,” he says.
The 130-seat restaurant will be open six days a week, for lunch and dinner, by October. People will also have the opportunity to grab a drink after work without formally sitting down, or take the likes of a sandwich back to the office.
“We met in New York and we love those European brasseries like Balthazar, The Odeon and Pastis – we really miss that,” says Helen. “We think Auckland needs that; there are great places like Amano which is busy, vibrant and bustling but you get stumped after that.”
They’d love to see even more restaurants.
Onslow, with its elevated service, is often a place for a celebration or special occasion, or treats for clients. With Gilt, the pair are looking to create a faster-paced vibrancy “but likewise, we’re in the city and we can imagine a lot of long work lunches as well”.
They love this part of town, rattling off businesses such as the Aesop beauty store, Unity books, Crane Brothers, Rumours coffee and Panacea bar.
“This is a beautiful part of town, with those heritage buildings,” says Helen, who loves the laneways feel.
“We know from living in big cities, people come back to them. Queen St needs to be there but having a happy street around it, that’s just a little bit different and a little bit more arty.
“We like to think that by shining a light on it, people might go.”
Their head chef, Glen File, has just completed a fact-finding food odyssey to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York.
The team is designing a simple yet sophisticated European fare menu, paired with old-world wines and handcrafted cocktails.
Emett himself has been working on the design elements of the building. The space is under “frenetic renovation”, he says.
“There is a level of sophistication which we really like,” says Josh. “It’s got great bones, and a lot of columns. And we’ve got these beautiful big windows right along O’Connell St.
“I love the building and the development. Part of my being here on this planet, I think, and doing what I do is, is to grow the hospitality industry in New Zealand.
“I have a commitment to that. I want to see it grow, thrive and flourish and have huge energy and be world-class. And be a place where people look at Auckland and say, ‘Oh my god, go to Auckland’, like they talk about Melbourne … and Auckland is a great food city.
“We are part of that growth and part of that story. Restaurants will come and go but we will hopefully own restaurants that will be around for a long time, not a short time.”
There’s a romance behind owning and running restaurants, says Emett. “But it’s bloody hard work.”
The couple bought the Oyster Inn on Waiheke four weeks before the Covid pandemic broke out in early 2020. Onslow opened in October 2020, in those crazy days as New Zealand came in and out of lockdowns and coped with all sorts of strange dining rules and limits.
While Covid wreaked havoc on the hospitality industry, the pair say it gave them the gift of time – as part of their new ventures, the Emetts have enlisted the help of a hospitality business coach, building their financial expertise and introducing a new style of leadership. Helen will step more into the limelight as well.
The business coach and Helen have helped challenge Emett’s traditional thinking about a restaurant operation.
“To my credit,” he laughs, “being a horribly stubborn chef who’s been trained in military fashion, I am very open to just being like, ‘you know what? I don’t give a shit what I’ve done in the past or how we’ve done it.”
There are areas that have upset him for years “and I want to change it”.
For example, if he asked anyone in the industry about what they’d like to learn most, it would be a deeper understanding of business, such as the finances. “They don’t really understand that part of the business, they are incredible chefs or they’re so immersed in the food or the wine.”
The couple want to give their staff a career path in the industry; that includes exposing them to more of the financials – opening books, no matter if you’re a dishwasher, a runner or a head chef.
“It is about really transitioning it into a complete profession,” says Emett.
“And for staff who are growing up in the profession to know that they have a career path ahead of them and it’s quite a well mapped out career path to owning a restaurant; being in senior management or earning a really good living out of it.
“Because I think too many get to a certain stage in their career in hospitality and they can’t see the light at the end of their tunnel.
“Most people who get into food and food and wine and hospitality do it because they love serving people and either love cooking or have a love of wine or love restaurants.
“It just fills their cup.”
In 2020, Josh resigned from the Go To Collection Hospitality Group and restaurant chain operations to focus on setting up the new business and restaurants with Helen.
Along with Fleur Caulton, Josh had set up Rata, Madam Woo and Hawker & Roll. The business came to grief during Covid, with the closure of several restaurants – happily, many of them have now traded out of voluntary liquidation.
“Fleur is a great operator and the team at Rata, Madam Woo and Hawker & Roll are fantastic,” says Josh. “Covid and staff shortages were hard on the hospitality industry, particularly in regions like Queenstown where their hero outlets are located.
“I’m thrilled to hear the management team successfully restructured and is positively moving forward.”
He says stepping away from his business partnership with Caulton “was a natural progression”.
“Helen and I had made the decision to create a family business, led by the two of us, and spend more time in Auckland with our two sons.”
The pair tell me their most commonly asked question on social media and in person, so I naturally ask it myself.
What do you eat at home?
“All sorts!” says Josh.
They do a fair amount of meal preparation on a Sunday for the week ahead. Perhaps prepare a pesto or a tomato vodka sauce. Their boys Finn, 14, and Louis, 12, cook. They might make some venison meatballs; they had ribs last night. Louis loves chilli eggs.
“We like eating,” says Helen. “Cooking, weirdly, is a wind-down time.”
Have they ever heard of – or used – Uber Eats?
“Our kids crave it… ‘please can we do Uber Eats?’. I’m like, ‘Wait, no we’re coming home’. No, we do sometimes use it,” says Helen.
As a bona fide celebrity, Josh is constantly recognised. “You do have to walk out the door every morning, [switched] on.”
He doesn’t take himself too seriously. Once a group of people asked for a picture. Thinking it was for a selfie, he took control of the camera. No, we want a picture of us, said the group.
“They were taking the piss,” says Helen.
“I think they were taking the piss,” grins Josh.
In this age of likes, follows, views, he feels he doesn’t need to be back on television.
“We don’t chase it. We enjoy doing what we’re doing at home and the way we like doing it with regard to our social media and how we push out our content. We don’t feel like we need to be on TV.”
Helen: “I think there’s fewer eyes there. We need to go: what and where is the content? We might do some more on YouTube but run it ourselves.”
As Helen leaves the table to make a business call, I ask Josh his state of mind right now.
“I’m probably getting more and more content at the moment. I’m two weeks away from turning 50. I’ve had a really, really hard, couple of years, probably a really hard four or five years.
“It could be anything from Covid to just, you know, getting into your late 40s.”
He says a mate, who always cites statistics, recently told him that a US study had shown men were at their unhappiest at the age of 47.
“I said I felt like I might have been through that and coming out the other side. I think Covid shook us.
“I think I care less about various things -– I just don’t let them bother me. I’m really highly energetic about what we’re doing.”
Helen returns to the table and I ask her the same question. “I think I’m really driven. I felt very strongly about being a mother, like I want to be a present mother.
“I realise now that as your kids get older, they actually need you just as much as they probably did when they were younger.
“Not to the point that you’re carrying them around, which I found exhausting, but all of a sudden I’ve got these new opportunities ahead of me, which I didn’t have for that period that I was focused on our family while Josh was literally here, there and everywhere.
“And so from that point of view, I’m just really excited about some of these opportunities that we are looking at.”
Josh makes good on his promise of ordering desserts – “Josh has a terrible sweet tooth”, says Helen.
The meal, complemented by a Central Otago chardonnay and a Greek red, has been superb, the chicken parfait one of many highlights - it’s a dish that gets shared among the family and other school parents.
Their boys “used to have it for breakfast”, laughs Helen.
“We were like, you can’t have it for breakfast. It’s too weird.”
'I can imagine people being outraged that TVNZ signed a deal with me.'