Tough critics - Colin Fassnidge (left) and Judith Tabron host and judge My Restaurant Rules premiering on September 30. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Colin Fassnidge and Judith Tabron put five professional Kiwi kitchens to the test in a new spin on an old reality television format - but what are their rules for restaurant excellence?
Eventually, the smell was impossible to ignore.
Fish. Very old fish.
"Fark," said Colin Fassnidge. "Faaarrk."
His Irish accent stretched the moment. It underscored the severity - and hilarity - of the situation.
The private upstairs dining room of one of Auckland's most feted restaurants, the one that bakes its own bread and keeps its own bees and "looks to the bush, the ocean, the orchards, the fjords and the plains as tools for exploring national flavours and identity" smelled like month-old pilchards.
Even a great restaurant can have a horrible day.
Fassnidge pushed the sash window as high as it could go. At the head of the table, Judith Tabron tapped her phone, her acrylics quietly clicking. Ten minutes later, the restaurant's co-owner and executive chef arrived.
"You got my text," said Tabron.
"We're dry-ageing mackerel upstairs," said Tom Hishon. "Someone opened the chiller and it just sort of wafted through ... "
It was a made-for-television moment but the television stars were off-duty. Wine in hand, lunch in belly, Fassnidge and Tabron were at Orphan's Kitchen, contemplating weeks of competitive eating at the five restaurants about to feature in the new reality show, My Restaurant Rules.
They've been to Katikati and Lyttelton; Nelson and Birkenhead.
"The beauty of this show, is it's local restaurants," says Fassnidge. "Like, we've gone to a truck stop. A restaurant in a truck stop. Like how interesting was that?"
That truck stop was in Waiōuru, where TripAdvisor's keyboard critics rank Subway as the town's third-best restaurant.
"We've gone to places where I'm sure people in New Zealand don't even go," says Fassnidge.
The new reality TV show is straight from the My Kitchen Rules playbook, only this time the contestants are professionals and it's their literal bread and butter under the grill. Menus will be overhauled and dining rooms renovated as real-life New Zealand restaurants are visited and critiqued by the teams and two celebrity judges - Sydney-based chef (and My Kitchen Rules star) Fassnidge and Tabron, the former owner and face of Auckland Viaduct's Soul Bar & Bistro.
"You know what I call her?" says Fassnidge.
"The Lord Mayor," replies Tabron.
Last night, the pair dined together at Auckland's Andiamo. Tabron sent a dish back. "I sent back my pasta ... because it just wasn't hot enough. There was nothing wrong with the dish, I just said, 'Can you please make it hot?'"
Fassnidge went to Masu on his own. "It wasn't cheap, f*** it wasn't cheap and then when I left, the manager on the door was busy talking to the staff, didn't even say goodbye. That just galled me. It angers me. They're too busy being cool."
Even great restaurants can have horrible nights. Tabron and Fassnidge know exactly how hard it is to make a career in hospitality and that's why Canvas has cornered them in this unexpectedly fishy private dining room. Sure, we could (and do) talk about the TV show. But what makes a good restaurant? What makes a good customer? Is there a right (and wrong) way to complain? And if there was one dish these restaurant critics never had to eat again, what would it be? Pull up a chair for some restaurant rules from the experts ...
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Fassnidge: "Years ago, you had to spend like a couple of million, go into debt, just to kit-out the restaurant. Fifty-dollar plates, before you served any food. You don't have to spend a billion dollars on a fit-out. Some of the best places in Sydney are small shops with some of the best chefs going - like Josh Niland at Saint Peter or whatever."
Tabron: "It needs to be tidy. Don't have crap everywhere. People end up putting out too many trinkets. They need to keep their trinkets out of the restaurant."
MAKE THE CUSTOMER COMFORTABLE
Tabron: "When people order an expensive bottle of wine - any bottle of wine - especially if it's a woman, I say, 'That's a good choice.' How simple is it to say, 'Good choice, nice wine?'"
Fassnidge: "My wife does Judith's job in our business and we've had top restaurants and we've had nights that are f***-ups in the kitchen and she has saved my bacon, she has contained the problem and made it better, rather than have the customer leave."
HOW TO SEND FOOD BACK
Tabron: "In my training days and especially in fine dining, if something was wrong with the plate, the expectation was that every single dish off the whole table was to be removed, re-cooked and sent back. We always say make sure you just talk to the guest who has the problem and not the whole table. Do not invest the whole table in the situation."
Fassnidge: "When I worked for Raymond Blanc, if a plate came back and it was your fault, mate, you're gonna be hospitalised ..."
Tabron: "You're going to be cleaning out the fryers."
Fassnidge: "You'd be in the fryer. They were the days you got bashed."
IN A COMPETITION, LESS IS MORE (MOSTLY)
Fassnidge: "We'd get these giant plates that were like surfboards with a smear and then you'd have a scallop at one end and a bit of parsley at the bottom. We told 'em, throw all that out and let's modernise it a bit."
Tabron: "I mean, really, the 19 ingredients on the dessert one night was quite bizarre ..."
Fassnidge: "You would need an army to build it."
ON FOAM AND OTHER FINE-DINING DINOSAURS
Fassnidge: "Fine dining used to rip people off with their price points. Now, people know where their food comes from and how much it costs. I remember in Sydney, you'd buy a bowl of carrot foam for $32. For a bowl of foam! Mate, now they'd be like, 'Stick it up your arse, I'll have a carrot.'"
Tabron: "I went to [London chef] Tom Aikens' restaurant and he'd just bought himself a Pacojet. Christ, he'd gone mad. I swear to you it was like paco-heaven. And then I went and looked at his cookbook and I was like, 'Oh my God, his food used to be so approachable - and now he's got a Pacojet'."
Fassnidge: "And then he went bust. Molecular used to be fine dining and everything used to have to be pearls and sous vide. Now everyone wants slow-roast or baked."
Tabron: "Soils!"
Fassnidge: "Soil! F***ing soil!"
LESSEN THE SERMONS FROM THE SERVER
Fassnidge: "Sometimes, chefs, they want to tell their story. 'The sorrell was picked by little Johnny at 5am.' Mate, just give me the sorrel. You know what I mean, it's either good or it's bad. Sometimes you need to know we buy our animals from here or whatever but I don't want a waiter standing there telling me about something for six or seven minutes before I even eat it - and it's a canape."
Tabron: "Don't tell me, because I want to actually experience it myself. And let me ask you the questions. Why remove the mystery of food by telling me exactly what's going to be on my plate?"
KIDS SHOULD BE SEEN ...
Fassnidge: "I know my kids have got an hour and a half before they become horrible people …"
Tabron: "There's no point taking kids to any fine dining restaurant, where they're going to do 10 courses. There's no way they're going to have the attention span.
Fassnidge: "But I don't want to give them fish fingers and chips, either."
MEET YOUR HEROES
Fassnidge: "Marco Pierre White was my hero. When I was 12, I got my picture taken outside his restaurant."
Tabron: "In my head, if I had to pick your mentor, it would have been Marco Pierre White."
Fassnidge: "I met him. He came for dinner, and his people said, 'Marco's only eating vegetarian this season.' and I said, 'Oh, f*** mate, cook him a pork shoulder' - and he ate it all. I was like, 'F***, you got to meet a hero.'"
Tabron: "Do you think mine would be women?"
Fassnidge: "No, men. But she's very strong. Like an [British chef] April Bloomfield."
Tabron: For the style of food I wanted to do, they were mainly women because they were better at writing recipes and telling a story. They were like teachers. Alice Waters at Chez Panisse and Claudia Roden and Stephanie Alexander. But when it came to the restaurant, Wolfgang Puck was, well, me. I was looking at [Beverly Hills restaurant] Spago.
Fassnidge: She's the high end. I was the low end!
TRAIN HARD
Fassnidge: "Those [high-end] kitchens are good for young chefs to learn discipline and to work with great products ... to learn that food doesn't come out of a vacuum pack and a box."
Tabron: "And I suppose you learn more, because you do less numbers and you do lots more intricate things, whereas if you do your training in a hotel, you could end up doing my apprenticeship where you could have to make like a 20kg box of croquette potatoes.
Fassnidge: "But that's good to do as well. I've done that, and washed pots and things. I think you've got to do every aspect, because then when you go and do your own place, you know all the business ... you need to start as a kitchen hand."
Tabron: "I never started as a kitchen hand."
Fassnidge: "Oh, well, your nails ... "
ON SHARED PLATES
Fassnidge: "I like 'em. Within reason. Sometimes I just want to eat something myself, but if it's like a lamb shoulder ..."
Tabron: "Not for the business community, because they don't want to deal with that."
Fassnidge: "Not for quick lunches, But we stuff a whole chicken and sometimes it can be a spectacle, or involve people. Or if we do functions, we do a whole pumpkin and that gets people talking."
Tabron: "Can you see like a business lunch, half-Kiwi and half-Japanese, actually sharing a big pumpkin? That's actually not going to happen. The thing for me, is that it's dumbed-down our service in New Zealand, because you don't actually have to get the food in the right place."
THE CUSTOMER IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT
Fassnidge: "I've had people who have made waiters cry by being rude and obnoxious. In the early days, I'd kick 'em out. I think: respect. He ripped the tablecloth, he said some words he shouldn't say to a female staff member. Mate, they're not getting paid that much.
Tabron: "Please and thank you is always good."
YOU CAN HAVE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
Fassnidge: "Pork belly. Scallops. And f***ing cauliflower puree."
Tabron: "We're so sick of scallops, aren't we?"
Fassnidge: "And cauliflower puree and black pudding. Put it to bed."
Tabron: "Pulled pork."
Fassnidge: "Pulled pork sliders."
HOW TO PAY THE BILL AND OTHER MONEY DRAMAS
Fassnidge: "You know what s***s me? You go out for dinner with five people and someone itemises the bill. I f***ing hate them people. 'I didn't have the salads'. Right, you're gone!"
Tabron: "You know what, I don't even want to go on the record even going near this. You're an Australian, so you can."
Fassnidge: "I went to a laksa place in Christchurch. I went to pay, and she goes, 'We don't take credit cards.' I had to drive to the airport to get to an ATM and then I came back and she said, 'Do you want to leave a tip?' I said, 'Yeah, take f***ing credit.'"
CRITIQUING THE CRITICS
Tabron: "Books get reviewed and art gets reviewed in the same critical manner as restaurants but apart from that - hairdressers, for example, don't get reviewed in the same way."
Fassnidge: "Your business gets rubbished in four lines on a social media thing."
Tabron: "By somebody who has absolutely no idea what they're talking about."
Fassnidge: "Somebody who can't even heat up f***ing frozen crispy pancakes is telling you how bad a cook you are."
IN AN IDEAL WORLD ...
Tabron: "I want to make [hospitality] it like a 9-to-5 job where everything is really organised and everybody knows their jobs and they've got the tools to do their jobs. They've got enough teaspoons, they've got enough pots, they've got enough space. It should be like a 9-to-5 job and not be a job that puts them under that incredible stress."
Fassnidge: "There's not that many jobs where you're under that amount of pressure all day and then they just send you home. And to come down off it, there are drinks, drugs and then they're breaking up with their families, because you're not home, you work so much. I'm pretty sure if I had a wife who wasn't in my industry, I'd be long divorced."
My Restaurant Rules premieres on Monday, September 30 at 7.30pm on TVNZ 2.
Broadcaster has written a new book about the joys of getting older.