My Kitchen Rules winners Vikki Gorton-Tibbits and Pascal Tibbits. Photo / TVNZ
My Kitchen Rules winners Vikki Gorton-Tibbits and Pascal Tibbits. Photo / TVNZ
Vikki Gordon-Tibbits and Pascal Tibbits first connected over their shared passion for food – now they’ve been declared the winners of the latest season of My Kitchen Rules New Zealand.
The Bay of Plenty couple cooked up a four-course fine dining feast for some of New Zealand’s top chefs, including Nick Honeyman and Sid Sahrawat, and judges Colin Fassnidge and Manu Feildel, to take out the title on last night’s finale episode, which screened on TVNZ 2.
“It’s all starting to settle in now,” Vikki, 40, tells the Herald today. “Last night I was like, is this real?”
It was a close finish between them and rival team, Mangawhai mates Matt and Kurt - although two outcomes were filmed, so they didn’t find out who had won until the episode aired - and Pascal (50) admits it was “tough to watch”.
“All the contestants and our competitors, Kurt and Matt from the grand final, and us and our family and friends and their family and friends - we had a big joint party so we could all watch it together,” Vikki adds. “Cause we didn’t know who was going to win and we wanted to be together to congratulate each other, no matter what.”
Their own family and friends were “just so happy” to see them win, she says - and the couple themselves still can’t quite believe it.
“I think what happened is we kind of got involved, we started to see what other people could do and then halfway through the show we realised, hold on a minute, we could have a shot at this,” Pascal recalls.
“The whole experience - we loved it,” Vikki says. “We thrived under pressure, we can do that really well. We’re a bloody good team.”
And instead of testing their relationship, they say the experience has made them stronger.
The My Kitchen Rules NZ 2023 finalists, Vikki and Pascal and Kurt and Matt. Photo / TVNZ
“It draws us together more than anything,” Pascal says.
“You see people getting into the high stress situations and it starts to fall apart, whereas we’re the opposite. No matter what happens, she’s got my back and vice versa.”
For both Vikki and Pascal, getting to cook in Sahrawat’s kitchen at his iconic restaurant The French Café was a highlight from the competition – as well as getting to hang out with judges Fassnidge and Feildel who are known for their banter on and off the screen.
“Colin, he’s the old cheeky Irishman,” Vikki laughs. “I was having a martini while I was cooking at our instant restaurant and he comes along and grabs it from me and takes a sip.”
“He gets his fingers into everything, tasting this, tasting that,” Pascal says, adding that he thinks the judges are “quite a good foil” for each other.
“Manu is a really dedicated man. When you see him backstage, he’s rehearsing his lines, he’s trying to get it right, he really believes in good food, and he critiques from the heart. Whereas the flashy Irishman would sometimes be a bit more flamboyant.”
My Kitchen Rules NZ hosts Manu Feildel and Colin Fassnidge. Photo / TVNZ
The pair agree they’d do the competition again in a heartbeat, adding that it wasn’t the challenges or the pressure in the kitchen that proved to be the most difficult part of filming - it was being apart from their kids as the Auckland Anniversary floods and then Cyclone Gabrielle hit the North Island earlier this year.
“We had to relocate to Auckland, and it was during those storms that came through Auckland and we were completely unaware of it because we had our phones taken off us for the show,” Pascal recalls.
“We got stuck in Auckland for a week, with the kids at home, all having to go to school. That was pretty tough.”
“Luckily my parents and our friends were able to look after the kids,” Vikki adds.
The pair are especially grateful to their friends back home in Tauranga, who Pascal says “have been there the whole way with us - supporting us, looking after the kids when they had to, just being there for us.”
As for what’s next, Pascal is directing Tauranga’s Summer Shakespeare programme, which the couple founded several years ago, and Vikki has been developing an infused gin called Ginfusion, which she hopes to launch soon.
It may come as a surprise that the couple don’t plan to pursue careers in the kitchen, though they hope to one day publish a cookbook - but Pascal points out that what they love is “designing flavours” above all.
“I don’t think we’d ever want to be chefs - it’s that design aspect of cooking and designing meals and putting flavours together,” he explains.
But if the chance ever came up to compete against teams on the Aussie version of My Kitchen Rules, they couldn’t turn it down.
