Brock and Campbell Sprague with the pizza paddle Campbell's late son Josh made for the High St Bistro. Photo / Leanne Warr
Brock and Campbell Sprague with the pizza paddle Campbell's late son Josh made for the High St Bistro. Photo / Leanne Warr
Two years ago restaurant owners Campbell and Brock Sprague weren't sure they wanted to keep High St Bistro going.
The father and son opened the Dannevirke restaurant in May 2020, three months before Campbell's other son Josh died of a brain hemorrhage.
The pair and their family were devastated andit would have been easy to throw in the towel.
Instead the restaurant has become a vehicle to help them through the grief - a beacon of sorts.
That will and that fight to keep giving their customers a good experience earned them the People's Choice award in the Manawatū Hospitality Awards held in Palmerston North earlier this month.
"It was hard to work again but we're also lucky to have this place to come back to and carry on," Brock said.
He felt if they'd been working for other places it would have been easy to just "sink in" to what had happened and neglect their work.
Josh, who worked for Metalform, had been helping with the renovations before the restaurant opened and would even come in after working fulltime to help in the kitchen.
"It's just a nice little community. It had some really nice values, good, old school values," he said.
While in Auckland, he found he was just leaving home to go to work, without any in-between.
"There wasn't time to do anything else."
Brock moved to Dannevirke a little more than two years ago.
"In Auckland I was doing about 80 hours a week. I've got young kids and a wife."
Then came the first lockdown.
"We came down here for the lockdown, we spent a bit of time in Dannevirke, saw the character and a nice style of life."
Opportunity knocked when the building became available for lease.
With both Campbell and Brock having always worked for someone else, they saw it as a chance to bring the family together as well as build something they could both imagine.
For the pair, food had always been a passion and getting their own place was like it was meant to be, Campbell said.
"Things just sort of fall into place. We're doing our best work, which we want to do. We're passionate about what we do, we love it and naturally when you do that you take care."
Every dish offered in the restaurant, they made.
"We don't buy anything in," Campbell said.
Campbell and Brock Sprague outside the popular Dannevirke restaurant. Photo / Supplied
While it wasn't always cheaper to do it that way, that was the commitment they had to giving their customers the best experience, Brock said.
"It speaks for itself. If we were serving bad food or had a bad environment, we wouldn't be getting the People's Choice award.
"We wouldn't be full every night. That's why we put our heart and souls into everything."
The bistro was also very much a family business with Campbell's wife Nicole working as the maître d.
Brock said her fabulous front of house service had always been complimented by the locals and was a big part of the People's Choice award.
His wife Liz, who originally implemented the bar/cocktails, until she had to prioritise their children, also worked behind the scenes doing marketing and accounts.
Campbell's daughter also did some shifts in the bar.
High St Bistro was nominated for awards in four categories in the Manawatū Hospitality Awards: outstanding front-of-house team, chefs choice outstanding chef, OneMusic outstanding ambience and design, and Nova Energy outstanding regional establishment.
Those awards were judged by their peers in the industry.
