Kelson Henderson at Tony's Steakhouse, Auckland. Photo / Michael Craig
Kelson Henderson is an actor turned restaurateur. As well as playing roles in Power Rangers, Shortland Street and Avatar, Henderson is also maitre d’ of Tony’s Steakhouse, the iconic Wellesley St eatery that turns 60 on February 16.
My parents met in the late 1960s when they both worked in insurance. My dad, Kenn, sold insurance as his father had before him and my mother, Doris, was a teleprinter operator. Dad would’ve preferred to be a potter but because he had the gift of the gab he became a salesman. Dad was really good at improving sales teams and was sometimes moved to teams that weren’t performing. But with the teams being on commission, and dad earning a salary, he didn’t think that was fair, so eventually he decided to move on. In 1978, when I was 3, dad left insurance with a little money in his pocket and no idea what to do with the rest of his life - which is how he ended up buying a one-fifth share of two Tony’s restaurants.
Whenever both my parents had to work at night, they’d take me and my brother to the restaurant. One of my earliest memories is of a visiting French rugby team. They were very rowdy, yelling in their accented English and slicing the tops off champagne bottles with kitchen knives. It was such a spectacle, and so classically French, but I also thought that was what people did.
After my parents separated, I moved from Coatesville to Torbay, which was a one-hour 10-minute bus ride into town. Sometimes I’d take my friends to Tony’s, where I’d sneak behind the bar and grab us all lemonade or Coca-Cola, then we’d eat spaghetti bolognese and go to the movies or to Real Groovy to look at cassette tapes. We also had access to Gilmour’s, the wholesalers, and occasionally I’d rock up to school with ridiculous amounts of candy and say, ”ooh I just went to Gilmour’s”. Or I’d take in a box of Return of the Jedi trading cards, not just a packet, but an entire box of packets. That earned me some street cred.
I’ve never been particularly tall and, at 13, when my older brother was working as a weekend kitchenhand, I’d go with him. Tolan would make pasta and salads while I stood on a box to man the dishwasher, scraping plates and washing dishes. I was 16 when I started working shifts of my own.
Our customers are such a beautiful mix. Sometimes, I’ll think, wow what an amazing dress, they must be going to ballet, while at the next table there’ll be a regular family who are hungry for meat and next to them is a couple whose plane was delayed and they’ve been sent to a nearby hotel. Visiting bands come in too. I’ll be like, “oh wow, there’s Slayer in the corner”. Or Ice T, or Ozzy Osbourne.
I wanted to be a rock kid but I’m not a brilliant singer, so when I stumbled into the Maidment Youth Theatre, I decided acting was for me. I was fortunate that both my parents were supportive of that ambition, and the only advice they gave was for me to be smart with money.
I’ve had enough of a good run as an actor to be philosophical. Whenever I’ve been to an audition and I haven’t got the job, I just think, it’ll be me next time. Also because my hit rate’s been pretty good, I’ve never reached a point where I’ve felt there’s no point and I love acting today as much as I ever have. Going on set, I still feel the joy I had as a kid when we played make-believe.
When people say, “hey don’t I know you”, or “you’re on TV”, I’ll say I am. Then they’ll say “you’re famous” and my gag is, “I can’t be that famous if you don’t know where I’m from”. Or I might ask them if they have young kids, and maybe they’ve watched Power Rangers with them, because I’ve been in 13 seasons of Power Rangers, among other things.
Returning to Tony’s was accidental. I’d stayed in Wellington after drama school, but I wanted to do more screen work, plus my family was in Auckland, so I moved back and whenever I had downtime from acting, I’d slot into shifts at the restaurant. Being older and wiser meant I eventually moved into night hosting, then one thing led to another and now I’m in a managerial role.
As part of that new role, when I first started looking after the menu, I wanted to keep up with the times and I added some vegan options, only we kept throwing out vegan cheese and vegan patties. That was one of the biggest lessons I learned after moving into management, the importance of knowing our audience. We are a steak restaurant. People come to us because they want a beautifully cooked steak, not because we’re following trends or trying to be cool.
My biggest learning curve was understanding that people come to us for timeless classics. For prawn cocktails, deep-fried camembert or a carpetbag steak, with the dark wood and booths pointing to the 60s or 70s. Tony’s captures a more beautiful, more innocent time, and people can bask in that here for an hour or two. I’m getting a bit teary thinking about it, but Tony’s is a beautiful place to work because diners come to us with such love and enthusiasm.
Our staff is amazing and our manager Donna has been the restaurant’s backbone for 32 years. She not only allows me to come and go when I have acting work, she’s been like my second mum, and even more so since my own mum passed away. Then there’s our old head chef, Peter Bird. I call him Uncle Pete, as he’s another extra-parental figure. He was with us for 29 years before he finally retired, then his son Louis took over as head chef and now he looks after some of his dad’s recipes that we still use today.
We tried to pivot during Covid by creating “Steakaways”. My friend Laura Hill, the actor and writer, thought of that catchy name and I created a subsidiary website with some computer-savvy friends. We changed the menus to be more takeaway-friendly, then we sat at the restaurant door and made about $300 a night from takeout, mainly from my own friends who were trying to keep us going. One day I realised we were still losing money and making my friends poor, so we stopped.
At the height of Covid, Donna and dad and I were meeting once a week, figuring out how much more debt we could take on going forward. From a business point of view, we probably should have closed, but if we had, 60 years of restaurant history would’ve disappeared just like that. All those people who say they had their first date here or their 21st birthday here, all that goodwill would’ve gone. Seeing the support we later got, when people knew we were close to closing, that took my breath away and I cannot thank our customers enough.
One of my favourite customers lives on the North Shore. He first came to visit Tony’s after he’d read that we were having a tricky time during Covid. He lives simply, he doesn’t drive, and he came over by bus to have a meal. Because he had a good time, he came again and I recognised him. He’d had a couple of craft beers so we chatted about craft beers. Now he comes in every week, we chat about beer, and he always insists on tipping every single staff member $10. Ages ago I said he didn’t have to do that, but he said it was pleasure, because coming to Tony’s makes his week.
We’re just about to celebrate 60 years. For quite a while I didn’t believe we’d make it, which is probably why we haven’t organised a celebration. For our 50th we had a huge party and we invited all our regulars, but this time we’ll take it easy. New T-shirts have been printed and we’ll change the signage. Dad and Donna and I will probably have a quiet drink. Maybe take the tops off a few champagne bottles with kitchen knives. We’re functioning well again, but we also have the quandary everyone in hospitality has these days. A lot of our staff are now my friends’ 15- and 16-year-old kids instead of the 20-somethings you’d usually see working in a restaurant. And if we lose one chef, we’re in trouble. It’s such a different world post-Covid.
When I was a kid I wanted to be an actor. I loved James Cameron’s films and I wished I’d been in Aliens and somehow I managed to fly to LA for a role in Avatar. I also wanted to be a superhero, and I’ve since donned spandex when I became a Power Ranger. But right now I just want to set a good example to my kids. They’re 8 and 10 and sometimes I take them into work with me, like my parents did with me. My eldest daughter, Rio, was in over the holidays and she was desperate to work, so she put on a Tony’s T-shirt and wiped tables and some of the customers said to her, “you’re going to look after this place one day”.
One of the things I felt saddest about, when it looked like we were going under, was not having the opportunity of possibly one day passing the business on to my kids. Tony’s has been such a gift. It’s creative, balanced and orderly, and it offsets my loose, actor-y life. I love working at Tony’s, and I want to be able to give that same gift to my daughters.
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