Becoming wiser to create delicious meals with seasonal vegetables will help combat the increasing prices of food, celebrated New Zealand chef Peter Gordon says.
Gordon - often described as the ‘godfather of fusion cooking’ - spoke to Sunday Morning as he marks three years in New Zealand after being based in the United Kingdom for 31 years.
He is now running Homeland, a food hub with a restaurant, cooking school and place to buy local produce based in Auckland’s CBD.
There had been a time where Moroccan and Turkish foods were popular, but Gordon said he was currently finding plant-based foods interesting.
“People having to look at other products, you know, especially as things like protein becomes more and more expensive.
“Our eggs at Homeland went up 40 cents an egg not so long ago. So you need to become wiser with seasonal vegetables, so I think people focusing on that is really interesting.”
Gordon said he had planned to return to New Zealand after shutting down his restaurant in London in July 2019.
He had decided on August 2020 to return, but when Covid-19 started shutting down the world, he raced back to New Zealand in March - just before the first lockdown.
He started Homeland in mid-2020, with no plans to open a restaurant as such. But when they found the perfect location and it had a “huge room”, they realised a dining hall was needed.
A scene from Peter Gordon's 2001 docuseries Pacific Harvest, which screened on TV One and BBC2. Photo / Supplied.
“So having said I will never do another restaurant, I then set up the largest restaurant I have ever set up.
“It didn’t sort of go to plan but it’s been a fantastic project.”
Gordon said community days at Homeland were his favourite. It was the charitable part of the business and saw community groups from all walks of life come in for a few hours and learn some simple recipes and life skills.
Working with people on budgets, Gordon said mince was often involved and he enjoyed teaching people his mum’s pavlova recipe.
It was a tricky time for hospitality at the moment, he said.
Many young people had left New Zealand to travel overseas when the borders reopened and migrant workers from South America and other places were not coming in as they previously did.
Travel was harder and more expensive and accommodation was not as readily available, he said.
He said New Zealand may have too many restaurants but creatives needed to “do their thing”.
“They’ve got that itch to scratch, they have to do it.
“There’s a lot of places and I think it’s that thing, do you have a lot of places that are doing half as good or do you have fewer places doing better? There’s so much talent, people have got to do what they need to do.”
Gordon said work was tough with rising costs and difficulties in finding staff but he was loving his time back in New Zealand and was not missing his life in London.
