Gourmet restaurateur's campaign kickstarted an industry
After Otto Groen arrived in New Zealand from the Netherlands in 1952, he founded the Gourmet restaurant and went on to become a doyen of the local hospitality industry.
In the days when Groen started his establishment in Shortland St, gourmet was not a word that could be worthily bestowed on many New Zealand eateries.
Groen was startled to find that wine and beer were only served in hotels while bars were open. As closing time was 6pm (the "six o'clock swill") the restaurant trade as it is now was virtually unknown. But it was not unknown for restaurant patrons to arrive with illegal alcohol concealed about their persons.
Groen started the Gourmet in 1954 and began a long campaign to be allowed to sell beer and wine legally. He did not succeed until 1961 when his was the first restaurant to have a liquor licence awarded by the Licensing Control Commission.
The opposition was formidable, both from people of temperance inclination and from brewers with no interest in encouraging competition.
The Gourmet became for years a home of food, wine and the David Kennedy murals. It closed in 1969 when Otto Groen left for Japan to run the New Zealand restaurant at Expo 70. He went on to run other restaurants in Auckland and Wellington.
His cooking included more interesting lamb dishes - not the traditional roast lamb a la Kiwi, described then as "cooked to death, sitting in its own grease and carved from a joint with a heavy outer coating of skin and fat".
He had also headed the North Shore International Academy, one of the largest to offer hospitality training. Groen is survived by his wife Else and children Martin and Timothy.
