The general trajectory of a hotshot chef tends to go from small to big. Small town to big city, small kitchen to world-renowned restaurant. The world’s culinary capitals are where food creatives flock to.
But chef Analiese Gregory has taken a different path. Her trajectory has seen her move from
Raised in Matamata in a family with a diverse approach to food (born to a Chinese Dutch mum and a Welsh dad, Analiese describes the food she ate growing up as “a weird mix” of congee and stir-fried vegetables from her mum, and the French and English food her chef dad made), her first professional kitchen experience was at the Sheraton in Auckland, then at Wellington’s Te Papa and Logan Brown.
From there she moved to London to work with her father and soon found herself in the kitchens of The Ledbury in London, and Le Meurice in Paris. But it was while working at Sydney’s famous Quay that her passion for wild food was born.
“Produce was being sent from all over Australia, directly from the farmers to the back door. We’d go to make a staff meal from the fridge, and instead of finding a box of chives and coriander and parsley, I’d be pulling out giant bunches of radish flowers and rocket flowers — very different from the normal stuff. And I became curious about where these things were from.”
The revelation took her back to Europe, to work at Michel Bras’ eponymous three-Michelin-starred restaurant in southern France. Her last stint in France had been in Paris; now, she found herself in a tiny town of 800 people, “the middle of absolute nowhere”, as she describes it. And it was just what she wanted.
“In my mind, I was going to be like Heidi, skipping through the French countryside meadows with cheese and a bottle of wine and a baguette, which is kind of what I did. I really deeply immersed myself in the foraging and the growing, I spent time in the garden at Michel’s house learning where things are really from, going to the market with him.”
Her next stop was Spain, where she was equally immersed in the foraging world (“I would drive around in my tiny Renault with a ladder, and spend a whole day picking rock samphire and acacia flowers”) and she describes both these experiences as both idyllic and difficult because the question of where home was never left her.
She chose to return to Sydney but found city life was no longer for her. “I felt really disconnected, and I fell into like a bit of a hole. I always lived in places like Potts Point or Kings Cross, and I would walk the streets feeling like everything was surreal and unreal — I missed the mountains. On the weekends, I would drive up to the Hawkesbury and go pick figs and things. But it was a six- to eight-hour round trip to be able to pick something, and it was too tiring.”
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Advertise with NZME.Then one day, the call came. Ben Lindell, the co-owner of Hobart’s acclaimed Franklin restaurant (which closed down in 2020), called her out of the blue one day, asking if she had ever considered moving to Tasmania.
“I said, ‘No, but I’ll consider it now.’ I used to come down to Tasmania quite a lot, for R&R — you know, climb the mountains, breathe the fresh air, eat the produce. So I packed all my stuff into my car and I went.”
Long story short, what was meant to be a six-month visit turned into a whole new phase of her life. Analiese now owns a house in the countryside, with a few acres, some chickens, and possibly the best-fed dog in the world, called Kina (“I make us both an omelette for breakfast and we’ll have steak tartare for dinner. I’m always thinking, ‘What can I eat that Kina can also eat?’”).
Life in Tasmania is full of ups and downs, but it’s where she wants to be. “Tassie winters are really hard, intensely cold, and I only have a fireplace to heat my house, but I know in ways it’s idyllic. I went through a process of asking myself, ‘What do I actually want from my life? What makes me happy?’ And it’s this kind of stuff.”
Analiese says that France taught her that foraging is good for her mental health, but Tassie has brought about the more extreme elements of her foraging skills.
“As soon as I got here I learned to dive and it was bitterly cold and horrible, and I had an ill-fitting wetsuit. But then you come out of the ocean with an abalone, and you feel great. I think life just takes weird, unexpected turns.”
Now she is working on her second book (the first, How Wild Things Are, detailed her adventures, and celebrated her love of slow, wild food), and is in talks to film a second series of her TV show, A Girl’s Guide to Hunting, Fishing and Wild Cooking.
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Advertise with NZME.She is growing a market garden, the beehives are already up and running, and she’s working on a plan for a 10-seater restaurant that will dish up lunches a few days a week.
Life in Tasmania is rich and varied, and it certainly isn’t easy. But for Analiese, it’s a lifestyle choice.
“It’s not going to make me rich. And I guess I do feel very far away from everything, living on a tiny island at the bottom of the world. But I guess, coming from New Zealand, I was pretty used to that. I want to have the life that I never had when I was working in professional kitchens. I couldn’t have a dog when I was working 16 to 18 hours a day; I want to actually be present and have hobbies and do things, and enjoy life.”
