Michelin men

August 29, 2009
Geoff Collett meets the two men who have more than any put Nelson restaurants on the map. --------------------
There's some nice serendipity, if you believe in that sort of thing, in Kevin Hopgood's and Matt Bouterey's latest success.
They're two mates who play football together, yarn about food, share a wide competitive streak and strikingly similar back-stories. They both arrived in Nelson almost sight-unseen, on the strength of little more than the enthusiastic advice of someone they knew; both have gone on to make their names near enough to household ones around town, literally by putting them out there for everyone to judge.
Last week, they continued their double act by stamping Nelson on the foodie's road map as the place to visit outside of one of the big cities if you're looking for an outstanding restaurant feed, each claiming one of the two prizes for non- metropolitan restaurants in the Cuisine magazine restaurant awards - Hopgood's as the best regional casual dining restaurant, Bouterey's as the best smart dining in the same category. No other provincial centre got a look in.
Ask the rather laconic Mr Hopgood what the double success says about Nelson, and he shoots back: "It means Nelson's definitely worth a visit." Or, as he quickly decided five years ago, worth giving a go as a place to live. The region's happy confluence of appealing way of life and an ever-growing reputation for excellent produce have been the vital ingredients in attracting a couple of chefs who are determined to prove to the world that here, dining can be as good as you could hope to find in any hidden corner of the country.
Mr Hopgood, 44, is an Englishman, a Londoner who bailed on school to chase his passion for cooking. Mr Bouterey (he pronounces his surname "Boo-terry", even if most Nelsonians seem to insist on "Boo-te-ray"), is a 39-year-old "Naki boy" (meaning, from Taranaki) who did the same. Both gravitated to London as young men hankering for the heat of the kitchen, both quickly found places in top- end establishments in the city's celebrity- infused foodie scene. As they talk through their experience there, names like the Roux Brothers, Marco Pierre White, Martin Lam and Nick Lander, Bruno Loubet and Anthony Demetre come and go - names which may mean little in this corner of the world, but which the most cursory Google search will quickly identify as members of the sprawling aristocracy of British restaurant dining.
Both were determined to get themselves a foothold in the kitchens of restaurants that had been awarded Michelin stars (the highly sought ratings of outstanding restaurants); both duly did so, becoming steeped in the disciplines and demands of classical cooking and the consistency which underpins the Michelin standard.
"It's quite intense, " Mr Hopgood says of the Michelin-restaurant atmosphere. "Full-on, " is Mr Bouterey's description. Testosterone charged? "Oh yeah - yeah - yeah, " he says, the emphasis doing away with the need for elaboration.
Both men thrived there. "I loved it, " Mr Bouterey says. "It's good, it's hard. You're working with like-minded people who are dedicated to what they want to do and to be the best."
Mr Hopgood says he has mellowed since those days - "I think the old testosterone's died down a bit now" - but his wife, Jane, suggests that the hard-nut ways and high expectations of the high- end kitchen haven't completely gone. "He is quite tough . . . he's a bit of a Gordon when it comes to using the f-word, and he is quite strict, " she says. At least his staff know precisely where they stand with him.
Tania Bouterey meanwhile, gives a broad hint of the lasting effects on her husband's character, when he's recalling one of his old mentors as "first in the kitchen, last out of the kitchen, wouldn't let anyone else do anything." .
"Who does that sound like?" she innocently wonders out loud. Her husband doesn't deny it.
Kevin Hopgood had never seen Nelson before he landed here in January, 2005, with GP wife and two young sons. "Jane had checked it out, " he says, paying a fleeting visit when the family had been casting around for a way to break out of the big city rut and find a better place to raise the kids. Family friends who knew the region well raved about it. But "it was a shot in the dark", he admits, particularly changing down from a metropolis of 16 million to a sleepy town of 40,000.
They did have a plan. "I had a little book that I kept in London, " he says, with it all mapped out, to set up a restaurant firmly focused on the locality, using local ingredients, beers, wines.
When they got to Nelson, they found that while they weren't necessarily the only people talking about going local, there was an opening for somebody actually prepared to do it.
"We did a small bit of market research, but we realised there was a niche market that no-one was really focused on." Besides the local emphasis, they settled on a European, casual, semi- bistro style; far from the cheapest place in town, but never to be mistaken as the most pretentious.
They found a site at the top of Trafalgar St - a canny location, as experience has proved, surrounded by other bars and eateries and the first port of call for tourists wandering down from the hotels and bed-and-breakfasts around the cathedral.
"We just wanted to start off slowly, so we didn't get hammered, " Mr Hopgood says now. They didn't advertise, still haven't bothered with a website, but things soon snowballed. Within six months of opening in late 2005, they had won a local hospitality award. The recognition kept mounting, culminating in this month's Cuisine award. And Nelson diners fell in love with Hopgood's.
The hospitality industry may be one of the killing fields of the current recession, but at Hopgood's, "we're 30 per cent up on last year, and that's been the trend since we've opened", Mr Hopgood says. The 60-seat restaurant is full every Saturday. Even through July, the traditional depths of Nelson's hibernation, the place averaged 48 customers a night. Since news of the Cuisine award broke, the reservations have flooded in. He employs 18 people and is getting to the stage where he can head away for a week or two and leave the place safely in the care of his staff.
Consistency is his key, he says. "If you come in and ask for crispy duck salad [as near to a signature dish as you'll find on his menu] you're going to get that and it will be the same every day of the week, 365 days of the year." Plus there's "good, humble service, and saying yes to the customer - we're in the hospitality industry, not the hostility industry which seems to happen quite a bit around town".
Matt Bouterey and Kevin Hopgood make two identical observations: each admires the other's work, and each says he shares the other's competitive instinct.
Nevertheless, there's a distinct hint of envy on Mr Bouterey's part as he reflects on Mr Hopgood's soaraway success in central Nelson. Bouterey's, he concedes, is second fiddle to Hopgood's. "That's a pain in the arse. At the end of the day, he does a great job, we do a great job, but he's got the location."
He's a little bothered, too, that the "smart dining" label may make people think his restaurant is high-end, special- occasion stuff. He argues his prices are more than competitive with Hopgood's - Mrs Bouterey comes up with the cute line that the award simply highlights that "you need to be smart to dine here".
The Boutereys are regularly urged to move across to Nelson, but setting aside their bemusement at the Nelson mindset which sees a trip to Richmond as some kind of epic journey, they reason that the location has its advantages. Mostly - and this is where they have a clear edge on a city location - they have an impressive network of growers and suppliers on their doorstep.
The Boutereys and their three young daughters landed in Nelson back in 2003, leaving London suddenly when Mrs Bouterey's father fell ill in Auckland. They decided to settle back in New Zealand; they had no connection to Nelson, other than the recommendation of friends and their suspicion that if they decided to go into the restaurant business there was a gap to be filled here.
Mr Bouterey is a straight-talking but amiable sort who - it doesn't take his wife's asides to reveal - isn't letting go of the punishing approach to life he learned in London, even if circumstances allowed it. He puts in 80-hour weeks, arriving at the restaurant at 9am and getting home at 1 o'clock the next morning, five days a week at present. Particularly over winter, they can't justify taking on more staff who might help him ease the workload, but he's not one to present himself as a martyr.
If they do have complaints, it is with the way Richmond has been allowed to develop - or not develop - with its paucity of nightlife. There is nothing to attract people into Queen St after the shops close.
Still, he's prepared to forgive the place many of its sins for the community of suppliers he has nurtured since he and Mrs Bouterey took the plunge into their own premises in late 2006.
Like Mr Hopgood, he subscribes enthusiastically to a locavore approach to food, maybe more so; his particular passion is picking, even sowing, the produce himself, to track its progress from seed to plate.
Both restaurants make a big deal of naming and thanking their various suppliers, in Bouterey's case on the back of the menu (and Mr Bouterey makes a point of phoning back after his interview with the Nelson Mail to add Nelson Winegrowers to the list of those he feels indebted to).
But while he can single out numerous individuals - the likes of Vailima Orchards ("the best apples in New Zealand") or "Gav and Ang" at the 185 produce shop in Hope - it is a mysterious trio of farmers who he will only identify as "J, R and T" he says the business owes a real debt of gratitude to. "One thing I'd really like written is that without those farmers out there, we'd be dead and buried."
He puts the secrecy surrounding them to the fact that they don't supply other restaurants or commercial operators - "only people who want to go there to buy veg" - and the warmth with which they have responded to his enthusiasm for their "outstanding" fresh produce. They try out new produce for him, let him and his staff plant and harvest their own crops. The paddock-to-plate approach is at the core of his philosophy, and there's no mistaking his conviction - as the interview wraps up Mr Bouterey still has more than 12 hours to go in his day. His plate, it could be said, is full.
Hopefully, he muses, the award will get more people to make the great trek out from Nelson. Does that extend to convincing them that he's better than Kevin Hopgood?
"That's an argument too. I don't really think about that. I've got my own things to do, he's got his."