Nine years ago a little-known New Zealand chef named Josh Emett won his first Michelin star and gave his first interview to Jonathan Milne.
Today, the two catch up again for a cheap dinner and beer. Here’s a ‘tasting menu’ from their conversation …
MOUNTAIN OYSTERS
The first time I met Josh Emett, he told me the story of how, as a 12-year-old, he was riding on the back of a farm bike when his brother pulled a wheelie. Josh fell off, catching himself on a protruding bolt and ripping open his left scrotum. "It didn’t remove any of my tackle but . . . it wasn’t pretty. I ran all the way home with my hand between my legs, because I thought something was going to drop out onto the ground. I just got like 10 stitches and that was it. That was rough. I didn’t tell anyone at school."
An editor with more delicate sensibilities excised that little vignette from the ensuing article – but now you know. Some will read this as evidence of his fortitude, others as an example of his candour. Others will see its inclusion here as purely prurient. It is what it is.
1) SPRING ROLLS AND BEER
When he was 20, he moved to London and lived in a seedy two-bedroom flat with his mate, no furniture, no heating, and £30 left at the end of the week after paying his bills: he would drink £1 Steinlagers at the Outback pub in Covent Garden, and on his day off fill up with the £5 all-you-can-eat deal at Mr Wu’s Chinese restaurant. But a brief spell working on an American tycoon’s £15 million floating gin palace, ‘Taipan’, cruising between Corsica and Naples, made him realise he needed to buckle down: "Most of the time we had no-one on board. There’s something quite nice sitting up in the spa pool on the front of the boat while the sun’s setting, getting boozed – but everyone was running away from something." So in 1999, he returned to London and got a job as the most junior chef at Gordon Ramsay’s flagship restaurant, Chelsea.
2) A KETTLE OF FISH
Working from 6.30am till the wee small hours, Josh watched Ramsay and learned. "It was a whole different kettle of fish. It was an aggressive kitchen, long hours, and the guys there were pretty tough cookies."
The mercurial Ramsay was fighting for his third Michelin star; Josh learnt to keep his head down and do as he was told. Just four years later, Josh would earn his own star as Ramsay’s head chef at the historic Savoy Grill. Like his boss, he didn’t suffer fools – once he threw a bowl of ravioli at a junior cook; a few weeks before I visited, it was a piece of fish. Ramsay was as proud as if Josh were his own son: "Josh is an instantly impressive chef," Ramsay told me, back then.
3) OMELETTE ARNOLD BENNETT
I interviewed Josh in early 2006, when nobody in New Zealand outside his hometown of Ngahinapouri had ever heard of him. I sat in a corner of the Savoy Grill kitchen eating Omelette Arnold Bennett – that’s haddock and hard cheese omelette, named after the famous writer who first ordered it.
The same day the curiously ugly, arch-browed Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber munched down on a quite beautiful golden-topped parsley-encrusted steak and kidney pie, sitting at the window seat once kept for Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Churchill would plan the advances and retreats of World War II over a very similar steak and kidney pie and a glass of brandy; Lloyd Webber that day was planning his latest assault on the West End with a return season of Evita. Josh sat there and told me of his own wars, taking on the traditionalists, ending the carving of meat on silver trolleys at the table, and hanging paintings by Kiwi pop artist Dick Frizzell on the walls.
4) AMUSE-BOUCHE
A week or two later, I visited Josh at home in his second floor apartment in the north London neighbourhood of West Hampstead. Half an almond croissant was left over from breakfast with his 23-year-old French girlfriend, Marion Cros. Josh and I headed out for lunch at the Lansdowne pub where, over a chorizo pizza, he said that he and Ramsay were about to head to New York with a view to starting a new restaurant. His "on-off girlfriend" Marion had been more off than on in recent months, he confided. So off he went to New York, and next thing they had married in a quickie ceremony, phoning his parents to give them the news. But just months later, at a New York party with Marion, his eyes met those of an Englishwoman, Helen Cranage, across the crowded room. They were teamed up in Pictionary. "I thought, oh, he’s a bit of alright," she recalls, "but he’s off the market". He left the party with Marion – but phoned Helen a few weeks later and asked her out for a bite to eat. He told her he’d broken up with Marion.
5) BITTER HERBS
The London restaurant in New York was a triumph, winning him two Michelin stars. The London West Hollywood was popular. Maze in Melbourne – well, that was where it all came to a sudden halt. It took just one look at the business plan to see the high-end restaurant was doomed to fail, Helen says. If every seat had been filled it would still have lost money. The city’s Herald-Sun reported a $2 million loss in the restaurant’s first nine months, and Josh’s resignation. In truth, Josh now admits, Ramsay sacked him. "When I put the phone down, the last time I spoke to him, I just got the feeling that that would be the last time. And it was." Josh already had his bags packed for a lucrative promotion to Ramsay’s London HQ. It was, he says, a "real full-on" three months. He had been commuting to New Zealand to film MasterChef NZ. Louis, a younger brother to Finn, was born in January. Josh was sacked in February; he and Helen got married a week later. They returned home to Hamilton, allowing Josh to say goodbye to his dad Roger the following month, before he died of cancer. Is he angry at Gordon Ramsay? "I worked for him for 12 years, I know him extremely well, and I actually respect him."
6) OTAGO RABBIT LOIN AND RILLETTES, WITH THYME
Up in Poolburn in the Maniototo, more than 400 metres above sea-level, the hills are like a moonscape, Josh says. He was up there in early 2012 with restaurateur Fleur Caulton and her husband Daz, as they mulled over plans for the first restaurant he could call his own, Rata in Queenstown. The skies were an amazing blue. Clear, quiet, still. "We wanted to take what that region looked like and put it inside the restaurant. Rough but beautiful. Quite raw and natural. We wound down the windows when we were driving back and the sun was going down, and it was the season when the thyme was out. As far as you can see, there was thyme. The smell was unbelievable. We got out and stood there on the side of the road and the rabbits were running around, and it was still. That’s what we love about this place. I’d spent 20 years overseas. I was very conscious about coming back to New Zealand and taking ideas from within New Zealand."
7) MALAYSIAN PORK RIBS AND SAMBAL KANG KONG
Josh Emett does cheap and cheerful at KK Malaysian. Photo: DAVID WHITE / STUFF
Josh has been to KK Malaysian in Epsom at least a dozen times since he’s been living in Auckland. Sometimes with Helen, sometimes with the kids. Sometimes he’ll pick up takeaways on the way home from the airport. His second Queenstown restaurant, Madam Woo, is fast gaining a reputation for its Malaysian and Chinese-style street food. Up in Auckland, it’s hard to beat KK. We get there early and get a table, before the queues start forming back from the counter, wending between the tables and out onto Manukau Rd. We order deep-fried tofu ($5), mummy chicken ($20), coffee pork ribs ($20) and sambal kang kong watercress ($18), to share. And roti and beer, of course. My kids love the mummy chicken here, but I’ve never known the secret to the sauce – so I ask Josh. "Probably Marmite," he laughs. Josh’s lean marathon-runner physique belies an enormous capacity to eat, and eat. Six weeks ago he took Fleur Caulton and Rata head chef Chris Scott to Los Angeles, on a research trip. They ate in a dozen restaurants in five days – Manhattan Beach Post, Gjelina, Spago, Animal, Rustic Canyon . . . What does he look for in food, when he goes out for dinner? "You want a little spark of something, something that makes you smile," he says. Josh drops me home in his brand new sponsored black BMW 435i and I’m smiling – I’ve got three takeaway cartons full of leftovers to feed the kids tomorrow.
ESPRESSO AND PETIT FOUR
It’s late Wednesday. Josh gets home from Ostro, his Auckland restaurant. He strides in across the back lawn and through the sliding doors of the family’s home near the beach in Kohimarama. Finn, 5 and Louis, 3, leap on top of him. He greets friend Charlotte and her two kids, says hi to au pair Ellie, shakes hands with me, gives Helen a peck. Josh Emett, 41, the man and the multimedia brand, is all about calm and order, but this is chaos. Louis has vivid blue cupcake icing all over his mouth – his parents make a half-hearted attempt to wipe it off as photographer David White raises his camera to the mayhem.
We browse the cookbooks. Josh pulls one of his cook-in-the-bag dinners out of the chocka fridge. It’s slow-braised pork belly with dashi and white miso, two servings for $24 from his eponymous Chef Series food brand. Chef Series is managed by Helen. "One woman said: ‘I love the food but I really don’t like Josh Emett’," Helen laughs. "I turned around and said, you know what, I don’t like him that much either, and the worst thing is . . ." Her Homes Counties accent drops away to a conspiratorial whisper. ". . . The worst thing is, I’m married to him!"
He chortles.
Josh and his wife Helen at home. Photo: David White/Fairfax NZ.
Josh has more than 120 people working for him across three restaurants, but Helen is the only one who doesn’t "sugar coat" her advice to him. They are a dynamic couple, interrupting and contradicting each other, each bringing out a sparkling vitality in the other – a vitality unexpected in the usually grave Josh.
Will he move with MasterChef NZ from TVNZ to TV3? "We’re in negotiations." What’s his next project? "We’re looking at another Madam Woo restaurant, in Auckland next year." Will he run for mayor of Auckland in 2016? "Yeah, why not?" he laughs.
A few years back, he began compiling "a little book" of photos showing where he has come from and visualising where he wants to go. Until now, he’s answered every question with extraordinary candour, but when I ask him what destination is depicted in the photo at the end of the book, he takes pause. "I think I’ve got there. I’ve got two nice kids and a lovely wife and we’re all happy – that’s really important. So enjoy it!"
HAPPINESS: Josh with his wife Helen, and sons Louis, 3, and Finn, 5. Photo: David White/Fairfax NZ.
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