Monday, May 12, 2008


RICHARD TILL WANTS TO BE A RESTAURATER AGAIN - BUT JUST FOR THREE WEEKS

Bookman Beattie was surprised to read in the Sunday Star Times yesterday that Richard Till is to open a restaurant in Christchurch later this month, but just for three weeks! May 15 to June 1. You'll have to be quick.

The huge success of his recently published book, Kiwi Kitchen (already three reprints!), must have gone to his head! However, having said that, the Bookman is already trying to scheme a way of getting himself down from Auckland to enjoy a meal at Anderson Dining.

Here is Richard on the subject:

Restaurant cookery and home cookery are vastly different. I have become a true believer in the potency of domestic culinary traditions in the making of a well community. I love home cooking and I also love restaurant cooking. Eating it is often very nice, but what I really enjoy is the cooking. To that end I’m opening a restaurant, but for just three weeks.

There are many reasons why this is a good idea. It seems that the modern restaurant goer is not particularly loyal, always heading off to newer renditions of the same thing, so a life of three weeks will fit well. And I’m not ready to give myself to a restaurant for any more than a trial period again either, so in the same way it suits restaurateur and diner alike.

It also gives me the chance to have a crack at a type of menu that I’ve always fancied. I grew up in restaurants reading about about so called ‘prix fixe’ restaurants where the diner is offered a set menu at a fixed price. Most famous to me was Chez Panisse. I had a book of their menus and always liked the idea of putting my energies into a limited range of dishes for each night. However I not fond, nor is anyone else much, of the ‘no choice’ menu like the famous Chez Panisse and other ‘pure’ prixe fixe restaurants. I wouldn’t want to eat in one and as a cook it’s preparing an order made up of different dishes that I like about restaurant cooking, so I want to present a menu that offers limited choice. I like to think of it as a type of ‘Table d’hote’ menu, which translated means ‘the hosts table’, and I will serve what I want to be cooking. One thing in particular that I look forward to cooking is potatoes.

Of course I’ll enjoy slicing a nice big pink wing rib chop onto a plate and pairing it with a sauce-boat of intense rich gravy, but I’ll really enjoy practicing the art of the multiple types of potato preparations. I may be showing signs of a slight hysteria by saying this, but I think I have been gifted a way with potatoes. Or at least much practise has left me skilled in potato’s many forms. Scalloped, Hasselback, croquette, chip, crisp, salad, and roast.

In this way it’s a chance for me to do the restaurant that I want to go to. One that gives good potato and pays attention to the vegetable part too. It’s a chance to ask people to pay a dinner charge and let us take care of them for that price. And in that way the diners get it good too.
I freely acknowledge that I’m making it easy on myself by only doing it for three weeks. It’s really easy to sustain the enthusiasm for that length of time.

It’s also easy to do because Christchurch is blessed with a resident catering hire visionary, who makes gear that suggests ideas like a three week restaurant. I’m cooking in a beautiful container kitchen that could handle civil emergency rations for a small town for a week, nicely appointed it is ‘plug and play’ in that it just needs power (albeit 74 amp three phase), water and waste connections and you’re cooking.

I’ve bumped up to an historic building that has been unoccupied for the best part of 30 years. Weeks of cleaning has revealed the extraordinary interior of the pattern making office of Anderson’s Foundry complete with parquet floor. Tables are on the parquet, the stock is bubbling and I’m in the restaurant business. Under pinning the whole endeavour is the call of the restaurant kitchen. I spent so many years in them it’s got in my blood. I miss it dearly and I’m looking forward to slogging away the kitchen, for three weeks.

Anderson Dining
15 May – 1 June
Dinner Wednesday – Friday Lunch Sunday
Booking by Ticketek.

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