Where are all the chefs?
That is the question being asked by Wanaka and Queenstown restaurateurs desperately searching for staff to keep their businesses going over the summer holidays.
The Wanaka Ale House has three or four kitchen jobs going, next door, Francesca's Italian Kitchen has three vacancies, while the shortage in Queenstown has been described as ''dire''.
A Wanaka community newspaper advertised a total of 17 kitchen jobs last week.
Ale house director Grant Lawrie said a lack of qualified chefs had been ''plaguing'' Wanaka for years but had become more critical this summer with higher tourist numbers.
A normal roster at the Ale House had 12-13 staff in the kitchen, but Mr Lawrie said he had been filling gaps in the roster with temporary staff hired through a Christchurch agency.
While they were doing a good job, it was an expensive option, he said. Also, kitchens worked best ''when you have got settled staff who know what they are doing and are qualified''.
He could not pinpoint why there was a shortage but it was a ''pressure industry''.
''I know there are a number of older chefs around town who have got out of the industry.
''Let's face it, if you are going to have a family, it's not the best lifestyle when you are working at night.''
Mr Lawrie had been offering to pay for chefs' flights to Wanaka but knew of one instance of a restaurant flying a chef to Wanaka to have him ''disappear'', leaving the restaurant owner out of pocket.
Restaurateur Francesca Voza said she had advertised nationwide.
''We're just not getting the CVs.
''The CVs we do get through are from either India or Saudia Arabia, and all of them don't have visas to come here or experience, normally.''
Those overseas chefs she did employ generally stayed only a few months until their visas ran out and she wondered where the newly qualified New Zealand chefs were.
Often staff left just before the Christmas-New Year period
because they did not want to work over the holidays, returning some weeks later.
However, Ms Voza promised, no matter how many cooks she had in the kitchen on Christmas Day, there would be dinner on the table ''even if I have to cook it myself''.
Cameron Mitchell, of Queenstown, said the chef shortage in the resort was ''dire''.
''All you've got to do is look at [Queenstown newspapers] - you've got four or five pages of situations vacant, a big chunk of them are chefs.''
Mr Mitchell, owner of The Bunker bar and restaurant, said the chef shortage was not a new problem. However, it was the worst it had been for some time - chefs were high on the skills shortage list, but the situation was made more difficult by immigration rules and requirements.
''When you've got people you want to continue to employ or extend their visas, it's made even harder.
''There's no easy fix ... we've got to make it attractive for people to come here and that sometimes translates to higher wages.
''There's not many people who are going to have sympathy for poor business owners ... but the margins are already pretty tight.''
Restaurant Association of New Zealand Queenstown president Grant Hattaway said one solution may be for restaurant owners to ''upskill themselves'' and learn to chef.
Mr Hattaway, owner of Pier 19, said the chef shortage was not limited to the Queenstown Lakes, but was a ''worldwide'' issue.
In Queenstown, if a business found a good chef, the problem was retaining them.
''Trying to get people to stick and stay here for any length of time is tough - [because of] the cost of living, employers need to pay more. Therein lies the problem.''
