Our obsession with cookery shows and celebrity chefs has given us an appetite for confrontation in the kitchen and extreme or bizarre foods, but one Wanaka chef is hoping to change all that. Kerrie Waterworth reports.
The only dish I marked down was the organic South Canterbury baby beets tossed with Central Otago walnuts and fig balsamic cherry vinegar in a beetroot gel and covered with twice charred nitrous goat's cheese - because I thought the cheese tasted bland even though the texture was sensational.
However, the four dishes which followed that could only be described as culinary tours de force and I gave each 10 out of 10.
It was test kitchen night at Wanaka's Ode Conscious Dining organic restaurant and I was one of about 20 diners who had paid to eat and critique dishes ''whimsically'' created by head chef Lucas Parkinson (29) that day.
''I never write a menu - the farmers tell me what they have and ideas start popping into my head as I am walking around, sleeping or in the kitchen.''
Mr Parkinson opened the restaurant on May 26 with a philosophy of creating good food that ''excites all the senses''. The ingredients are made from organic produce sourced at least 89% within the region and 99% within New Zealand and prepared in a ''calm'' environment.
But as Mr Parkinson brought each course to the table and explained the dishes I had a sense the calmness was hard fought.
''I was an angry person in my younger years and a lot of that can be attributed to the way I was treated.
''If you worked in an office and your manager suddenly kicked the rubbish over, screamed at you and went berserk, you are going to remember that day for the rest of your life but I dealt with that on a daily basis in a lot of restaurants.''
Mr Parkinson had two grandfathers and an Italian-born mother who were chefs and believed cooking was ''in his bones'', but his journey to becoming a restaurant owner was circuitous and full of challenges.
Born in a Coromandel commune, baby Lucas and his four older sisters moved to Thames, where his specialist physician father Dr Peter Parkinson worked at the hospital before the family moved to Auckland when Lucas was 5 years old.
He grew up in Grey Lynn. Over the years more and more affluent people moved into the area but in his teen years he had school friends who never had food for lunch, had experienced violence in their homes, had abusive alcoholic parents addicted to drugs - and then the arrival of P or methamphetamine ''really changed'' everything.
''Everyone in your neighbourhood was doing it, and as a teenager seeing it, you became part of it.
''I had friends . . . who became sick from taking drugs and not eating or drinking; it really tore me up a lot.''
Mr Parkinson started work as a panelbeater but his life a took a U-turn when he was almost fatally beaten by a local gang after a ''miscommunication''.
He was sent to live with relatives in Italy for several months and on his return moved to the family rental in Ohakune, where his life ''changed''.
''My first season there I saw a small Italian restaurant, walked in and asked if they had a job?''
Mr Parkinson had never cooked anything harder than toast but he found he was a natural.
He worked another winter in the Ohakune restaurant before his father suggested he attend the Auckland hotel and chefs training school.
''I liked learning the theory and the practical and when I finished I got straight A's.
''That was something I had never experienced before; I was the top student - it felt amazing.''
Mr Parkinson knocked on doors until he found a restaurant that would give him three weeks' work experience.
''On the first night I stood there clapping my hands and the chef asked me what I was doing?
''I said I didn't know what to do, so he threw a broom at me and yelled there was always something to do in a ... kitchen, and that was my introduction to working in restaurants. When you got it right you were praised and when you got it wrong someone threw a potato at you.''
Mr Parkinson worked in better and better and bigger and bigger ''hatted'' kitchens until he almost died from a heart attack and ended up in hospital for three days.
''They said it was from a lack of nutrients and living off adrenaline and caffeine.
'' I lived across the road from Skycity casino in Auckland and I was working in the Grill.
''It was a huge, massive kitchen with 22 chefs and we were doing 350 covers a night, sometimes working 11 days straight and from morning to late at night.''
With his daughter Tiger-Lily on the way, he and his partner Lorissa McDonough moved to Australia to save money. He got a job at Sydney's Flying Fish restaurant at the end of Jones Bay wharf.
''The place was just booming.
''Peter Kuruvita was the big celebrity executive chef and Stephen Seckold came back as head chef and we were pulling off 19 course degustation menus, parallel to 11 course tasting menus, parallel to the a la carte menu.
''We would do 150 for lunch, 150 for dinner. There were 15 chefs running around. I'd get about an hour or two of sleep every night because we'd work a 17-hour shift.
''We'd start at 7.30 in the morning and we'd finish at 1am.
''It was manic but it was exciting, it was fun. There was love, there was hate, there was sabotage, there was everything.''
Every two weeks a chef was chosen to create a dish for the test kitchen.
When it came to Mr Parkinson's turn, his challenge was to make a dessert without sugar or chocolate.
''I went home thinking the head chef had it in for me, but my best friend told me to have a smoke, a drink and relax.
''I had too many, woke up in the night, and I was staring at a pot plant with cigarette butts, broken beer glass and weeds growing out of it.
''I thought how am I meant to be inspired when I live with this around me?''
Mr Parkinson created the Urban Garden dessert, which featured baby mint to look like weeds, and thinly rolled pastry filled with passion fruit cream to look like cigarette butts.
It was the only dish that year to make it on to the menu and stayed there for six months.
A winter holiday in Wanaka in 2010 with dinner at the Botswana Butchery planted the seed of the idea to return to New Zealand and buy their own restaurant.
''We always had our eye on Wanaka; it just took a few years to get here.
''I worked at Rata (in Queenstown) with Josh Emett and then at Sasso with Sal Grant until I was offered a job at Matakauri Lodge.
''That was very difficult. We had a new menu every day and no guest was allowed to see the same ingredient twice during their stay.''
Burnt out, Mr Parkinson ''quit cooking'' and took two years off to be fulltime father to Tiger-Lilly, although the need for a hot sauce one night prompted him to start an award-winning home-based company, Frankton Heat hot sauce.
Two years later, the family moved to Wanaka where Mr Parkinson ran a consultancy business until he realised ''it was more stressful than anything''.
He heard there was a position for a sous chef at Bistro Gentil Restaurant and wondered whether he should apply.
''I talked to Mario Rodrigues, the head chef, and I said I want to do this but I don't want to be yelled at and I don't want to yell at anyone. I can't work in animosity any more.
''He said I won't yell at you - I just have high standards - and we got along like a house burning down.''
Nine months later, the Botswana Butchery restaurant came on the market and Ode restaurant was born.
Mr Parkinson said the philosophy behind Ode conscious dining came from a documentary he watched about New York chef Dan Barber who owns two restaurants and believes if the farm-to-table movement was to truly support sustainability, end the rise of monocultures, and produce delicious food, it was the table that must support the farm, not the other way around.
Mr Parkinson agrees.
''There is an abundance of natural produce around Wanaka if people care to open their eyes and hearts to it. I think for the last three years more restaurants have opened here with higher ethics and more care for the food.''
Even though Mr Parkinson is adamant ''it is not OK to yell'' he admitted there were nights when mistakes were made, the restaurant was quiet, there were bills to be paid and it was hard to stay calm.
However, ''there were times when the restaurant was full and someone would come to the kitchen to tell me they've learned something that night and that made it worth it.
''You have to be the change you want - that is my motto.''
