Mr Pryde has been the owner and chef of Aparima Restaurant and Bar for four years.
His dish of Foveaux Strait blackfoot pāua arancini is one of five dishes from around New Zealand to make the final.
He said the inspiration for the dish resulted from his time working in Australia, where he realised he missed some of the comfort foods from his home in Invercargill.
"Every time I came back from Aussie I always wanted the things I grew up with, pāua, venison, all those sort of wild things that everyone’s got in their freezers around here."
With over 25 years of experience in the kitchen, he landed on using pāua to represent Southland and more specifically Riverton.
He wanted to give patrons an affordable option for a pāua dish so chose arancini as the vessel for his creation.
"The arancini sort of stretches it out because pāua is very expensive. We have pāua mince with the risotto [so we’re] stretching the pāua as far as we can go to make it nice and affordable."
He said the community and everyone at the pub had rallied around him for this challenge, where finalists are selected by public voting.
"Everyone at the pub was pretty stoked, that’s where I got most of the support from voting," Mr Pryde said.
He will be competing against four other restaurants in a live cook-off on June 18 in Auckland for a prize of $10,000.
