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Trent Watson, Executive Chef at True South Dining Room shares his culinary journey with us, his vision for creating community through food, challenges and advice for up and coming chefs.
Tell us about yourself.
I'm a Kiwi, love the outdoors and have been a chef for about 25 years. I started cheffing in my home town of Hamilton.
Why did you become a chef?
I got into it by accident. I was studying science as I thought it was a good idea, then I decided to take a year off. The family wasn’t having a bar of me doing nothing so the old man got me a job being a kitchen hand for a year. I started off there and found I liked it after 6 months, so I signed up for a Polytech course, did that for 2 years and then worked my way up.
What do you love most about being a chef?
It’s the only thing I have found where every day can be a school day, there’s always something new to learn. A new technique, a new recipe, and I find nothing more enjoyable than passing on my knowledge and enthusiasm to younger chefs.
Describe the atmosphere of your restaurant. What kind of dining experience do you want your guests to have?
I started working at True South about 4 months ago.
New Zealand is a very young country. We have a couple of hundred years of history when it comes to food and everything like that but we are blessed with what the Maoris had before us - bush ingredients, foraging all of that stuff. Then we have what the Europeans bought over - great high country farming, root vegetables and wild game. And now we are blessed with this wave of new immigration coming through from all over the world bringing interesting flavours and techniques. So my goal is to have a menu where it doesn’t matter if you have been in the country two generations or two weeks, I want for everyone to be able to sit down and feel part of society or a community and be involved with what I would like to see moving forward as a country - togetherness and some type of camaraderie.
What's the signature dish that puts your unique stamp on the menu?
My personal favourite is the Harakeke and Mushroom Tortellini. Harakeke is the Maori word for flax and in this case it’s the flax seed and it grows wild all around the hotel so I have had the chefs out foraging and getting all the seeds. We toast it and grind it down and make a lovely black pasta out of it which marries wonderfully with mushrooms from our local mushroom grower, Remarkable Fungi, finished with a mushroom ketchup.
How big is your team?
I am currently running four chefs and myself. We are a little bit understaffed due to the shoulder season but coming into peak season I like to have about seven or eight of us.
What is the biggest challenge in your kitchen today?
In general in Queenstown, it is getting long term passionate staff. It is such a transient town and the living cost down here is just absolutely obscene so it just factors into constant turnover and constant training and that's where Chomp is good, it sets us up for success.
That is a beautiful segue into Chomp. What was your experience with food safety compliance before you had Chomp?
Missing paperwork, scrambling to complete records up to a couple of days before your audit and just the general hassle to be honest. It just streamlines the whole kitchen operations essentially.
What is your favourite feature of Chomp?
I had the Fridge Loggers at my last hotel and they were just such an amazing time saver. It's just so good to actually get a notification within a reasonable time period of a fridge going down or a door being left open rather than finding it the next morning or halfway through a shift where you’ve already lost all of the stock.
Has Chomp improved your overall kitchen workflow?
Absolutely, it just streamlines everything, keeps everyone on task and I can easily see if a particular chef isn’t recording or doing what he needs to do.
Let's Get Personal. What's one piece of advice you'd give to your younger self as an aspiring chef?
Don’t do it! (kidding) Spend less time drunk. There is plenty of time for that but it’s so much easier to travel and learn from great chefs when you’re young.
Is there any experiences you can share about this advice?
No, I was way too drunk! (But seriously,) it really happened for me when I was working backstage at a gig. I happened to get a job through a friend and they wanted someone to do some catering and I said, yep, no worries. So that weekend I was backstage at a Meatloaf concert cooking for the musicians and it just sort of rolled on from there. I met people that were passionate about what they did, the quality, and everything like that and that was just a turning point where it became less of a job and more of a career for me. Having the ability to learn from better chefs is just amazing.
Outside the kitchen, what are you passionate about?
Skiing, mountain biking, music - all of the normal things. My little garden at home and trying to spend some time with the wife.
Where can we find you?
At True South Dining Room at the Rees Hotel in Queenstown.