This Wildly Creative Chef Is Putting New Zealand On The World’s Culinary Map

26.09.2023 - 10:23 / forbes.com / Martin Berasategui

Vaughan Mabee is a mad genius. I mean this as the highest compliment. The New Zealand chef asks helicopter pilots to drop him off in the middle of nowhere so he can forage, hunt and cook. He researches the molecular structure of animal proteins. He shoots deer and pheasants from his back porch and serves them to guests. He cooks with the creativity, assurance and technique of someone who spent decades in the kitchens of Noma and Martin Berasategui. He sleeps about two hours a night.

It’s a combination that makes him sui generis—unlike any other chef in the world. And when he returned from Copenhagen and San Sebastián to make a restaurant in his own name. His idea was to create a was deeply reflective of his native New Zealand, he signed on at the Amisfield winery in the Central Otago outside Queenstown. It’s a place that has long been recognized for producing some truly spectacular pinot noirs. Before he negotiated a salary, he insisted on the condition that he could let his creativity run free. No more Sunday roasts and family-style feasts.

Instead, he would offer a once-in-a-lifetime gastronomic menu of 22 courses, one of the most spectacular food experiences in the world. He didn’t even talk money with his potential employers. His contract simply stipulates that the goal is to create the best restaurant in the world.

Not long ago, as a preview of the Amisfield experience and a window into his busy mind, he welcomed a small group of international food writers to his log cabin outside the city, which he shares with his wife, Julia Yamamoto. He showed us some giant crabs that he had received 46 minutes earlier, which were attempting to jump out of their shipping boxes to crawl around his kitchen floor. (“The liveliest ones always taste the best,” he says of the animals’ enthusiasm.)

I guess you could call them New Zealand king crabs, but that species was never known to exist. These delicious beasts were only recently discovered in the cold waters south of the South Island, near Stewart Island. (Mabee has a network of fishermen, marine biologists, mycologists and other food scientists. One of them said, “If there’s anyone who wants this crab, it would be you.”)

Sure enough, after hearing about this new species, Mabee’s first thought was, Let’s cook this! And so, after we took our photos and videos of the five-pound crustaceans, he dropped them into boiling seawater. The result was unbelievably sweet and yummy, some of the best crab I’ve ever had. We drank the broth of crab juice, salt and melted butter.

Then he brought out a pheasant pie, presented with the bird’s head and wings attached. He pointed out that a certain 16th-century French king liked to see the bird, but his intentions were different.