From Prego to SPQR: Stories from an Auckland maitre d

My mother baked scones six days a week for a cafe
And did a day a week at the Auckland Art Gallery coffee shop, so I got my first weekend job there when I was a teenager – clearing tables and scaring off the pigeons. Later, working in a live-in pub in the UK, I was making salads and serving using a dumb waiter, but nobody had taught me how to do anything and I was terrible so I used to get abusive notes back in the dumb waiter!

In the late 1980s I waited tables at Guadalupe on Karangahape Rd
It was a game-changing restaurant in many ways. Candles became sculptures of dripped wax, chairs made from pigskin had been imported from Mexico, artist Denys Watkins had painted directly on the walls. There were two sides – "passion" had smaller, more intimate tables, while "pain", with its big banquet tables and church pews for seating, was all about serving large, rowdy groups. We waitresses all wore our hair in high buns and wore lots of makeup and peasant-y embroidered tops. Valo was the maitre d' and everyone was "darling". To this day it stands out as quite a cultish restaurant. I adored it.

I did a trial at Prego in 1990
It was full on, and I was just thrown into it: "Here's an apron, here's a pen – now go and prove yourself". Every night for the week I was trialling - I'd just go home and cry because I kept getting things wrong. I was amazed that I was offered a job at the end of it. That was the beginning of my career; the start of my ambition in the industry and working up to becoming maitre d'. It was a successful business and I admired many of the people working there. I quickly became addicted to the work.

I spent a quarter of a century at Prego, only leaving in 2015
But I did leave to work for a couple of years at SPQR, which was also owned by Kelvin [Gibson] for a while during that time, and a few years at Metropole, too. Between these three restaurants, I learned just about every lesson you could about hospitality and front of house. I also learned a lot about different facets of New Zealand culture. Prego was self-made people and family. Metropole was money. SPQR was sexuality. Within one decade, I got a handle on those three elements of our society.

Metropole was intimidating at first
Ponsonby of that time was big families, it was working-class. Then a few sets of traffic lights across town to Parnell and you didn't know what flash car was going to pull up outside the restaurant each night – there was just so much money. How could a girl from Onehunga find a way to relate to these wealthy people? That was what the voice in my head was wondering.

The notion of "fake it till you make it" came to me
And then I came to realise they were the same as me, the only difference was the economics. You can relate to anyone as long as you don't hold prejudices.

Working under Simon Woolley at Metropole taught me a huge amount
Simon talked faster than he thought. He was so inclusive; he was incredibly generous with both customers and staff. He made everyone feel part of a family. It was a true education for everyone who witnessed it. Simon was a leader – he was larger than life, he made everyone feel special.

I had a notebook where I wrote down absolutely everything
People's names, what they liked to drink, special anniversaries. It was full of personal information: notes like "multiple miscarriages". I wanted to remember what everyone liked, and what to say or not to say. At Prego's 20th birthday I spoke, telling the crowd in the room that while I might know them by name, I also know them by "bitterly cold Heineken", "medium-rare steak with linguine and no garlic".

We'd have wives coming in with husbands, and the same husbands with mistresses
It was weird, very weird. To be putting everything on the line when you walk through the door. I mean, I wasn't a naive person – I come from a complicated family and my dad's been married five times; I know these things happen – but to my mind, it's a bizarre lifestyle.

At Prego, there was one occasion in the late afternoon when a woman went down on a guy at a table in the corner
The chefs were watching and it was f***ing bizarre. Another time a big group was in and one guy went to the toilet and didn't come back. No one noticed. He'd jumped out the window to have a ciggie, fell off the roof, and broke his leg. A few hours later he walked back in with his leg in a cast and the party was still going.

But Prego had nothing on SPQR for stories of debauchery
A flatmate of mine shagged someone in the toilet there and broke the basin. I remember the great fun, parties, and dancing ... but honestly, most of what went on went completely over my head – I'm not entirely straight-laced but I was so focused on the business side, on getting things right, that I was blind to most goings-on. I had no idea that people were doing drugs in the toilets. I had no idea that all my colleagues were drinking on shifts, when there I was looking forward to our shots at 11pm on a Friday night. Years later they'd fill me in on stories.

SPQR was all about the pink dollar when I started there in '97
Because I'd grown up around lots of gay people, I didn't think anything of it when I started at SPQR with its mostly gay staff – I mean I felt like "these are my people". But they didn't think the same thing about me. They just saw a straight restaurant manager being brought in above them. Nobody spoke to me for six weeks. Staff dinner was at 5pm and everyone would be sitting down together; I'd sit down and they'd all get up and leave. It was awful. But again – put a hurdle in front of me and I'm like, "f*** that". I consciously planned how I could win friends, by working out what I had in common with them to break the ice.

Eventually they realised that I could talk about c**k as much as they could
And that's what changed things so that I was no longer "the other". I also realised that a lot of these people had been the "the other" all their lives, and once I started to hear their stories I really understood. What SPQR managed to do for the gay community at that time in Auckland – it was quite radical. It was so important to have that place that the community could call home, and it's still there. No other business in Auckland at that time was doing that, and it was amazing to be a part of it.

A restaurant meal is just one out of 21 per week
And more than 1000 per year. Your challenge in hospo is to try to deliver the "wow" for each individual that walks through the door, no matter what they bring to the table. How will the next two hours stand out against all the competition, both in a business sense, and with everything else going on in someone's life? It can be draining and a hard slog. But it can also be beautiful, and anyone and everyone in the team has the ability to make the magic happen, whether they're senior or junior. When it works, it works like a machine – it can defy the laws of human error and frailty.

Auckland Eats Volume Two: The Prequel, Lazy Susan, 2022 is available at lazysusan.nz, $35

Krishna Botica is co-owner/operator of hospitality group Comensa.