How Hamilton’s food scene became the coolest in the country

Saturday, 24 August 2024

Sometime in the 1990s, Hamilton acquired the unofficial, ironic slogan “City of the future”.

Lacking the cosmopolitan airs of Auckland or Wellington’s theatre scene, Hamilton was viewed by many as nothing more than a daggy blip on SH1.

But these days, thanks to relatively inexpensive housing, significant investment in the city’s infrastructure both by the council and property developers like Stark Property, and the completed Waikato Expressway, Kirikiriroa is the fastest-growing city in New Zealand – and it’s got the hospitality scene to match.

News of Auckland and Wellington restaurants might be all doom and gloom, but Hamilton is thriving. Emily Brookes talks to four of the operators making Hamilton’s food scene the coolest in the country.

Kieran Clarkin

Amphora

There’s a clear indicator of Hamilton’s growth, as far as Kieran Clarkin is concerned.

“People constantly complain about parking.”

When Clarkin, a Hamilton native who left at 17, returned from Melbourne with his partner and child in the midst of the pandemic, he had been working in wine for about 20 years. He’d been a sommelier, led wine tours and wine clubs, and launched an import and distribution company, Cellar Days, specialising in traditionally-made wines from Greece.

Clarkin was unsure there would be a call for his skill set in his hometown. But when his partner, Lauren Clark, was offered a plum role at Duck Island, they decided to stay.

Then came an approach from Stark, who were planning an urban precinct along the lines of Auckland’s Commercial Bay in Hamilton East, to be called Made.

Particularly exciting for Clarkin was that the model would allow him to have a bar that served wine and wine only. In Aotearoa licensing laws compel venues that serve alcohol to offer food options. In Made, the food would be taken care of by other outlets.

So Clarkin’s bar, Amphora, sells wine. Just wine, mainly organic and low-intervention. It’s not for everyone, he admits.

“We do get a lot of that. ‘Oh, this is just wine’. People get put off.”

That’s a cultural thing, Clarkin says - “It’s a dairying town” - but the market has also been underserved.

“We haven’t had people championing wine and saying this is a great drink, you don’t have to drink beer.”

But the beauty of the Made model is that no operator needs to be everything to everyone. Clarkin points to fellow leaseholders like eight-seat degustation restaurant The Green, or newly-opened fresh pasta joint Pasta Paradiso.

“There's the greenlight for them to go, OK, this is what I want to do and I am going to do it,” he says. “I’m going to be a bit uncompromising and if some people don’t like it that's OK because there’s enough (of a market) to make it viable.”

Where do you go out in Hamilton?

Clarkin: “I think Hamilton does quite good cheap eats. Garden Place Noodle Bar is really fantastic.”

Fern and Stefan Kelly-Zander

Rudi’s Bakehouse

Hamilton’s current, authorised tagline, is “More than you expect”. Fern and Stefan Kelly-Zander reckon that’s true.

Says Fern: “I’ve done a 180” on Kirikiriroa.

When Fern was growing up in Hamilton it had, she says, “a bit of a reputation, and it wasn’t the coolest reputation”. She went to Wellington, then on to Europe, where she met Brazil-raised German Stefan.

Fern, who has a doctorate in chemistry, built a high-flying career in textile innovation, while Stefan was an architecture and interiors photographer.

But when they escaped Nottingham at the peak of the pandemic, with two kids under 3, they decided to do something different.

“You don’t often have opportunities where you have such a clean start, or a clean break,” says Fern. “It seemed like a good time to try something for ourselves and have a bit of flexibility.”

When Covid dried up Stefan’s photography work, he had indulged an amateur passion by training as a baker. In Aotearoa, Fern’s mum had a bach in Whangamatā that was available for the family to live in.

So Rudi’s Bakehouse was born, first at the Coromandel.

They were very lucky, Fern says. But, “you have to really maximise a small window in Whangamatā, and that window also happens to be school holiday time. As our children got closer to school age we thought, we don’t want to be giving up their holidays to be working. And that was the reason we moved to Hamilton.”

Rudi’s has now been open in Riverside Lane, a few doors down from Mr Pickles restaurant, nearly a year - arguably some of the most difficult 12 months for food and drink businesses in our country’s history.

But it’s perhaps been a good time to be in the artisan pastries game.

“We’re seen as a little treat, or a little luxury,” says Stefan. “If people can’t afford to go out for a full meal they can still come in on a Saturday morning and get a little treat for the family.”

Cinnamon swirls are top sellers, along with Nordic knots. “Whenever someone French comes in and they ask for a croissant or a pain au chocolat I always tremble a little bit but the response is always good.”

Fern thinks they moved to Hamilton at a time when things were “bubbling over”.

“It’s definitely a time of development and growth. I think we’re starting to see that migration, and perhaps as it becomes more acceptable…” She laughs, catching her own faux pas.

“You know what I mean. We’re here to be advocates for the place.”

Where do you go out in Hamilton?

Fern: “We have been lucky enough to get to The Green, which Stefan and I rate really highly. We’ve eaten out quite a bit throughout Europe and the quality of the food and the quality of the experience is right up there.”

James Seddon

The Lost Boys

James Seddon first saw the building on the corner of Waterloo Cres and Colombo St in the suburb of Frankton back when he was in his early 20s, working as a barista at the cafe in Taupiri’s Woodlands Estate.

A long-since disused, art deco petrol station, it was a distinctive building, if perhaps not the most obvious choice for a cafe. But Seddon liked that it faced north, would get full sun. “I said, if it ever comes available, I want to set up a cafe there.”

Jump forward several years and Seddon, who had left Woodlands to get a building qualification, was working for his father.

“He told me, that little building is up for tender,” Seddon recalls. “I went to him and said, if you buy that building Dad, I’ll make it a cafe.”

His father agreed, and Seddon and his partner, Rachel McGovern, set about starting a business. “Funny how things work out.”

If the building wasn’t obvious, neither was the location. Seddon, who has lived on Hamilton’s Victoria St “my whole life”, was familiar with Frankton. Though not far from the city centre, it’s largely industrial, and not terribly trendy.

But, Seddon says, “as a builder, I wanted to service the people who were in the trade themselves. I wanted to look after the people I’d been looking after building-wise for 15 years.”

The community welcomed The Lost Boys with open arms, and even six years in, the busiest time is still the 45 minutes after doors open at 7am, as tradies pop in before they start work.

It’s also become something of a destination cafe, with people from around the city coming in for the signature kimchi toastie, pies and soups - made by Seddon - and McGovern’s baked goods, with plenty of gluten and dairy-free options on offer. The couple aim to keep their footprint as small as possible, with Seddon spending his weekends trawling farmer’s markets for spray-free, organic, local ingredients.

“It’s all handpicked, so I know where it’s coming from,” he says. “You get your eggs Benedict which tastes exactly the same as eggs Benedict somewhere else, so I think people want something a bit different.”

Plus, Hamiltonians are becoming very used to getting out of the city. Hamilton East is “absolutely going off”, Seddon notes, but new and rapidly-growing Rototuna also has a lot happening.

“I should probably sell up where I am and open someone else,” he muses, though that would likely cause an outrage.

Where do you go out in Hamilton?

James: “Ulo’s in Raglan which is where I get very good vibes and where I fill up my cup before everyone steals my energy at my cafe.”

Mat Pedley

Mr Pickles, Wonder Horse, Last Place, Neat, Everyday Eatery

“Hamilton’s always been cool!” Mat Pedley insists.

He points to long-running mainstays like Gothenburg or Chim Choo Ree, which were at the heart of Hamilton’s restaurant scene back when Pedley was first coming up.

“If you drove past it every time you went to Taupo, you just wouldn’t know how good it really is,” he says. “There wasn’t a lack of amazing things, maybe just a lack of people who wanted to go there.”

Pedley has, by his own admission, been in hospitality “forever”. Born in New Plymouth, raised between Hamilton and nearby Cambridge, he dropped out of Waikato University after one semester of a Management degree and straight into a revolving door of hospo jobs, everything from boutique hotels to karaoke bars, from Waikato to Washington state.

He worked with Mimi Gilmour Buckley for years, helping establish both the Mexico and Burger Burger chains, and thought he’d never leave Auckland before meeting Lisa and Brett Quarrie in 2016. They were launching an eatery, Hayes Common, in Hamilton, and wanted Pedley to help out.

Then came another opportunity: Stark’s Riverbank Lane.

“A lot of people would have looked at that and gone, nah,” Pedley says. Stark had done a lot of work reviving the old mall, but it was, says Pedley, “a large well-presented empty shell (with) a public walkway through the middle of the restaurant space”.

But Pedley and his business partners were undeterred, opening Mr Pickles, a sharing-style modern bar and restaurant perfectly integrated with its lush river outlook that has become one of the centrepieces of Hamilton’s restaurant revival.

In the years since they've opened or taken an interest in a number of businesses including bar Wonder Horse, which was opened by Alex Hudson about six years before Mr Pickles, Last Place, Everyday Eatery, at Hamilton Zoo, and Neat, a hybrid bottle shop tasting room and bar in Made, where they will soon open casual eatery Reggie's.

Having grown up at the feet of Hamilton’s hospo doyennes, Pedley is now very much one of them. And maybe the city is more cosmopolitan these days, he says. Certainly there’s a lot happening, and more to come. “I really genuinely love living in Hamilton.”

He’s happy it’s finally starting to get its due as a centre for cool hospo, and he has his theories on why that is. “With access to social media and the internet maybe everyone just realised how average everywhere else is.”

Where do you go out in Hamilton?

Pedley: “Lani (Lemaua) opened Sage in November, they’re doing great stuff. Made reminds me of a really cool Ponsonby Central [in Auckland], having been a part of that when it had already exploded.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Wonder Horse was opened after Mr Pickles.