Palate on the move
Tuesday, 26 December 2023
One of Hamilton’s fine dining restaurants is moving out of its tucked-away destination location to escape the parking quandary.
Palate Restaurant will celebrate its 19th anniversary at SkyCity Hamilton after operating at the corner of Alma Street for 11 years.
Owner and chef Mat McLean reckons the 250m difference will put them “bang right smack in the middle of town” and the new location is a much-needed change to offer flexibility to customers.
“The 3.0 version of the restaurant is the one that I would have liked to build first, but it's been an evolution of time… obviously, I couldn't afford to build this restaurant a long time ago.
“The new site, it's a lot more visual and we're sort of hidden away where we are now.”
One of the major concerns with the current site was parking and McLean said the restaurant tried its best to not take too many bookings at one time because of that.
“Car parking is very tight, especially with the hotels, a lot of people are checking in about the time when our customers start arriving and there are sports buses on the road.
“You'll quite often have a group, it might be a group of six, five of them come in and then dad's driving around in the car trying to find a car park, and it also affects the way the restaurant runs.”
Also, it was time to move out of the “pigeon-hole” and add some changes to keep the business interesting, McLean said.
The restaurateur commented “hospitality in Hamilton is asleep” when accepting the title of the most outstanding restaurant at Waikato Hospitality Awards 2023, but said he was reflecting on his establishment.
“(I was) not putting enough microscope on what I was doing, there wasn't any innovation or camaraderie.
“Ten years ago, we used to feature in all the major restaurant guides and stuff like that, but we’ve got fewer and fewer restaurants now competing on a national level.
“Regions like Dunedin and Christchurch, we were even above them at times, but now we're kind of slipping behind them.”
McLean believed Waikato hospitality wasn’t yet taking full advantage of its strengths - local suppliers and produce.
“We've got really good suppliers and people pushing forward the region and making the connection between the farmers and the chefs, which is really important if you want to have a local food culture.
“What we're serving on our plates at the moment is a direct reflection of this area, this region and it's something that never used to be the case.”
Given the current economic climate, McLean said money should be kept in the region.
The new location would be accompanied changes in the menu and other areas.
“It's going to be smaller, but there's sort of like four different areas - two dining rooms, a lounge space and we have the outside portion where the sun comes down at night… it's beautiful.
“There will be an evolution in the way we cook, here we're very one dimensional, where people view us as a dining restaurant.
“People coming for dinner or lunch will be a lot more flexible in the new place - there's no obligation to dine, you pop in, have a glass of wine, a board of some sort, etc.”
McLean said their reputation so far was a “bit snobby, flash or something like that”, but it wasn’t the case.
“I've worked in fine dining restaurants in Europe, Michelin star restaurants and I was trained in that format of dining and it makes me tired even thinking about it.
“It was pedantic and in that, all the freshness and fun is lost.
“I'd rather have someplace where you can come in a t-shirt or a suit or wear jandals, I don't care… it’s all about people's behaviour and paying bills is my concern.”
Palate restaurant on Alma Street will open its doors for the last time on January 6.
McLean said they hoped to be open at Sky City Tower by February to celebrate their 19th anniversary.
“We've got some finishing to do next year.”