20 LISTENER JUNE 1 2019
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aul Hoather is getting back
behind the stove slowly,
concocting soups and stocks, and
making cheese. These are small
steps for the acclaimed chef who
suffered a stroke more than two years ago
that could have killed him.
Hoather spent more than three decades
cooking for others, notching up awards
for bespoke dishes and the high-end,
successful restaurants he set up.
Sitting at Charley Noble, the Wellington
restaurant he and his wife, Louise, co-own
with their business partner, Pengyu Du,
he is an example of a chef who worked
around the clock to feed the diners who
came to him. The 62-year-old dedicated
his life to his restaurants: first came fine
dining restaurant The White House,
followed by bistro Charley Noble, then,
in late 2014, contemporary seafood
restaurant Whitebait, which was forced toclose this year, a victim to rising costs.
Hoather worked so hard that Louise got
used to dining at home alone. They chose
not to have children because he didn’t
want to be an absentee father.
“Being in the kitchen was a very
exciting place; it’s like a drug,” says
Hoather. “When you put a new menu out,
it’s like a performance. You feel really good
about it. That’s what kept me going.’’
At the time of his stroke, Hoather
wasn’t eating well, he wasn’t getting much
downtime from cooking and overseeing
up to 300 meals a day. After he suffered
the stroke, he struggled to walk or talk. He
was forced to relearn basic skills he had
taken for granted.
Last year, the Hoathers shifted from
their Brooklyn home to Nelson to help
Paul’s rehabilitation. The move has been
good for him – his speech, once difficult
to understand, is now clear. He goes outPressure cooker
for daily walks along the river with their
dog and he has started cooking again –
simple meals he can create in their home
kitchen for the two of them. He’s getting
creative by making cheese.
“I play in the kitchen all the time,”
he says. “Eventually I’d like to make
camembert and blue cheese. It’s nice to
do.’’
Asked if he might return to one of
his restaurant kitchens, he shakes his
head. Instead, he will focus on menudevelopment, to help the head chefs at his
restaurants.
To some extent, Hoather is a chef of his
generation. Younger ones such as Michael
Meredith stopped before cooking took
its toll. Meredith closed his eponymous
Auckland restaurant in 2017 to spend
time with his daughter, his fourth child.
The co-founder of “buy one, gift one”
social enterprise Eat My Lunch says his
first marriage broke down because of the
pressure. “It’s hard being a chef and trying
to be at home.”
In Wellington, The Larder’s Jacob Brown
stopped serving meals at night to spend
time with his children, and his Miramar
restaurant is now only open during the
daytime and for pop-ups.
The pressure of the industry has resulted
in a number of high-profile chef suicides.
The deaths of Benoît Violier, the French-
born chef of Restaurant de l’Hôtel de
Ville in Switzerland, in 2016, and Bernard
Loiseau in 2003, were attributed to the
pressures of maintaining three Michelin
stars, considered the pinnacle of a chef’s
achievement. Earlier this year, Australian
celebrity chef Justin Bull was found dead
in his Sydney restaurant, the latest in a
series of suicides in Australia.
“If you’re an owner-operator, it’s your
house on the line if the business doesn’t
do well,” says Louise Hoather. “There’s so
much pressure and a restaurant is such a
public thing. A lot of chefs have very high
standards. They’re often perfectionists.
A lot of restaurants are based around
one person. Everyone expects Michael
Meredith to be there. They’d come here
and expect to see Paul.’’“Being in the kitchen
was a very exciting
place; it’s like a drug.”Paul Hoather: ”When
you put a new menu out,
it’s like a performance.”