Chef

If a 10-year-old asked me what I do for a living,
I'd tell them I put smiles on people's faces by serving them beautiful food.
Hi, my name is Lyall, I'm an executive chef and welcome to my kitchen.
My decision of becoming a chef happened when I was very young.
My family loved to cook, and I guess I found that passion in cooking as well,
and I wanted to take it the next step further.
So I've been here for about five months as head chef,
right on the front of the coastline,
which is awesome. I started at the bottom here,
which is pretty much what every chef should learn is the dishes.
The culture in the kitchen, I believe is family.
You only don't just have a position in the kitchen.
You help out everyone. So today we'll be preparing some tarakihi raw fish.
Just a simple delicacy from, uh, our culture.
I've been cooking for around probably 12 years.
So my journey started back when I was removed from school at the age of 14. I
just wanted to find something that I was good at.
So I decided to get into cooking. So I started at about 16.
I went to MIT. I did a,
a level 3 and a level 4 chef course. And then after that,
it's just all been hands on experience.
It's always good to have paperwork behind you.
Always good to have your credentials. You can pretty much walk around and say,
"Yep, I can do this. Yep,
I've got the paper to prove it." You can also back yourself by just showing them
that you can do it and without the papers. Yes.
I am able to bring my cultural identity to work,
which has actually been really amazing. My, um, boss has pretty much said,
you know, if, if you want to put anything you want on the menu, put it on there.
So for Matariki,
we put on a hāngi. Obviously I'd do our
basics of Māori food, so fried bread. Um, we also did, uh,
burnt sugar steam pudding with custard. I guess learning all of that
while I was young, I was able to bring it to the kitchen.
And I believe we have beautiful food and beautiful kaimoana and
a beautiful, pristine,
crisp land that we can get beautiful produce from. If one day I could open up a
restaurant, I'll definitely look into promoting Māori, Pacific Island food.
And this is, this is pretty much a raw fish salad traditional Māori way,
just with a little bit of tweaks, a little bit of watercress,
just for a little bit of colour. For the extra height and the extra spice,
chilli floss. To anyone who wants to become a chef,
make sure you have the passion there, behind your dishes.
Just be creative and have fun.