5 MINUTES WITH...

Hayden McMillan

The Neptune head chef on finding your own style, creating innovative food and working for yourself.

I ALWAYS LIKED cooking from a young age. My Mum and my Grandma weren’t amazing cooks or anything — it’s not one of those stories. I liked cooking at home and school wasn’t for me, so I left pretty early and went straight to university in Auckland to train as a chef.

It wasn’t until I worked at Vinnies — one of the best restaurants in New Zealand (now closed) — that I saw the potential to make a real career out of it. I was always serious about it because I wanted to be good, but that was the next level up.

I was 25 when I got the head chef job at TriBeCa, which was pretty young. You can get a start in New Zealand because the industry is a bit smaller. Once you work at enough places, you become in demand.

Style changes as you get older, as you cook more and have more experiences with food. Until then, your style mirrors a lot of the places you work at. When I was at Etta, I really found my own style. It’s always been sort of fresh, lighter and produce-driven. Some of the stronger dishes I’ve made have all been vegetarian, for some reason. I find it more of a challenge to turn a pumpkin into something special compared to a steak. Chefs should always innovate in some way or another. The job is to give people something they can’t recreate at home.

The brief at Neptune is to create a coastal Italian menu, so we’re trying to source as much sustainable seafood as we possibly can. We’re doing grilled meats over charcoal, so we’re sourcing grass-fed beef, and we’re doing some really awesome vegetarian dishes as well.

I left Etta so I could have more flexibility with my family. When you have a child, it changes things. I don’t want to make those sacrifices, like late nights, anymore. Working for other people is also exciting. At Etta, we didn’t really have a brief. I guess I felt the pressure to be original and do things that hadn’t been done. At Neptune, I don’t feel like I have re-write everything. I’m enjoying going down the rabbit hole but staying within the brief. ■