Paris Butter at SkyCity have partnered to showcase the best of local cuisine, through some of the country's most talented culinary creatives.
Serving 260,000 people every year is no easy feat. That’s thousands of meals, thousands of taste buds to satisfy, and a constant demand for not just exceptional skill, but fresh creativity every single day. Auckland restaurant Paris Butter has recently joined forces with SkyCity to help build on its impressive resume.
For Jesper Gustafsson, Chef at SkyCity’s restaurants, Fortuna and Food Republic, it’s a challenge he relishes. But he's always looking for ways to step out of his comfort zone, and that’s what inspired an idea.
“I wanted to experience something different. I wanted to surround myself with chefs who had different knowledge. And thankfully, my boss thought it was a great idea,” said Gustafsson.
Gustafsson didn’t want to just go anywhere; he set his sights on Paris Butter, judged New Zealand’s Best Restaurant at the World Culinary Awards in 2024.
They say it helps who you know, and nowhere more so than in Aotearoa’s tight-knit culinary community. It took one well-placed call to Zennon Wijlens, co-owner and executive chef of Paris Butter.
“Michael Meredith from Metita at SkyCity got in touch and asked if I’d be interested in having someone in our kitchen for three weeks. I said yes. He forwarded Gustafsson’s number to me, we got in contact, and here he is,” said Wijlens.
“Paris Butter has always been one of the best restaurants in New Zealand and I’ve always been super interested in coming here, not just to dine, but to be in the kitchen because you get to be back-stage with the actual rockstars and that’s a very unique experience,” added Wijlens.
For three weeks, Gustafsson became part of the team.
“It’s rare to get time with these chefs, ask them questions, be a bit annoying, why are you doing this, what are you thinking about that?”
For Wijlens and his team, opening their kitchen to a fellow chef felt like a natural fit.
“One of our biggest ethoses is collaboration, whether that’s collaborating with another kitchen, another restaurant, another event, or collaborating with another chef on a more personal level and teaching them how we do things.”
Gustafsson said seeing how they do things was one of his biggest takeaways. “The culture they implement at Paris Butter is different to what I’m used to. Because it’s such a small team, it’s important for everyone to pull their weight so they really drive the junior team to take on responsibility."
SkyCity runs New Zealand’s largest chef apprenticeship programme - employing up to 20 chefs at a time for a three year journey across 20 kitchens. But both Gustafsson and Wijlens believe that opportunities for senior “It’s really easy to get stuck in your own box in your own kitchen. So, for SkyCity to give these guys an opportunity to step outside that, and come to restaurants like ours, I think that’s really important for the industry as a whole,” said Wijlens.
And when Gustafsson puts his chef hat back on at SkyCity, he knows he’ll be bringing a little Paris Butter creativity to the thousands of plates he creates every year.
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