24 hours in the life of Lindsay Bennett

CLAIRE ALLISON

Lindsay Bennett has owned Le Monde Restaurant for nearly three years. The former New Zealand chef of the year has also tutored at Aoraki Polytechnic and was chef at The Grosvenor.

We open seven days for lunch and dinner. If there are no issues or large functions, a standard day would be that from 9am to 11am, I do any administration that's required, menu planning, staffing issues, have meetings with sales reps. They could be for equipment, wine, food, hygiene products, that sort of stuff.

We receive the food supplies for the day, they get delivered. And at 11am we set up for lunch, equipment and preparations. At 11.30am we open for service. That lasts until about 2.30pm or longer as required. So we're cooking orders, and doing lunch prep and dinner preparation as much as we can. By about 2.30pm-3pm, we're cleaning down from lunch, then I'll start to get to any reps that haven't been before lunch.

Then, if everything is going well, about 3.30pm I take the dog for a walk if I can, and see the family for about an hour or so. At 5pm, the kitchen re-opens for dinner. Earlier on we will have set up again, and done the final preparation for dinner.

Preparation is basic vegetable cuts, stocks and sauces, any butchering, any dessert component – everything we can do in advance, so it pretty much covers everything. The idea is that you have a hard day and an easy night. .

The kitchen is open until 10pm, last orders have to be in by then. From then, it's a deep clean, storage of food items, ordering of products for the next day by fax, have a bit of a wander around, look into the vege, meat and fish departments, see what we need fresh for the next day. And then write the preparation list for the next day, so you can walk in and start work straight away.

We're licensed until 1am, but that's rare for us unless it's summer parties. It's usually by 11pm or midnight. After 11pm, people's behaviour changes, they have different requirements, have a change of venues.

That's a typical day with everything going well and everything going normally.

We can seat 70 inside and if we have a lovely fine day it's another 27 outside.

It's a seven-day operation for me. We've had a couple of chefs who have been misbehaving, so I've been on.

We've recently sold Blue Bay so that gives me a bit more time. We're going to concentrate on the restaurant, relax it a bit. Make it a bistro style, so people feel they can come in for a platter and a glass of wine, and not feel they have to stay for a meal.

If we have a function, we know we have a guaranteed number of guests and a guaranteed menu, so we have to prep for that. That makes it easier, because we know what's coming. With a la carte, you don't cook until it's ordered, but you have 20 of each thing just in case.

Allergies and food intolerances – that's something we're getting better at. It's becoming a big deal. We've had people who have worked overseas, and they've never seen, per population, the amount of people who are gluten free. It's every day, or every second day.

It is becoming an issue. We'll have to design a new menu when we relax our style, and that will label vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free – we have to make a conscious effort.

We'll also be aiming to use local suppliers as much as possible. Havoc Pork, Aoraki Salmon, wines. Whenever we can.

I've always been the chef here. People are a bit funny. They'll ring up and ask who's cooking. That's the beauty of a small town.

Usually I get home by 11pm, at this time of the year. It will be later in summer. Now people aren't coming out until 7.30pm. Everything has an extra hour on it, with daylight saving.

I don't go to bed straight away. I usually relax from the bright lights and noise for an hour or so. Midnight is normal, that's pretty standard for bedtime. I watch a bit of the Food Channel, channel 9, that last hour of the day. And I like to watch the late news.

I'm usually back on the handlebars by 9am. Our office is at home, and my wife Suzy does 99 per cent of the paperwork, so that helps.

Yes, life's a little bit unbalanced at the moment, with the family. We are working on that. If I have spare time, I usually try to get into the great outdoors and let the wind blow out the bulls... ... shoot a few things ... hunting and gathering, and fishing. If I can get a couple of hours in the afternoon I can race to the Opihi and go fishing.

You don't get more by working more. I've had to find that out the hard way. I needed to find it out for myself. Our main issue is time.

We are a couple of chefs short because of bad behaviour. Otherwise I'd be aiming for Sunday and Monday off, to have a day with the family and a day on my own. The hours are standard for restaurant owners. At the end of the day, the buck stops with the boss.

It's the first time I've owned and operated. Being a chef to a chef-owner is a big change. I thought I knew everything. The paperwork has blown me away. The usual employer stuff, a marketing plan, menu changes, we do that four times a year, and the wine list that goes with it, compliance issues: food, hygiene, liquor licensing, gas inspection, public safety things.

We could have a food hygiene inspection, gas inspection, liquor licensing inspections to make sure we're not serving young people.

I do like it. You learn something every day. I still learn things every day. By cooking 3000 pieces of beef, you see the differences.

It's exciting, you're surrounded by exciting people. Gordon Ramsay? I've had a few goes at it. But it's a bit small here to get away with it. As you get better you can cope better.

It's a pretty volatile industry. You cook to order, and you can have 40 orders, but you've only got six elements. Then it just blows apart on you. But that's why some people do like it – they like the excitement.

We've been in a couple of cookbooks: New Zealand Coastal Kitchens and New Zealand Food and Art. We've had a couple of TV cameras in here.

There's a bit of community stuff. What goes around comes around. We're taking students from the schools at the moment from work experience schemes. I quite like them to find out young if they are going to be chefs or not, rather than 10 years into it then say they'd rather be a builder.

I guess they are kind of creative people. I like a bit of mongrel in them actually, a bit of character.

It's a hard industry to work in. It's unrelenting.

- © Fairfax NZ News