Craig Hoyle

7–8 minutes

Fine dining isn’t always about grand gestures and impressive twists - it’s about hitting perfection on the smallest of details.

Of course, at The Chef’s Table, a remote 10-person restaurant at the top of Blue Duck Station out the back of Taumarunui, there’s no shortage of grand, with sweeping 360-degree bush views and a sunset vista towards Tongariro and Ruapehu.

But it’s a considerably minor point that most impresses me when the Sunday Star-Times visits on a crisp Sunday evening.

A bit of background. I’m left-handed, and over the years I’ve become accustomed to shuffling table settings accordingly. But until The Chef’s Table, no waiter has reacted.

The Chef’s Table is a remote 10-person restaurant at the top of Blue Duck Station, with sweeping 360-degree bush views and a sunset vista towards Tongariro and Ruapehu.Orianna Photography

Clover Sykes didn’t say anything, but she noticed; between the first and second course of our 10-course degustation she smoothly rearranged my place so it was set for a left-handed person. This detail, more than anything else, is what’s on my mind when I sit down with chef and co-owner Jack Cashmore the next morning.

"It’s the little things," he reflects, as we talk about the importance of good service in fine dining.

"There’s no limit to how good you can make someone feel through just noticing little things. If you show up like Clover, she picks up on those things, and she’s thought about what you need before you know you need it yourself."

Jack Cashmore is co-owner and chef at The Chef's Table.Orianna Photography

From start to finish, The Chef’s Table experience is about impeccable attention to detail. On arrival - just getting there is no mean feat, involving a six-hour drive from Auckland, including a gravel road, and then when the road runs out an hour-long ATV trek up through the hills - Cashmore and his team are lined up in their crisp whites to greet guests.

You might expect a kitchen to be in full swing at this point, with a degustation about to get under way, but Cahmore strongly believes in getting most of the hard work out of the way before diners arrive.

"We do all the running around before the guests arrive at 5 o’clock, so when you’re here it’s just calm and clinical," he says.

Jack Cashmore's Garden Wrap features pink camellia petals, radish rounds and a thin lemon verbena jelly served on a nasturtium leaf.Craig Hoyle / Sunday Star-Times

The serenity remains unchanged over the next four hours; unlike Jeremy Allen White’s Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto in The Bear, Cashmore’s a strong believer in never raising his voice in the kitchen.

"It’s too detrimental to the guest’s experience," he says. "We’re trying to create an environment where you feel like you’re sitting in our front room, and you wouldn’t want to go to the front room of somebody who’s having a domestic."

Instead, The Chef’s Table is eerily calm, with a minimum of talking amongst the staff as plates glide between the kitchen and tables.

"We know exactly to a tee what’s happening where," explains Cashmore. "Clover knows exactly what’s happening in the kitchen … and it’s all implicit communication. Generally it’s just a look or a nod, and that’s it. It’s practice. Practice, practice, practice."

Jack Cashmore, pictured working in the kitchen at The Chef’s Table, says staying calm is key to a good experience.Orianna Photography

Aotearoa’s back country isn’t an obvious location for a chef making it big on the world stage. It came about by accident, really; Cashmore, 33, who grew up in Staffordshire, about an hour from Birmingham, started off as a pot-washer at the local pub around the age of 13, and used to "sit in the pot-wash trying all the meat trim, the meat off-cuts, and the sauces left in the pan".

"That was really where I got an interest in the concept of a restaurant, and what a restaurant is, and what kitchens are, and the energy of it all."

He started cheffing at 15, and in 2010 - after a few "hectic" years in the UK - he "fully randomly decided to come to New Zealand, as it was the less common option when going travelling abroad".

Jack Cashmore's smoked eel doughnut is brushed with a mānuka honey glaze, using honey produced at Blue Duck Station.Craig Hoyle / Sunday Star-Times

While backpacking around the country he stayed at Blue Duck Station for a few days and was impressed by the vision of station owner Dan Steele, who is on a mission to return the area to its original state through a combination of conservation and tourism. Cashmore was drawn back to the station later in his travels, volunteering there as a horse-trekking guide.

He returned to his cheffing career in the UK, but after three years something didn’t feel right: "Being from a fairly rural background myself, being from the countryside, London wasn’t for me."

Steele jumped onboard when Cashmore improbably suggested a fine-dining restaurant at the station; The Chef’s Table opened in January 2021, and now functions as an off-grid high-end venue offering an overnight experience that includes tours of the station and a hill-top stay in luxury cabins. (The full package is $895pp, with an additional $160pp if you’d like to add matched wines.)

Guests at The Chef's Table can stay in overnight cabins beside the restaurant. The views are stunning.Craig Hoyle / Sunday Star-Times

The food - excellent, as you’d expect - is mostly sourced from the station and its environs; partly to promote local sustainability, but also due to the practicalities of bringing produce to such a remote location.

"It’s a logistical challenge getting any ingredients from outside," says Cashmore, "so that’s why we aim to grow as much as we can here, source as much as we can, forage it, and keep it all onsite."

Cashmore’s favourite dish from the degustation is the milk and honey dessert, which is served with shaved truffle. "We’re normally closed for truffle season, so it’s quite a treat to actually get some," he says, explaining that it's been sourced locally from Whanganui.

Jack Cashmore plates his milk and honey dessert, which is served with shaved truffle.Orianna Photography

"Traditionally it wouldn’t be used on a dessert … but it just works well with the dairy. We’ve purposely left any acidity out of that dish, I wanted it to just be pure rich decadence."

Decadence is the byword for The Chef’s Table, although Cashmore still has one tough crowd to crack - his parents, who thought he was "absolutely mad" when he told them he was opening a fine-dining restaurant in New Zealand’s back-country.

They saw his vision realised when they visited in early 2023, and he’s cautiously optimistic they finally approve.

"I think they were pretty impressed. They’re a pretty tough crowd to impress, but they didn’t say it was bad!"

The Chef’s Table is currently on winter hiatus, and will reopen for bookings from Friday, September 13. For reservations and more information, visit thechefstable.co.nz.