Chef Fleur Sullivan first moved to Moeraki on the Otago Coast for a peaceful seaside retirement, but 17 years on, her award-winning restaurant Fleur's Place is going from strength to strength.
She'd previously run the acclaimed restaurant Olivers in Clyde, before being diagnosed with bowel cancer and getting through a gruelling treatment regimen.
What Fleur discovered at Moeraki, instead of a quiet life, was an area so rich in wild food that she couldn't resist getting back into the restaurant industry.
For a start, her family sold chowder from a catering caravan on the bay.
Now Fleur's Place is a recycled timber building on the site of an old whaling station.
"It's just so wonderful to be doing this and we get such wonderful people coming here. It's a huge pleasure every day."
Health-wise, the move to Moeraki was just what the doctor ordered, she says.
"I think what I really needed to do was get my feet back in the ocean and walk up the beach and gather shellfish and search out wild potatoes that grow… and just turn into a bit of a gypsy and make compost and do all those good things."
Fleur's story features in a new book, Kai and Culture: Food stories from Aotearoa.
