He's one of New Zealand's best-known chefs but a new biography takes an intimate look at the life of Simon Gault beyond his culinary skills.
Simon Gault: No Half Measures is about taking risks and chasing ideas and begins in the cockpit of a replica P51 Mustang when it suffers complete engine failure.
[picture id="4N2V3S0_image_crop_91327" crop="16x10" layout="thumbnail"] Photo: Vanessa Lewis
Perhaps less well known than his culinary career, Gault has an absolute passion for flying and learnt to fly in glider planes. “And what a tremendous thing to have up your sleeve when the engine stops.”
Though, he says the replica plane “glides like a brick”.
As Gault recounts, things got hairy when he was in Wanaka for an airshow.
Planning to join the circuit overhead the airfield, Gault began to descend. But when he went to introduce some power, he realised there was none.
Photo: Supplied
“At that stage you make some pretty quick decisions of what you’re going to do and obviously my aim was to get to the runway.”
At one stage it looked like he wouldn’t make it.
“I’m literally looking at the bank of the end of Wanaka and the guy in the back’s yelling out ‘power, power!’. I really didn’t have time to politely tell him I didn’t have any power because when it happens, it happens very quickly, and you’ve just got to keep flying the aeroplane. The trap is to start thinking about other things.”
Thankfully, Gault managed to pull up and land on the runway “by the skin of my teeth”.
Gault’s dad was a pilot, but both of his parents loved cooking and were always in the kitchen, he says.
Gault fell in love with it too and when he first saw a “head chef conducting this orchestra, all culminating in this wonderful food coming onto a plate”, he knew he had to make a career decision between flying and cooking.
Just like flying a glider, in the kitchen “it’s you against the elements”.
While he would learn to fly on the side, Gault began his career as a chef.
Following an apprenticeship with chef and restauranteur Tony Astle, Gault took off overseas, where he says his eyes opened to all of the ingredients you couldn’t get here.
“I remember going to Italy and ordering a five-pound menu off a blackboard and it was the first time that I had truffles and they bought the pasta over...and the guy put the truffle down and it was the size of a golf ball...probably today’s value it would be $400-500 worth of truffle.
“It’s experiences like that that ignite the passion in you and the excitement.”
Gault says he’s spent a lifetime in restaurants, including as owner of Bell House, and executive chef at Euro, Pravda, Shed 5 and Jervois Steakhouse.
Though nine years ago, his daughter was born “and I soon realised that I was going to get absolutely one opportunity only to be a dad".
Not being there for those daily rituals like putting her to bed or seeing her home from school was something Gault says he just wasn’t prepared to do.
But Gault was never one for a quiet life. Over the years, he’s tried his hands at a number of ventures – some which found success and others - like a ketchup brand – which did not.
“It’s like flying an aeroplane,” he says. “If you just sit there you’ll crash, if you do something, you’ll survive.”
