Photo: Supplied: Bateman Books
Tony Astle was just 22 when he opened Auckland restaurant Antoine's with his wife Beth in 1973, but he had already earned his hospitality stripes.
The couple owned and operated the legendary Parnell restaurant for 48 years until it closed in 2021. For decades it was the place in New Zealand to be wined, dined and seen.
Now Astle tells all - side-stepping any legal landmines - in his memoir, Let Them Eat Tripe: The Story of Antoine's.
Much to his father's horror, Astle knew he wanted to cook from an early age, he tells RNZ's Nine to Noon.
Brought up in a working class Christchurch family, Astle was so keen for an entree into the world of fine dining he wrote to New Zealand's first celebrity chef Graham Kerr.
Kerr helped him to get his first job, at Le Normandie, a legendary French restaurant in Wellington.
"I left home at 15 and went to Wellington, which was a little bit daunting for a 15-year-old, but I found my feet there, and I luckily was taken in by Madame Louise who owned Le Normandie restaurant.
"And from there, I started off as a waiter and was then put into the kitchen. Many things happened at that restaurant.
"At 15, I'd already burnt someone's hair off their head, and when I was 16, I'd chopped a couple of fingers off."
The fingers were lost with a meat grinder encounter, but it did not put Astle off his chosen path.
He then moved to Des Britten's famous The Coachman restaurant in Wellington. Britten was a true food innovator, he said.
"Suddenly there were no just big bowls of chips. There were no awful big hunks of bread."
Britten and his staff were young, ambitious and at the centre of something completely new to New Zealand in the late '60s, Astle said.
"You didn't care how many hours you worked, you just wanted to be part of that new regime.
"And it just swept Wellington. I mean, The Coachman became absolutely, amazingly busy."
Astle took what he had learned up to Auckland and when he opened Antoine's - the French version of his name.
Britten was not impressed, Astle said.
"He accused me of stealing all his recipes - which is probably quite true, because that's the only things I knew how to cook.
"But at least in Auckland, no one knew about them. And I mean, when Antoine's opened, it just went absolutely nuts."
Despite enduring "disgusting" tripe as a child in Christchurch, offal became something of a signature at Antoine's, he said.
"Tongue became huge, and then I got sweetbreads, anything that was internal. The interesting thing is that 45 percent of Antoine's customers were Asian, and they absolutely adore offal.
"So I started putting a lot of offal on, and it just went mad. So, we just kept doing it."
Tony Astle at his ONZM investiture. Photo: Creative Commons
The clientele included some of the world's biggest stars - Elton John was a favourite, he said.
"He and Hudson and Halls were great friends from England days. So they used to come in quite a lot.
"In fact, funnily enough, Hudson and Halls and I did not get on at all at the beginning, and then we became very close friends. But Elton John was a great mate of theirs, and so they introduced him to Antoine's.
"And from then on, every time he was in New Zealand, he would come to Antoine's, and he became a close friend."
Phil Collins was another favourite and Quincy Jones was a "gem of a man", he said.
Queen Elizabeth II was meant to come once, but it did not quite work out, he said. The royal entourage booked out the entire restaurant.
"When they all arrived, we were all so excited. But no Queen. The Duke [of Edinburgh] came and all the equerries, but unfortunately she had food poisoning from a cocktail party they'd been to, and so she went back to Britannia.
"So it was sad, because I was getting quite excited about this, not many people have the Queen and the Duke in their restaurant."
Not all famous customers met with the Astle stamp of approval, however.
"Kiss, of course, they got the kick. Didn't like them at all, they were just so up themselves."
Astle took exception to Gene Simmons being rude to wait staff and demanding he be compensated when a water dribbled water on his shoes.
"They treated the staff like rubbish... he said 'these are hundreds of dollars' worth of shoes'. So, I came out in my little Crayons, red shoes, and said, these are worth more than yours and I told him to get out."
Astle's late wife Beth took a dim view of any clandestine lunches going on at Antoine's.
A regular would bring a woman (not his wife) for lunch every Friday, he said.
"He was a very good customer; his family were very good customers.
"At lunchtime every Friday, he would come in with the same person, but definitely not his family, and it was a bit obvious what was going on, the hand-holding and all sorts of stuff.
"Beth hated this, so one day, his wife and her mother arrived at the door, and he was already in there with his girlfriend and as only Beth could do, she said, 'Oh I didn't realise you were coming today. I've got a table for you'.
"She took them down, she sat them right next door to the husband, I've never seen a person run so fast in my whole life."
Let Them Eat Tripe is published by Bateman Books.
