Kent Baddeley says new graffiti-style signs outside restaurant TenTwentyFour aren't there to shock people - they do enough of that on the plate.
It's simply another way to ensure value is passed down to the customer and comes as a response to years of missed opportunity.
"The idea is people are saying 'we don't know where you are' - so I went out there with a black can of paint," he said.
A few days after Baddeley took to the wall scrawling "Restaurant Tues - Sun" alongside his signature chef with a soup spoon symbol, there had been plenty of feedback.
The first reaction was a positive one, in fact paint had barely dried when someone approached to book a table for six.
"About ten minutes afterwards, my sous chef comes out saying there's someone here to see you. It was a guy who said: 'Mate, this is the kind of restaurant I want to eat at, I have businesses here and in Australia and pretentiousness is creeping in'.
"Other people look at it and frown, I was asked if I had been tagged - it's a handwritten sign, it's not graffiti."
At the end of the day signage was there to serve a simple purpose, it had the added benefit of creating debate and that couldn't be bad for business.
He had always handwritten menus, restaurant vouchers and the chef symbol had been his trademark for many years.
As someone who has opened 61 restaurants and was one of New Zealand's most awarded chefs, Baddeley said he had a good idea about what worked that's why people flew from all over the world to eat his food.
"We are in the Cuisine Magazine top 50 - we are very proud of that, we were featured in the International Congress of Chefs in Milan last year - that's a big deal, they came down five times for that ... 70 per cent of our bookings are outside Hawke's Bay, locals don't come here much really."