Top chef's menu of success

From his mother's kitchen to the world's best hotel and the Scottish Highlands. Celebrity chef Peter Blakeway cooks up a storm wherever he goes. And now he's set to turn his hand to novel writing.
Peter Blakeway's story begins where all good risk-taker's stories should - with a dare.
Wind the clock back 20 years, and Blakeway has woken up in hospital in northern Spain. There's a plastic bag taped to his leg, containing his credit cards and passport.
He is a professional yacht racer, and at 23, been knocked out on a yacht sustaining a head injury. His time on the water, he decides, is done.
"I think the injury shocked me quite a lot. I don't remember very much," he tells me.
Blakeway decided his next challenge was to stick his money where his mouth is.
After years of boasting in restaurants to friends he could do better, he thought "why not?"
Blakeway learnt to cook at age 10 in his home town of Darlington, County Durham, Northern England. He has no formal qualifications but he has passion and experience - thanks to his mother, Ann.
"My father can burn cornflakes," he continues. "He's a wonderful, incredible man but he can't cook," Blakeway says with a pitiful shake of the head.
"My mother was a stunning cook. She was born at the end of the war and married at a time when, in the early 60s, men and women had their particular roles and all that. I was 10 and she basically introduced me to the stove and washing machine on the theory I was not going to follow previous generations."
His grandmother Blanche introduced him to baking.
Interestingly, Blakeway's only sibling, sister Jill, was not "remotely interested" in the kitchen. "She's [now] a professor in oriental medicine. She lives in New Jersey but her practice is in 5th Avenue. She specialises in ..." He starts laughing.
"It's almost pornography. She specialises in fertility through oriental medicine and has become the fertility guru in New York."
Blakeway says growing up, the "foodie thing was just one of those things I did." He always felt he would go to sea.
And he did. He joined the Navy at 17 as a navigating officer and then switched to yacht racing a couple of years later.
He travelled the world.
"If we won a few [races] we got paid well. I was young and living in an apartment in the centre of Rotterdam. I think I was 19 and I ate in this restaurant ... it was the simplest dish; steak and red wine sauce. I must have eaten there five to six times a week before I summoned up the courage to talk to the chef. The guy was a sweetheart and invited me into the kitchen and it was ridiculously simple, but it was the flavour.
"Everywhere I went in the world, it was always the food."
And so, we come back to the dare.
In 1991, at age 24, Blakeway takes a risk and buys a £400,000 restaurant on the west coast of Scotland called Kilcamb Lodge.
I recommend you look this place up on the internet - it is ridiculously romantic, stuck out on its own, surrounded by water and sky-high trees.
Positioned on the edge of Loch Sunart, it has loch and mountain views from every window.
Four days out from opening, it dawned on Blakeway he couldn't afford to hire anyone, so he would be cooking. Which, wasn't the plan.
He cooked for four guests on opening night. The next night was Good Friday and there were 48 guests. Blakeway finished at 3am.
"I thought I'd died and gone to hell. I couldn't believe how hard it was."
"That first year, I'd steal cook books from anyone I knew just so I could raise the repertoire."
He went to America and did a stint in the kitchen at Boca Raton Resort and Club to gain experience, and there he met Anne or "Annie."
They married in 1995 and together built Kilcamb Lodge up to become finalist in the UK Restaurant of the year (twice) and AA Hotel of the Year (twice).
"And also, one year we were Romantic Hotel of the Year, which was really bizarre," Blakeway laughs.
"As everyone knows, the first year is really tough. The year before you're married is really romantic. But that first year is really tough when you work together as well. Frankly, we weren't feeling that romantic!"
But luck kept coming their way.
One of the first year's guests at Kilcamb Lodge was Ron Jones, the then general manager of Claridge's, in London. Claridge's old connections with royalty have led to it being referred to as an "extension to Buckingham Palace".
Blakeway connected with Jones and was invited to spend five months working with Claridge's restaurant chef, getting a condensed apprenticeship. This worked for Blakeway because Kilcamb only operated seven months of the year.
Kilcamb received a rosette from the AA for food quality at the end of its first year of operation.
This dare of a career, was taking off.
At age 28, Blakeway did a one-hour documentary on Scottish salmon and there was talk from UK's Channel Four, that Blakeway be hired to do more TV.
But the restaurant was going "gang busters" and he declined. "All that was important was the respect of my fellow chefs."
Does he regret it?
"Oh huge!" he says.
Blakeway moved to New Zealand seven years ago and is having to reinvent himself. His past reputation and networks are largely gone. Few people here, would know he has worked with UK celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey.
"Gordon's a brilliant chef. He is genuinely a brilliant chef," Blakeway says respectfully.
"I have worked with him at a couple of events. Thankfully, not for him.
"He swears an awful lot, he's quite aggressive in his manner but he's from Glasgow and if you've ever been to Glasgow, swearing isn't actually words, it's punctuation, you know? ... So that's his upbringing and kitchens are kind of tough and rough and a bit primeval; survival of the fittest."
"The thing with Gordon is that if you get it, if he explains it and you get it, then there isn't a problem. If you can't get it and you can't understand how his brain works, then you really should just leave."
"Gordon is successful because people really hate him and he polarises people. He doesn't really do a lot of intelligent comment. Jamie [Oliver] is trying to get people to think and instill that passion in food. He's getting people to actually ask the questions. To turn the packet over and see what's actually in it."
Is Blakeway anything like Ramsey or Oliver?
"I'm a very quiet, controlled chef. I'm very disciplined, very ordered and folk know I'm under pressure when I go quiet, not when I go loud."
Blakeway is quite unlike Ramsey and more like Oliver, because he is "perpetually happy."
"Food is is all about passion and just desperately wanting to do the best you can do. I'm good at getting people to feel passionate about food, and good at making food seem fun and exciting."
"For me food is all about flavour and family. I love that Italian idea of everyone around the table, the bit of sauce dripping down the chin. We sit round the table together every night ... There's no nuggets on the knee infront of the TV."
Blakeway has a real objection to chemical additions to food. The last time he chomped into a McDonald's meal was five years ago.
The time before that, he doesn't remember.
He'd rather have a "beastie" in the freezer and an over-flowing vegetable garden, than head through the drive-thru. And he can make his own burgers (the buns included).
Here in Tauranga, Blakeway's fame flame is rising. He and Annie opened the now-closed Deli on Devonport six months after arriving in Tauranga, and Plenti Cookschool. He has also done live on-air demonstrations for TV's Breakfast team and joined British actor Robson Green during the filming of his Extreme Fishing programme; and he has hosted the Bay of Plenty episode of New Zealand on a Plate.
He also writes for Bay of Plenty Times Weekend magazine, indulge, has his own website, and is a regular at foodie events, and on radio.
His first book Fresh - the best of New Zealand from market to table, is out. And he has started on his next two books, one of which is another cook book and one, a novel on Captain James Cook. "It's fiction. It has to be because I'm a chef, not a professor of anthropology."
Blakeway comes from the North Yorkshire village where Captain Cook first gained his love of the sea and he has dreams of a show with Robson Green tracking Cook's movements, which will likewise help with research for the book, which is told through 25 different narrators.
Blakeway, it seems, is quickly earning a name for himself in New Zealand, much like he did in the UK.
He hopes his own journey can inspire those up and coming in the industry.
"We're all so afraid that the door that slams on our face is going to hurt. Slamming the door doesn't break your nose and nothing winds people up more than if you knock on the door straight away. I was desperate to see more and do more."
"You asked before where I hope it goes? The hope is very wonderful. The hope takes it to the very top."
Linda Preston of Mills Reef Winery, says Blakeway's determination is huge. He will become "a household name," she says. "He's all personality and very determined. He is absolutely passionate about New Zealand, particularly this region."
Owner of Somerset Cottage restaurant Anne Butcher, believes Blakeway is a good front person for the Bay.
"We listen and read comment on the industry that (often) lacks credibility in our eyes. Peter's a vastly experienced chef, a very good chef, understands food and understands the industry. We admire him and respect him. Peter's dream is to be on TV. He's done the hard yards and day to day catering stuff and we really hope he gets that opportunity."