As one door closes another opens... chef Dean Runganaikaloo about to get cooking at The Common Room in Hastings. Photo / Paul Taylor
As one door closes another opens... chef Dean Runganaikaloo about to get cooking at The Common Room in Hastings. Photo / Paul Taylor
It's been a case of one door opening as another one closes for a Hawke's Bay chef who lost his job in a Covid-19 crisis shutdown.
Dean Runganaikaloo, a 32-year-old originally from Mauritius, an island nation in the Indian Ocean of the the coast of East Africa, had been achef at Elephant Hill Winery just four months when it closed its restaurant because of the impact of the lockdown.
As it happened he'd become a regular chilling-out after work at Hastings music and craft beers venue The Common Room, where he will now get to spend even more time leading a kitchen for the first time in a new dining experience created by propietors Gerard Barron and Jess Soutar Barron.
With the "refurb" done and dusted The Common Room proprietor Gerard Barron waits for Friday night's opening of a new chapter in the venue he started eight years ago. Photo / Warren Buckland
Their extensive lockdown "refurb", as Gerard Barron calls it, as created the new Common Food initiative, extending the food range of quality burgers and chips and other bar menu items to the fuller dining room experience, and another attraction in once near-dead area of Heretaunga St East.
The staff member responsible for the previous array had chosen a new direction as a result of the lockdown which closed restaurants and bars for more than seven weeks, when the Barrons and Runganaikaloo made contact.
"The timing was right," said the new chef, who has been in New Zealand nine years and who started training as a chef in Melbourne at the age of 18.
As a bar and music venue The Common Room would not have been able to open until May 21, but as a restaurant it will reopen on Friday night, with a little help from friends if needed to help meet requirements of contact tracing, maximum numbers and self-distancing.
The Cabana and proprietor Roy Brown, an item for 10 years and about to reopen after another closed chapter of an iconic venue which dates back well over half a century. Photo / File
'We've got a good community going here," Barron said.
Iconic Napier music venue The Cabana could have been also up-and-running straight away had it not been for the later date set for the staged transition to alert level 2, says proprietor Roy Brown, who has kept the mystique of venue in Shakespeare Rd, Napier, alive for the last decade of its 60-plus years.
He said supporters had offered to help "for free" if needed to make sure the premises function within the rules, and having originally hoped to reopen this week, but aware bars would probably be the last to get the green light, has three live "gigs" set to go on Thursday-Saturday next week.
It'll mean a maximum number of 100, but Brown says seating arrangements he used for tables during Art Deco weekend will suit people in their "bubbles". He says bubble-makers will have to be treated at "face-value" as to whether they're sticking to their bubbles, and then there's the need to keep an eye on self-distancing dancing.
In an environment where venues are likely to need more staff with initially less income, supporters have volunteered to help with record-keeping for contact-tracing and other requirements of being able to stay open without breaching the conditions and risk being shut-down again.
The saviour has been the Save our Venues project, which has raised the equivalent of two months' rent, the biggest of the costs which had continued despite the lack of usual income over the eight weeks of closure.
Barron used the lockdown to do another major "refurb", at the Heretaunga St East premises he opened in Hastings in 2012, and he's also taken on a new chef.
"As a country we've done well, but it's got to a stage of make or break for a lot of people," he said. "We've got to get something coming in."
