Oak Estate restaurant owners Simon and Emma Lillico with daughter Isla. Photo / Warren Buckland
Oak Estate restaurant owners Simon and Emma Lillico with daughter Isla. Photo / Warren Buckland
Chef Simon Lillico is not offering a regular dinner service at his restaurant, instead choosing to prioritise time with his wife and young daughter.
“All my friends who are chefs... they look at me asthe crazy one that I don’t do [dinners].”
Simon and Emma Lillico have run the Oak Estate cellar door and restaurant in Hawkes Bay’s Bridge Pa triangle for the past three years.
The restaurant is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, and while he accepts bookings for large group dinners, Lillico does not provide a nightly walk-in dinner service.
But his reasoning is simple: “I want to be present.”
“I’ve worked in restaurants where I do 100 hours a week... and it’s a young man’s game.”
By shutting his doors at 4.30pm, the father-of-one can go home, cook dinner, do bath time, and read his daughter a bedtime story.
He said at the peak of a hospitality career “you [have to] do something for yourself”.
Oak Estate restaurant owners Simon and Emma Lillico with daughter Isla who is turning 3 in August. Photo / Warren Buckland
Lillico says the cost of living crisis is hurting the hospitality sector.
“It’s a period where restaurants are struggling.
“If you went around and talked to a lot of places, they would say they’re struggling compared to what they have been.”
Despite this financial pressure, the chef says he is not willing to sacrifice time with his family.
“It comes down to a monetary thing at the end of the day. Sometimes, yeah, I’d love to open more nights and make more money. But at what cost? You’re sacrificing your own time in your own life to make an extra dollar.”
