Celebrity chef Simon Gault has turned from the kitchen to the bar with his latest business venture. Photo / Supplied
Celebrity chef Simon Gault has turned from the kitchen to the bar with his latest business venture. Photo / Supplied
It's five o'clock on yet another Friday afternoon during lockdown. Work is finished for the week, the kids are playing outside, and there are hours of sun left in the day with summer on the way.
What better time is there to reach for a cocktail?
We may not beable to head out for a margarita or a martini, but you can now bring the bar into your own kitchen.
Gone are the speciality wines and craft beers - the drink of the summer is the at-home cocktail. This year we're all becoming bartenders in our own homes and shaking up a storm.
The Kiwi celebrity chef formerly behind Giraffe, Jervois Steak House and The Crab Shack, Simon Gault is the latest to get on board with the at-home drinks trend, starting his own gourmet cocktail business during lockdown.
Gault's Cocktails launches this weekend just in time for Labour Day - and the chef acknowledges that the new business venture was born out of necessity.
Gault supplies New Zealand restaurants with premium ingredients through his own brand, but with Auckland restaurants still closed amid the level 3 lockdown and the hospitality industry in crisis, business has dried up.
"It's kind of gone to being non-existent," he tells the Herald. "[Gault's Cocktails] is a Covid, get myself out of the blue business.
"It's a bit of a dire situation for us - my business supplies restaurants and that's just gone."
So when level 4 hit, he turned from the kitchen to the bar.
"I love cocktails and I've had lots of amazing cocktail mixologists work for me for years over all the restaurants I've had," he says. "I've learned from the best."
Gault's Cocktails was born during this year's level 4 lockdown. Photo / Supplied
"I've just gone on a mission to sort of revolutionise cocktails at home, to make it super easy for people so they can literally shake it or pour it over ice and they're good to go.
"Right now everybody's going from one drink to the next. It's five o'clock at 11 o'clock in the morning and I'm just trying to give everybody an escape. And it's also hopefully going to save the jobs of the people that work with me."
Building the business in a matter of weeks - designing the cocktails, packaging them, making the website - has been an "absolute mission", he says.
"It's probably been one of the most stressful things I've done and I've opened a lot of restaurants," he says.
"And a restaurant opening always comes down to the wire, like two hours before customers are going to walk in you're thinking, 'Am I ready, am I ready?' and this is the same, but it's even harder."
The gourmet cocktail menu includes a melon martini. Photo / Supplied
Gault says his team has been working "unbelievably" hard to get ready for the launch.
"We've managed to build something in a time period that is quite incredible. Normally you'd spend months, if not years, planning a venture like this," he says.
"But I've just been surrounded by people that work for me and people that have just dropped what they're doing to help, so I'm fortunate and I'm so grateful to them. Now I just hope it's what people want at home."
The drinks on Gault's cocktail menu include a piña colada, espresso martini, a raspberry margarita, melon martini, apricot bellini and skinny passionfruit mojito - but these aren't your average cocktail mixes.
"I'm trying to give that extra 5 per cent of magic in each cocktail. The piña colada comes with a piña colada chip, the blood orange comes with blood orange chips. I've got gold-coated chocolate coffee beans, I've got edible flowers, I've got all the little bits right through to even if people want the glasses," he says.
If you like pina coladas ... Photo / Supplied
"All the cocktails that I've done, I've given different options. One of my favourites is the raspberry margarita, but there are different salts - so you can have a lime margarita or a chilli lime margarita or tropical chilli salt on the rim."
There's even a healthy option for those who want a guilt-free cocktail - the skinny passionfruit mojito contains more fibre than sugar, he says.
Ultimately, Gault wants to provide Aucklanders with a much-needed escape.
"We want to make everyone feel like they're back on holiday again with a piña colada in their hand as the weather changes - that's what everybody wants.
"If somebody is feeling a bit down this will put a smile on their face. It's what we all need right now."
