Parla's interior was designed to reflect the meaning of its Turkish name. Photo / Mark Mitchell.
The Wellington restauranteur behind some of the capital’s most popular inner-city spots has expanded his empire to the suburbs.
Dean White, the man behind Cuba Steet’s award winning restaurants Ombra and Kisa, as well as the city’s popular pan-Asian Mr Go’s, last week opened a new venue named Parla in Island Bay.
The neighbourhood offering has been a long time coming with White signing the lease two years ago for the site of a former dairy on Island Bay Parade.
It’s a sister restaurant to his most popular eatery, Kisa, which he says would be booked out up to five weeks in advance on Friday and Saturday nights before the economic downturn.
Even with the city’s well documented economic struggles, you still can’t get a Friday night booking at Kisa without planning it two to three weeks out.
“People absolutely do love Kisa and so it was like, ‘ok, I think we’re on to something here’”, he said.
“We do really well in town, but just wanted a change of scene and definitely saw that suburban sites were popular and well frequented and supported as well.”
It is a vote of confidence in the capital’s hospitality sector which has been battered by repeated announcements of closures over recent years, made worse by the rise of working from home, public sector cuts, and inner city construction resulting in reduced foot traffic in Wellington’s CBD in the past year.
Parla is 34-year-old White’s fourth restaurant in nine years, with his hospitality company Mosaic Venues growing to a team of 127 staff.
“We’re happy, really happy with how last week went” he said.
Similar to Kisa, Parla’s menu brings a Middle Eastern offering rooted in Turkish cuisine.
Its name comes from the Turkish word meaning to shine or gleam.
“We sort of tried to reflect that”, White says of the venue’s fit-out.
“It has quite peachy yellowy toned walls just to try and capture that sort of like warmth and energy.”
Parla represents a new step for White, not only for its suburban position but also being the first of his venues to be open for breakfast, serving up Middle Eastern inspired eggs on toast and granola.
“The core lunch trade in the city, that sort of midday to 2 pm with people going out for lunch is definitely where we’ve felt economic conditions hurt us the most”, he said.
“What we’d found is that more people would go looking for a more of a brunch time offering.”
Despite the industry’s doom and gloom, White’s optimistic for the sector.
He believes Wellington is starting to feel “brighter” and is “having our moment of suburban dining”, which he says the city hasn’t experienced before compared to the likes of Auckland or Melbourne.
“There is a bit of a reluctance to go into town at the moment, maybe that’s a bit of a loss of pride on what things look like and in the state of it.
“Civic Square is going through huge construction and there’s not a whole lot to do and see around there, you’ve got Courtenay Place which has its challenges, so people kind of like to be out of the city and doing different things.”
Asked why he wanted to take the leap opening a new venue at a time the hospitality scene has been plagued by closures, White laughs.
“I’ve been asked that question at every single new restaurant I’ve opened over nine years.
“It is probably at its lowest point now, but hospitality is, and I think always will be, a pretty tough industry.”
He said the motivation to expand comes from having confidence in their offering.
He said Middle Eastern cuisine is “definitely of people’s interest at the moment”, partially thanks to online food trends.
Post-covid, White believes customers tastes and awareness of ingredients has increased “hugely”.
“I think a lot of that comes from cooking more at home during Covid and there was a sort of rise of online stuff, even chat GPT helping people make recipes”, he said.
“We have a really good team and I do have an interest to add to the city and keep creating opportunities for employment and a new place for myself and guests to go.”
Despite his drive, White said there is “no doubt” there have been challenges, but blames a range of factors rather than one single issue.
“There’s just less people around” he said, pointing to job cuts across Wellington’s public and private sectors, and “essential city infrastructure projects”.
The bigger challenge White believes is unpredictability of customers behaviour.
“It used to be if Thursday was busy, Sunday was busy. If Monday, Tuesday were quiet, Friday and Saturday would be really busy. There used to be these rules of thumb, there’s just none of those anymore.
“When we’re busy, we’re ultra busy, and when it’s quiet it’s very quiet.
“It’s just lots of kind of two or three percent factors, construction disruptions, you add all of these things up that might have a one to three percent impact on your trade and it only takes there to be 10 of them for it to really start impacting us.”
He said since opening last week, the latest addition to his hospitality empire is showing signs of promise.
“It’s been fantastic, we’re really pleased and there’s good forward bookings - long may it continue.”
Ethan Manera is a New Zealand Herald journalist based in Wellington. He joined NZME in 2023 as a broadcast journalist with Newstalk ZB and is interested in local issues, politics, and property in the capital. Ethan can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz.