Tala Has A New Head Chef. What Will Tommy Hope Bring To The Samoan Table?

As the moon wanes, the Samoan sea worm rises from the coral reef.

Its reproductive “tail” splits from its head and floats to the surface in a mass spawning event that lasts just a few nights every October and (sometimes) again in November.

By daybreak, the palolo will have disappeared. But as it washes into the moonlit shallows, nocturnal hunters scoop it from the ocean – spaghetti-like strands of peacock blue and seaweed-brown worms that can sell for $100 a kg.

Locals eat palolo – dubbed the “caviar of the South Pacific” – raw from the ocean or fried with butter and onions and piled on toast. How will Tommy Hope serve the mysterious sea worm that he’s just secured for supply? Tala’s new head chef shakes his head and grins: “I’m not sure. I have to taste it first, I guess.”

Tala, in Parnell, Auckland, is the New Zealand’s first modern Samoan restaurant.

Opened in late 2023 by Henry Onesemo and his wife Debby, the restaurant’s newest head chef comes most recently from Auckland’s Sid at The French Cafe. But the Melbourne years of Hope’s CV included The Town Mouse, Embla and the much-feted Attica, where the now 39-year-old worked under New Zealand-born Ben Shewry on menus highlighting native Australian ingredients and indigenous culture.

Hope remembers hours and hours (and entire weekends) scouring the internet for ingredients never previously seen on a fine dining restaurant menu.

“When I was at Attica, I was ultra-obsessive, almost dangerously so . . . I managed to get these honey ants from Western Australia. It took me a year and a half, contacting local councils and tour guides . . . if you just keep digging at something, you’ll find it.

Like palolo. Or vaisu – a technique for caramelising coconut milk over charcoal, that’s deployed in a dish incorporating a steamed mussel, coconut mānuka tea and pineapple.

Hope, Onesemo and Matthew Reade (ex-Lyle’s in London and another Kiwi recently come home) are a formidable trio.

“It’s nice working with people who are aligned in their vision,” says Hope. “And we’re very fluid in the menu – we’ll change a dish mid-service because Henry has this idea and it’s great. We kind of bend the rules. Some dishes are very traditional and then there are others that we just evolved. There are no rules, it’s an exploration.”

Hope was born in England and moved to New Zealand, aged 2. His older sister is a vet, his twin brother works in biochemistry-robotics-medicine and his parents are retired from their careers in neuroradiology and ophthalmology.

“I’m kind of the practical one.”

He entered the hospitality industry, aged 17, when his dad got him a job at Mt Eden’s Circus Circus cafe. When he didn’t get into art school, Hope pursued a fulltime career in the kitchen, working at Rob Richardson’s Molten and Phil Clark’s Phil’s Kitchen. There were some London years “mostly for travel” and then the shift to Australia where his game plan began with a Google search for “top restaurants”.

He spent two years at The Town Mouse, owned by ex-Matterhorn chef Dave Verheul, “probably one of the top two chefs I keep learning off – he’s very sideways thinking in his flavour combinations”. But the dream was always Attica. Verheul knew Shewry and helped Hope score the interview that eventually led to a four-and-a-half year stint - including one of the toughest trading periods in hospitality history.

“Yeah, we did Covid. Hundreds and thousands of lasagnes. We went from 65 people every night to 500 a day. We scrambled around the city trying to find massive pots to cook stocks. I think we were the first people to do a 17-course degustation, with wine pairing, delivered.

Hope and fiance Claire came back to Auckland to buy a house and start a family. The couple have yet to actually get married (“weddings are expensive!”). The newest gig is both a stepping stone and a learning curve ahead of one day owning his own restaurant. In the meantime, he has full creative control at Tala and, in October, will visit Samoa for the first time.

What can he expect?

Tala’s co-founder Henry Onesemo joins the interview and recollects the last time he sent a colleague to his home country: “That guy slept on the floor and when he woke up in the morning, he made the floor - he didn’t make a bed. He had to sweep the house and then he went to the plantation.”

Onesemo is planning a slightly easier trip for Hope.

“We’re gonna break him in a little bit at a time!”

Hope will meet Onesemo’s brother Kent (whose YouTube channel Samoan Farmer has 16,000 subscribers) to learn the art of umu cooking - and encounter more ingredients to add to his food memory banks.

“My goal is to push Samoan food forward,” says Onesemo. “And I will use anything and anyone I can to push that along. I think with Tommy having worked at Attica, he’s very sensitive towards the indigenous, cultural aspects of the food. I knew exactly that he would be the right fit for here.”

Onesemo says his own role is to fit in where he is needed.

“The easiest thing for Tommy is that I don’t have an ego. Yesterday I was on the larder section and doing dishes.”

He was also in charge of the staff meal. “Every Wednesday, I try to get something from the Samoan stores. It was turkey tail and stir fry Samoan style which has, like, cucumber in it, and then, taro with coconut milk . . . the poor guys!”

Onesemo says there is a perception Samoan cuisine can be bland – but the food he remembers from his childhood was not. He points to a culture of fermentation (coconut milk and bananas) and the chillis that laced the oka. Tala’s menu is deliberately Samoan specific, not generically Pacific. And the fine dining price point ($85 for lunch; $215 for the full chef’s journey dinner) is a conscious decision by a restaurant owner who wants to challenge stereotypes.

“The term ‘Pasifika’, it’s like a safety blanket . . . we wanted to peel back those preconceived ideas and stereotypes of what Samoan food is. People that come to this restaurant have already decided they want Samoan food. Now we have a chance to educate them more.”

Hope says his own style is constantly evolving, but sensory appeal has always been crucial.

“How a dish eats is really important, that sensation of something crisp, going into a soft mousse and then discovering something underneath. How it looks is obviously a by-product.

“I like dishes where you can close your eyes and just eat. You don’t have to spoon the sauce from the right or the onion from the left and then put it altogether, or cover things in flowers just because it looks pretty.

“Something that Attica and Ben taught me is that everything matters. The cutlery, the texture of a plate, the horrible feeling that maybe a spoon makes on a textured plate when you’re trying to scrape the sauce. There are a thousand little things that make a good restaurant, a great restaurant.”

At Tala, just before a Thursday lunch service, the room smells banana-milky-sweet and slightly smoky. The signature umu chicken is still on the menu, but new dishes have been added – a roadside BBQ that pays homage to Samoa’s distinctive stalls, and a soft-boiled quail egg rolled in a burnt hay ash with a carrot sauce and oil for dipping that reimagines a childhood favourite served on White Sunday or Henry’s birthday. “Copra” is a coconut-based dessert named for the industry first developed during the German occupation of Samoa.

Hope says he loves the creativity of his chosen career. At any given 3am, he’s emailing himself a note, the base of an idea, something he wants to develop or brainstorm (on the day of this interview, that note read “flounder wrapped in banana leaf”).

“I like being the first one here,” he says. “It’s like being in your artist’s studio.”

In the morning, the team preps and talks. Hope describes a “pack mentality” – people who understand what this job means and needs. Anticipation builds. The chefs feed the diners and, in turn, feed off the diners’ excitement.

How does Hope define fine dining?

“The perfect execution of anything.”

Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016 and is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk. She holds a Masters in Gastronomy and is the 2025 recipient of the Gordon McLauchlan Journalism Award.

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