Top chef has taste for travel but craves Kiwi comfort food

A flying visit home to Wanganui meant mouth-watering fish'n' chips, satisfying pies and a couple of gorgeous cream doughnuts for top international chef Regan Browell.

"I was hanging out for some Kiwi comfort food," she said.

Regan has been on the move since qualifying at Wanganui Polytech Eastown Catering School in 1994.

She said she had been fortunate because she had been able to combine her love of cooking and passion for travelling.

Starting with New Zealand, she worked first in major hotels and restaurants in Auckland, Tauranga and Queenstown, before taking off across the ditch to Australia.

After that it was Britain and the United States.

She has been in her present position as head chef at the acclaimed and exclusive Willcox Boutique Hotel in Aiken, South Carolina, for two years.

"It is an incredible environment to be in and work in,"she said.

She lived in a small cottage that was exactly how you would picture a small white guest cottage that you approached up a long tree-lined driveway where a glorious southern mansion sat among various outbuildings.

Though she loved being away and travelling, there was nothing like home in the southern states, she said. "Even the eggs are different ... they taste different, they really do, and bacon in the US is nothing like the Kiwi bacon, succulent and juicy. Americans like their bacon crisp and see-through ... if you dropped it on the floor it would shatter."

When she first arrived home she had comfort food on her mind, she said.

And comfort food like grits and biscuits (scones without the sugar) and gravy were big in the southern states.

"Fortunately, we have a well-travelled clientele and they don't hang out for the southern breakfasts with grits, but they love their pancakes and waffles."

Regan said she was considering writing a recipe book from her travels.

"It'll have to wait a bit longer, because it's a lot of work and I don't have time just yet."

And coming home to Wanganui to live?

"No, not yet, but back to New Zealand eventually ... absolutely."