Jackson Mehlhopt

Jackson Mehlhopt is head chef at Christchurch's Tussock Hill Cellar Door and Winery and this year he was a regional finalist in the S.Pellegrino Young Chef Academy Competition. The Competition is a global annual event to support young chefs and their personal vision for the world of food, demonstrating how food can have a positive impact on society at large.Ten chefs under 30 each cooked one dish for the Pacific region competition. Jacksons dish, "The Southern Kiwi Deer and Its Surroundings," was also awarded the Acqua Panna Award for Connection in Gastronomy, and clearly impressed the judges by his use of Wapiti deer – a South Island animal commonly thought of as a pest – highlighting issues of food waste and sustainability. I was excited to talk to Jackson, obviously because he is from Christchurch, but also because he has had an unbelievable trajectory as a chef. He has worked at Roots in Lyttelton, Amisfield in Queenstown, he did a short stint at Relae in Copenhagen and is now head chef at Tussock Hill. And he is 23 years old. I loved chatting to Jackson. He had some beautiful things to say about stewardship of the land, sustainability and how important community is to him as a chef.

Hi Jackson, how are you and how is your day?

The day is going very well. We did a little pop-up on Saturday night, so we have just been moving the barbeque back to its original place and doing some jobs on my day off. Its a nice warm day here in Christchurch.

Is it really? I have been so excited to talk to you because I am originally from Christchurch and Tussock Hill sounds amazing.

It is a beautiful spot. We opened almost this time last year and it has been incredible the support we have had from Christchurch and people have been loving coming up to see us, it's awesome.

Having a winery just 15 minutes from the city is pretty great. There are so many great wineries in Canterbury but they are a bit of a drive away, that is a great drawcard and then also the food you are doing and the wine, it sounds really impressive. I am going to be there in a couple of weeks and I am pretty keen to come and check it out.

Please do. It is actually a cool thing for a city to have both options. People that want to go out to North Canterbury and make a day of it, are still doing that but we are just another option for people who can't travel as far out of the city. It is just about having more options in Christchurch which is good for everyone.

Congratulations on your award in the San Pellegrino Young Chef of the Year Award. I have just been reading all about it and it is incredible, so congratulations.

Thank you very much. It was a pretty spectacular experience to be part of that and working with Ryan Henley who was my mentor. He spent every second week up in Christchurch he is from Queenstown and it was great to have that support from him, but then also to meet the other judges was a cool experience.

I did speak to Jose Lorenzo Morales when he was a finalist in 2019 and it is quite a process, isn't it? So maybe taking me bac to the start, how do you go with getting prepared and where does it all start for you when you decide to enter this competition?

I have wanted to enter this competition for years really, since I started cooking. It seems like a really great way to be able to develop as a chef and learn and when I created this dish I wanted it to both represent New Zealand and also my personal ethos of using wild ingredients and local New Zealand ingredients.

And you are a forager and hunter as well, is that right?

Definitely a forager. I do a bit of a hunting when I get the time and the opportunity.

That was possibly easier when you were in Queenstown, although I am sure there are palces to go in Canterbury as well.

I think I did a little bit more in Queenstown, but I struggle to find the time these days. I do love the outdoors and get out there when I can.

What is the lead in to the competition? How many months do you have to prepare?

I think we have a couple of months from when I got accepted into the competition. From there it was practising the dish, refining the dish and making sure that we could actually get the product over to Australia, which was the big one. We were using wild shot New Zealand ingredients. I was on the fence as to whether it would be allowed in. But once it got through the border, that was a bit of a relief.

So it is, "The Southern Kiwi Deer and its Surroundings," and that is the Wapiti deer?

That's right. It came from Fiordland National Park and it has been considered a pest now for quite a while now and so there is a bit of a movement going on now to change the conversation around that and have it recognised as a valuable food source, which I am particularly supportive of. It is also a really good product.

How did you cook that? What else was on the plate?

I slightly seared that off on the barbecue and wrapped it in some blanched kawa kawa which is a native New Zealand herb. Once it has been wrapped, it adds a lovely fresh herbaceous flavour to the dish. It was also served with horopito, which is another local ingredient and so it all tied together nicely with some piko piko on the plate.

You won an award for being an emerging chef, and I wondered whether for you, are competitions and award important for your identity as a chef?

I think for the competition part, it was a learning experience; seeing how I compared to people of a similar age and experience and the more competitions where I can put myself out there are only going to make me a better chef at the end of the day, right? That's how I see it anyway, in terms of the award, it is not something I am necessarily striving for but it is always nice to validate that you are on the right path, at least.

Absolutely. I think too, from what I was reading about the San Pellegrino Competition, it is all about community as well. The have the community of chefs, the academy and then there is an alumni once you get over a certain age and you are not under 30 anymore but you are still included in the community and I like the idea in hospitality that there might perhaps be a community of people helping each other, and competing with each other healthily.

That's right. It is good to be able to stay in touch with those guys you have cooked with in the past and you never know where those connections will lead in the future. It's a really great competition and I look forward to trying to compete again in the future.

I am speaking to Robin Wagner later and he will be off to Milan next year which is an amazing achievement as well.

His dish was incredible. He fully deserved that. He is a great chef. I was honoured to be part of that competition because there was some pretty exceptional talent there.

So great that people are striving and having really great ideas about sustainability as well and the positive impact food can have.

Now, I don't want to focus on your age, but you are really young to be a head chef and to have had so much written about you; Broadsheet and Cuisine. Jackson, are you 22 or 23 now?

I'm 23.

I feel as though your trajectory has been so steep. You have gone all out and done exceptionally well and you are well regarded in New Zealand and internationally. But where did it all start for you? Have you always been drawn to food and cooking?

Thank you. I have always loved being in the kitchen and it always came naturally to me.I was dyslexic growing up and wasn't necessarily too good at the books but cooking always came naturally and I have definitely gravitate towards being in the kitchen and learning about where food comes from, gardening at home, all that sort of stuff. It is something that I love doing when I am at work and when I am at home and talking to friends constantly and immersing myself in the world of food and cooking. I don't think I can get enough of it, I love it.

I see you had already worked at Roots and at Amisfield in Queenstown and you have been to Copenhagen. I dont know how you. have fitted all that in and you have been at Tussock Hill this year. Did you do your apprenticeship in Christchurch?

Ye. I left school before I finished my last year and went into cooking school and completed a year of that and over the summer break between the first year and second year of cooking school, I staged at Roots which was Roots in Lyttelton at the time. I learned an incredible amount there. They were a three hat place at the time and one of the best restaurants and it was great to be able to have that experience at such a young age, learning those core techniques at a really high standard. I fell in love with that and so I didn't go back for my second year of cooking school, I just got a job at Roots, which was pretty cool and I spent a bunch of time learning from all the guys there.

They are an amazing bunch. I know the chefs there have been instrumental in starting some of the really big conversations in New Zealand around food and sustainability. Is it called EatNZ now?

Yeah, EatNZ are a really amazing organisation. Their whole thing is to have the conversation around New Zealand food and where we are going with it and how we can all come together to create a strategy for how our food is produced in this country. It is a collection of chefs and bakers and hunters and farmers and fisherman and it is a really cool organisation to be part of.

So from Roots, is that when you went to Queenstown?

I travelled overseas first after Roots for three months and then came back to the country and did a few jobs and then headed down to Queenstown to work under Vaughan Mabee. I learned so much there, it was really great. His food strategy is so cool. He uses lots of wild ingredients. Learning from him and his team was so valuable.

The restaurant in Copenhagen, Relae, tell me about that.

That was just a small internship or stage there while I was traveling. It was really great to be there. They have a massive farm that all their produce came from and so they had Relae which was their flagship restaurant and then they had a more casual dining space. Being able to work on the farm for a little bit and then work in the restaurant was cool to see that full circle connection from where all their produce came from. I just remember when I was working over there, it was summer and the glasshouse was full of so many different varieties of tomatoes and because they had such abundance, throughout their degustation menu at Relae, we had three courses with tomatoes in them. It was cool to see that concept switch of never being able to repeat an ingredient on a degustation menu to all of a sudden highlighting it throughout the menu. It changed how I thought about ingredients.

It is interesting to have things turned on their head for us, ideas that we might have inherited and rightfully so about not repeating ingredients but good to see that people are playing with the rules a bit more.

Jackson, taking on the role of head chef, there is a lot more to it than just cooking, there are leadership things and the money side of producing a menu. How have you gone with that?

It is a constant learning experience. I have made plenty of mistakes, but I am really fortunate that the owners of Tussock Hill are super supportive and they are also incredibly hard working themselves and they allow me to make mistakes and learn from them and grow from them. I have been really fortunate to have been out in a position like this so early on, but they are incredibly supportive of me and what we are trying to do at Tussock Hill with the food. There are definitely mistakes along the way, but it is about learning from them and trying every day to put out the best food we can and matching it to their incredible wine. But also we are backed up by a talented team. There are three of us in the kitchen plus a couple of extras who we call in when we need to, but everyone turns up early in the morning and gets stuck into it and we all leave together and have staff meals together. There is a really good culture there and we have all been there since the beginning. No one has left and that is testament to the culture we are trying to develop.

It sounds great. My next question was around wellbeing, but you have kind of answered that. It is a stressful job and you have consistency to achieve, you have deadlines and it is hot and there are sharp knives, my question was going to be, how do you manage that level of stress during service and the wellbeing of yourself and your staff?

It's a good question. It comes back to balance. We don't open for dinner, We are just lunch, so we work as hard as we can until 6 oclock in the afternoon and then we will clock off and go out for a forage or hang out in the garden and have a beer and that gets rid of any of the stresses we might have had during the day. It comes back to the supportive culture we have there. Everyone is able to have conversations with one another about how their day is going or anything that is bothering them. We try and look out for one another.

I love that. Just a final question, Jackson, you have had some big experiences in a short space of time, but what would your advice be to people thinking about becoming a chef?

Do it. Any chef will tell you that it is hard job to have, and it is pretty stressful and it does require a lot of your life if you want to do it, but it is a commitment to the craft. If you want to become a chef, then get out there and work for someone really good. Spend a few years doing that because that is how you learn; you will learn the standards and the techniques, and you will probably have a really good time doing it. Just go for it and commit to it and hopefully don't look back. It is the sort of job that will take you anywhere you want it to. You can make the industry what you want it to be. There are so many different opportunities that you can get out of cooking, I highly recommend it.

Tussock Hill Cellar Door and Winery

211 Huntsbury Avenue, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand