in residencE
Across our regular days, we host guest chefs
and winemakers.
Every week we bring you a unique menu
dreamt up by our guest chef.
Our current chef guest chef is Yutak Son in collaboration with
Amy Farnsworth of Amoise wines.
Alongside tasty plates, we have a thoughtful drinks list focusing on low-intervention wines made with respect to the land by small, independent winemakers.
It’s a unique approach to our culinary scene — one that opens the floor for spontaneity and experimentation. Roses looks to our hospitality friends who throw the best dinner parties and asks: what do you love to make and want to share
with people?
We are open every Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday.
The duration of each residency is ever-changing, sometimes we have a chef for just a week and sometimes we have them for a few months! The best place to stay up to date with who we are currently hosting is via our Instagram or sign up to
our mailing list.
For the most part we invite our guest chefs and winemakers but if you are a bloody good cook or winemaker and want to do something with us, please do get in touch.
current cheF:
YUTAK SON
A few years ago we had lunch at Te Motu (which is still the best place to eat on the island in our humble opinion). It was a notably memorable meal with flavour combinations we couldn’t place - which was exciting and unusual. Our curiosity was sparked and we decided to find the head Chef - Yutak Son. On our way out we cornered him for a quick chat, he was out the back of the kitchen playing with his two small children who had popped in to visit their dad. We talked openly quickly with Yutak and immediately switched numbers knowing our paths would one day cross again. After what is now years of messaging and another chance encounter meeting at Aigo we are so thrilled to be able to finally introduce Yutak and his culinary delights to you!
Yutak had an unconventional introduction to cooking, one derived from necessity. Having moved to Aotearoa from South Korea when he was eight, Yutak and his brother found themselves as young adults in need of a way to help their family stay in New Zealand. In order to get residency the boys needed a work visa and to get a work visa they needed tertiary-level jobs, so while his brother went off to study Psychology, Yutak landed himself at cooking school. After doing his time at NSIA Yutak started his first job at Verbena Bar & Bistro (now closed) cooking classic bistro food with an English lean, thick steak and jus and of course good old fish and chips.
Yutak then moved to a role at Stafford Rd Wine Bar working under head chef Ed Veneer of Pasture (now closed), it was here under Ed’s wealth of technical knowledge that Yutak really began to see the potential of the culinary arts. Yutak’s understanding of gastronomy exploded as he was introduced to the world of kitchen gadgets, where food can be manipulated and realized to the fullest of a chef's imagination.
Ed was set off on his travels to Europe and before he left, he secured a role for Yutak at Sidart. Here Sid reinforced Chef Ed’s teachings and inspired Yutak to make cooking his passion, with Sid leading Sidart with great creativity and discipline. Here Yutak learnt how to be playful with food and how to bring different types of textures to life.
He then went to Orphans Kitchen where he found great inspiration in chef Tom Hishon. Tom’s food was the polar opposite to what Yutak had just spent years learning under Ed and Sid, opting to hero farm-to-table ingredients in their truest form. It was at Orphans that Yutak learnt about and fell in love with fermentation and kaimoana. Yutak referred to the people he worked with at the time as the “Dream team”, he said it truly felt like a hospitality family and he admired the community-orientated approach to cooking within the staff (they would do things like all go to Kelmarna Gardens once a week to pick and plant together). Yutak feels his time at Orphans is one of his biggest influences. The team at Orphans also sponsored Yutak to finally get his working visa which we feel speaks to all the characters in this story.
Yutak then found himself down south. Tom helped to tee Yutak up a job at Black Estate where he immersed himself in the world of wine and local cuisine. Yutak speaks highly of his time there, crediting the team on their inclusivity and knowledge sharing around their organic practices and overall approach to viticulture. Reinforcing what he’d learnt from Tom, Black Estate was doing their own magic, with a heavily organic and locally inspired menu. It takes great effort, care and knowledge to source such local ingredients and then produce a menu from it, Yutak deeply appreciated this commitment and this ethos has had a big influence on his own style of cooking.
A few years later Yutak finds himself chatting with an old friend who is soon to take over the running of his parent's Waiheke vineyard and happens to be in search of a head chef - enter Yutak at Te Motu. Just as Yutak signed on at Te Motu the pandemic hit and he was stranded in Canterbury. It is notable that for this time Te Motu honoured his contract and paid him despite the fact that he couldn’t get there yet. There are many kind and generous people in hospitality and we feel it's important to mention good deeds when they happen.
From what we can tell Yutak had a bloody brilliant couple of years at Te Motu. A trusting friendship turned working relationship allowed Yutak to have essentially unlimited resources and free reign to simply play and learn - which is by any chef the definition of a dream.
This was Yutak’s first role as head chef and he wanted to do a lot. He wanted to pull parts of his fine dining training and balance them with more relaxed techniques he felt akin to, he wanted to do more curing and charcuterie and he wanted to do farm-to-table, with a newly built garden in the back of the vineyard; and do you know what? He did all that. There were lots of failings (think empty salami’s) but also lots of successes (the meal we had and the acclaim he received) and these years of self-directed learning allowed him to amalgamate all his experience into his very own plates.
A few years on and Yutak comes full circle home to his Orphans Kitchen family. Daily Bread (owned by Orphans Tom Hishon and Josh Helm alongside Patrick Welzenbach) has boomed and they bring on Yutak to be the exec chef for their savoury department. This is a huge diversion from everything Yutak has done to date because he is now getting to understand food production on a volume level most of us can’t fathom - and learning the management and business side of things at the same time. Here he learned a hell of a lot on the other side of the spectrum and credits Tom, Josh and Patrick for their humble and supportive approach to management.
Whilst working at Daily Bread he was working casually at Aigo (where we bumped into him again). He was approached by David Lee to take on a role as exec chef at David’s and Albert Cho’s (@eatlitfood) collaborative, new venture named Tobi on
Ponsonby road which is set to open later this year. With David’s group Namu being a Korean-owned company, Yutak felt that it would be a great way to reconnect with his culture.
As we chat about his food journey and his life I can’t help but feel that Yutak is just so bloody deserving of where he has landed. As a young adult searching for residency security for his family, the last 10 years have taken him on a wild path into amazing roles. After chatting with Yutak to write his bio, he thanked me for the opportunity to cook at Roses. The guy who just became the exec chef for the infamous David Lee’s latest venture just thanked me for the opportunity to cook three nights at our 20-seater purple cave? What a guy.
At Roses we are really trying to build a community (I sort of hate that word, but I don’t have a better one) of like-minded people, kind, generous, fair, interesting and interested people - on both sides of the pass. We liked Yutak from the moment we met him and we are so stoked to be able to host him in our little spot before he takes
over this town!
Yutak’s favourite flower is the Lupin.
current WINEMAKER:
AMY FARNSWORTH OF AMOISE
We met Amy Farnsworth of Amoise wines at a dinner in the home of Amy Hopkinson (of Halcyon Wines). We were in Hawke’s Bay and Amy kindly invited us over for a meal and to meet some of her fellow winemakers and friends. It struck me as a very uncommon thing to do - to invite your industry competitors over to introduce them to people who may have cool opportunities for them. It seemed the kaupapa of these makers was to wholeheartedly support, learn and share with each other through friendship. We need more of this energy in the world.
Amy is originally from Vancouver. Having been in the hospo world from date dot, it was a combination of her competitive nature and innate curiosity that led her into the world of wine. As she worked the floor with her more wine-educated colleagues, she watched them sell expensive bottles with sommelier language and thought I wanna do that and she knew that to do that she needed to know what she was talking about.
So as she downed bottles of Wolf Blass in her grimy flat she decided to sit her WSET (Wine and Spirit Education). From here Amy ended up working for an importer with the largest biodynamic portfolio in Canada. Amy continued to deepen her knowledge and her fascination with winemaking only grew as she learned more and more about her low-intervention viticulture clients.
The 2008 recession hits, everyone loses their job including Amy and she thinks…fuck, what now? But luckily I think the vine stars aligned for Amy and the pavement to her own winemaking began. Keen to understand the making side of things she thought why not approach some of the New Zealand labels she had been importing and see what jobs were slinging. Well known Felton Road then welcomed her with open arms. Amy spent a year working in everything from the vineyard to the winery and it was here that she became completely hooked. A vintage in Burgundy followed not long after and her obsession was cemented further, she knew now she wanted to make wine.
With the seed literally planted, Amy decided to park up in France for a few years, she also studied for the BPREA - a viticulture prerequisite required in France in order to start your own domaine (a parcel of land under the control of a winemaker). Conveniently for Amy she also happened to study alongside the children who became the next generation of famous wine makers such as Etienette Dauvissat, Sylvestre Mosse & Antoine Robert. This education was taught entirely in French and although Amy actually learnt French as a child most of it was lost, this study brought the language back for her and subsequently when she dreams about the vine, it’s all in French and so it was here in France that Amy found the romance in winemaking. Imagine the horses ploughing the vines at magic hour!
Amy then spent the following years living out of a suitcase and touring the world to do vintages throughout Australia, France, Italy, Canada and Aotearoa. With an endless appetite for knowledge, Amy decided to park up in Canterbury for a while to go to Lincoln (the place in NZ where everyone goes to learn about wine officially) whilst she worked at Black Estate. Amy knew she wanted to work with some particular grape varietals (Cab Franc, Syrah) so then made her way to Hawke’s Bay to work for Paritua where she conveniently managed to nab a great role as assistant winemaker.
Jason and Dan (who’s job Amy took) of Paritua wines have been quite pivotal in Amy’s life and not just in her wine life as Dan introduced her to Greg, the love of her personal life while Jason encouraged her to try and make her own wine with his support. Amoise was born in 2018 when Amy made her first wine - a Pinot Gris - (only 3 barrels!). There was basically no organic fruit being grown in Hawkes Bay at the time and being Canadian Amy didn’t have a lifetime of connections, enter our kind connector Amy Hopkinson (of Halcyon Days) who gave Amy her first grapes.
From here Amy continued with vineyard work as her relationships with growers developed and alongside the organic farming scene in the region was becoming more plentiful. Amy finally had access to the fruit she had always been desperate to work with (Chenin, Gamay, Cab Franc & Syrah) allowing Amoise to flourish.
Winemaking in the way that Amy makes means that how you grow the grapes is almost more important than what you do with the juice. This sentiment means that Amoise wines are trying to encapsulate the land and place they are from. Amy even does this thing (which honestly made me think she was a little crazy when she told me) where prior to picking a harvest she collects a big bunch of grapes, macerates them, with all the flowers and dirt etc the came with the grapes, separates the skins from the juice, whacks them into a glass bottle and buries it in back in the vines with a loose lid. When the liquid (a wild yeast starter) gets all fermenty and rank and good she chucks the lid on and then when it comes time to do her harvest she pours it on top of her grapes. Turns out this is a very real thing - Pied de Cuve - is the official name, google it. The more I heard about it the more it made sense, the essence of the land is made into a ferment, then poured into extracted juice from the land. It's kinda the logic of sourdough but done backwards.
It is easy to forget when we down a bottle with friends how this tasty juice came to be, now would be a good time for us to reflect on the insane amount of labour (manual human labour) that goes into making a bottle of wine not to mention the absolutely incalculable amount of thought. Good things take time and also a fuck load of energy and commitment. Amy is an extremely committed winemaker, ever-curious and ever-changing. As much as a winemaker can make with intent, mother nature does not always abide to our plans but Amy knows this and she knows this must be embraced, as really there is no choice. Amy’s passion and breadth of experience can be tasted in the beautiful wines of Amoise - which as of last year has officially become her full time gig, having grown from making 3 barrels to over 16,000 bottles over the last six years.
Amy believes that everything happens for a reason and I think that too, but I think her soul somehow manifested this wine life for her too. I think sometimes things can be in our bones, it just takes a while to find them. Amy described making wine in Aotearoa as a fruit salad - the land where anything can happen. I loved this description and the more we get to know the independent winemakers producing in this country the more I think that applies to the people too. A big old bowl of fruit, of all shapes, sizes and flavours but nestled in really close together, sitting quite literally in each other's juice.
Amy’s favourite flower is the pansy.