in residencE
We are open every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evening from 5pm.
Across our regular days, we host guest chefs
and winemakers.
Roses is 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?
Alongside tasty share plates, we have a ever-changing thoughtful drinks list focusing on low-intervention wines made with respect to the land by small, independent makers.
The duration of our residencies is ever-changing, sometimes we have a chef for just a few weeks and others we have for a few months! The best way to stay up to date with who we are currently hosting is via our Instagram or by signing 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.
ABOUT OUR CURRENT CHEF
KARL BAYLY
Karl has always been a late bloomer, but the Tortoise always wins the race right? Karl came to cheffing late in life by industry standards. He’s been in the hospo circuit for the majority of his working life and despite multiple forays into the arts (Bayly ran multiple galleries in Hamilton for a time) he has always landed back somewhere in the hospitality world. Like all good cooks, Karl started out as a dishie (at Bestie).
He then graduated to waiter and eventually ended up as a barista and prep chef in the kitchen at Coffee Pen. In 2000 and whatever after a solid year of hustling the scene, he fled Aotearoa and spent a year travelling the Middle East. Karl has always had an inexplicable fascination with this part of the world and on this trip, he fell deeply in love with food and with the flavours of the region.
On return to New Zealand, he wasn’t entirely sure where he would land work-wise but he didn’t have to think too hard about it because lockdown hit and he was trapped in a shitty little residential kitchen where he ended up becoming the in-the-house chef for his flatmates. It was then that he decided to really give cheffing a crack and he landed his first cooking job at Mr. Morris, before spending a year at Candela and a stint at Celeste alongside his own pop-up dinners and private events under @cooked_plates.
After deciding to put a pause on his cooking career and deciding to quickly retrain and become a web developer (a baby was on the way so needs must!) his wife made a whim decision to take a lease on a very small commercial space on K Rd and throw out all their much-considered plans to start a pipe dream restaurant that the pair had been musing about for a few years. And so Karl and his partner Ophelia opened Roses.
Although Karl owns Roses he prefers to take a backseat from the limelight, working quietly and tirelessly alongside every single guest chef to finesse menus and ensure the consistency of food and service. Karl loves to cook but he loves to learn just as much and the residency format of Roses allows him to constantly be sharing his own knowledge and learning from the guest chefs at the same time.
Alongside building Roses into the host it has become, he literally built almost every single aspect of Roses with his bare hands and does a hideous amount of admin (such is the life of the small business owner) and so even despite his dyslexia has become a prolific Excel spreadsheet-er. Karl is also an avid wine enthusiast, hence the considered and eclectic wine list at Roses and has even started tinkering with making some of his own wine (stay tuned, so far its not very nice).
Karl’s favourite movie’s are the fast and furious series because “they are about family”. His favourtie scenes are where they all get together in someone’s backyard for a bbq and a beer.
Alongside his passion for grape juice, Paul Walker and Palestine and Microsoft Office 360, Karl really does love to cook, so in between our guest chefs he has spotlight slots in the kitchen. Enjoy him while it lasts!