A typical day for me is rising at 5. Then it's straight to the restaurant, where I spend the rest of my day, finishing work anywhere between 6pm and midnight. When I tell people what I do for a living they invariably ask me if I am anything like Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen.
I used to be an angry chef guy. These days, I try not to get angry, as I don't like the emotion itself or the energy it consumes. Let's just say I am good at conveying a certain level of pressure Chefs never really eat a meal as we are constantly tasting throughout the day - we never seem to actually develop an appetite as we are continually grazing.
I may go from tasting the salty flintiness of a Bluff oyster one minute to the earthy richness of a sheep's cheese the next.
The best thing I have ever had cooked for me was not cooked - it was sashimi in Tokyo. I wish people would understand that chefs and restaurateurs are generous of spirit and are not here to rip you off. If people only realised how small our margins truly are, they would then realise what incredible value for money we represent. I opened my first restaurant, Giverny, with my wife Julia, at the age of The best piece of advice I ever received was a quote I came across by Salvador Dali: "Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
I will never order soup if it's on the menu. Soups should be soothing and comforting. Too few cooks understand the art of making great soup and frequently my expectations of something ambrosial are never met. Martin tells Bryan Crump he and Nick crossed paths many times in the Wellington hospitality scene, but it wasn't until Nick moved into the flat above Martin's Oriental Bay office that they became close friends. On the rare occasions, we'd argue and fight, he'd wear me down with his cheeky grin.
Martin and Nick had a tradition of chatting on the phone every morning at 8 or , including on the Tuesday that Nick took his own life. In the weeks leading up to that day, the conversations had become more serious, Martin says. During their final call, Nick told him that he'd tried to end his life the previous Saturday morning.
He sounded quite confident the way he said it. It was just weird. Almost happy in a way. Martin called a counsellor afterwards and told them what his friend had said. He asked if he should be concerned and the counsellor advised him not to worry. Nick was found dead later that day. Martin says he's played this final conversation with Nick over in his head every day since his friend died, asking himself if he'd missed something.
They had laughed at the end of the conversation, as always, and discussed plans for Nick to visit Martin in the Wairarapa that weekend. Now he swings between feelings of guilt about not making more time to hang out with Nick in the last weeks of his life and despair over the loss of his friend. Martin doesn't think there's anything he could have said to Nick to stop him going through with ending his life, but confusion remains.
Was my friendship not strong enough?
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