The Michelin Young Chef Of The Year, Bob Fairs From Londo, Is Coooking A One-Off Dinner At Pici

Christchurch restaurant Londo is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of place.

The compact space on Papanui Road has space for just 27 diners and a tiny kitchen, which makes the food that Bob Fairs is cooking all the more impressive. 

Londo was awarded a Bib Gourmand at NZ's inaugural Michelin awards, and Fairs himself won Young Chef of the Year, a testament to the restaurant's impact and his immense talent in the kitchen. 

The cooking at Londo is not fine dining in the typical sense of the word, but this is food cooked with serious skill. Dishes are designed to share and the menu is exceptionally well-priced, but the attention to detail and ingenuity in each dish is more akin to multi-course degustation menus. It is, in many ways, fine dining for the modern world, making a certain level of cooking accessible to a wider range of customers. 

Lamb on the menu at Londo | Instagram

When I called Jono Thevenard, chef and owner of Karangahape Road restaurant Pici, to ask if he wanted to put on an event as part of Auckland Feast, it was Fairs he mentioned first. I couldn't quite believe my luck, Fairs was on the hit list of people I wanted to bring to Auckland for Feast, and a few emails and phone calls later, the event was set. It makes complete sense—these are two of the country's most formative next-gen chefs and will no doubt be one of those meals that people talk about for months after. 

Championing all elements of the industry is such a big part of what we do here at Urban List, and this dinner is exactly the kind of thing we love being a part of, which is why we're super excited to be helping bring what is sure to be an extremely special meal to life. We are hardly short on great chefs and exceptional restaurants in New Zealand, but to see this much talent and creativity coming through the new generation feels like a statement for the fact that the future of Aotearoa's restaurant scene is in good hands. 

Mastercard presale tickets for Auckland Feast presented by Mastercard go on sale at 10am Monday 28 September, with general release tickets launching Thursday 1 October. Sign up for first release at aucklandfeast.co.nz.

Image Credit: Pici | Instagram