Cooking Up A Storm in Kaiapoi

Words: Pattie Pegler

Images: Supplied TVNZ

It’s two o’clock in the afternoon and Lee Barrington, cook and owner of iconic Kaiapoi café Out The Gate, is tucking into a sausage sandwich. Is that breakfast, lunch or dinner?

“It’s all three,” she says with a laugh.

It’s no wonder. With a café to run and her recent appearance on My Kitchen Rules, alongside son Luke, she has had a bit on. But food and cooking have always been a big part of things – both in her work and personal life.

“We’ve always been a family that gets together in the kitchen,” says Lee. “I always cooked for my children and made sure they had a good, balanced diet. I used to love looking through the specials every Sunday evening and planning what to cook for the week.”

Now her four children are grown up but her love of cooking and connections is still going strong. Born and bred in Kaiapoi her bustling café now stands in the exact same spot where she first did work experience as a teenager. She worked at cafes in Kaiapoi and at one point, when her children were young, she ran the staff cafeteria at Patience & Nicholson.

Back in 2017 she had the opportunity to run her own café in Templeton. It went well in the early years but when Covid came along all that changed. It was a ‘pretty dark’ time she says.

Now, at Out The Gate, she has rebalanced her life –  taking a step back from the ‘rat race’ and re-evaluating life. “The overheads are less, I haven’t got lots of staff,” she says. “I love it. I give my heart and soul to it. It’s about food and people and connection.”

 It certainly is, the café is bustling even in the afternoon – people of all sorts come and go and some stop and chat with Lee about her recent appearance on MKR. She laughs and jokes and chats right back with them.

“We [Lee and son Luke] applied, sent in photos and a video interview. Then we heard back and it was like ‘oh my gosh, here we go’,” she says of the application process.  

The show required five weeks of filming, most of it in the North Island. Cooking for friends, family and customers is one thing and Lee is confident in the kitchen but cooking for television is different she says – she was in a strange kitchen, with people asking what she was doing and cameras everywhere, it added a different level of pressure.

“The last time I was working in the kitchen with Luke, he would have been about eight years old and he did what he was told,” she says with a laugh. “Now it’s different, he’s got all these ideas he wants to try out and I would have my ideas.”

Luke is also a keen cook and has plenty of social media followers on his channels – where he reviews pretty much anything edible. 

“We’ve always had a good relationship but I think going on MKR together definitely strengthened it,” says Lee. “It gave me a different understanding of him – we had never had that time just the two of us together.”

Now, back in Kaiapoi, Lee is happy back at Out The Gate, connecting with people and nourishing the community with some of that good, down-to-earth cooking.

So, there’s just one question left to ask. What could she not do without in the kitchen?

“Flour, butter and cheese,” she says, not missing a beat. That’s a pretty grounded answer from a a pretty grounded lady.