Restaurant Chefs to Stock up your Freezer
When lockdown hit rather than slowing down, the owners at Rangiora’s Five Stags decided to fast forward a new business venture. Within weeks Fresh Chef was up and running – delivering high quality, hearty meals up and down the country.
“Everything we make is made with love,” says co-owner and executive chef, Jay Bunea. With 20 years’ cooking under his belt, Jay is passionate about food and making sure the dishes he produces for Fresh Chef will freeze and reheat well. And whilst they operate from the Five Stags kitchen, with the same quality and talented chefs, it’s not as simple as taking dishes from the Five Stags menu and freezing them.
“The challenges are different to restaurant cooking,” explains Jay. “You have to be part chef and part mad scientist and get creative in different ways. It’s fun.” Jay has experimented with moisture levels, salt levels and details like slicing meat thinner to reduce the reheating time. The final result is great food prepared in small batches in the restaurant kitchen – then frozen ready for delivery. Popular sellers include roasts, butter chicken and lasagne - there’s even a mouth-watering sticky date pudding.
So who’s buying Fresh Chef meals? A lot of people says co-owner Kerry Mason.
“We get young customers, old customers, busy Mums, kids buying for their elderly parents - stocking up the freezer to make sure they’ve got good tucker in”.
And whilst they started with a very loyal, local following word has spread on social media and they now have customers from Bluff to Kaitaia.
It’s easy to order online and for first timers who just want to give the meals a try there’s a sample pack allowing them to pick three options from the menu.
So if you want to stock up your freezer – or someone else’s – with hearty, delicious meals made with love, visit www.freshchef.nz and get your order in.
