Source: Radio New Zealand
New Zealand food magazine Cuisine has dropped award-winning restaurant Amisfield from its esteemed food guide, following at least five complaints about executive chef Vaughan Mabee.
Amisfield was awarded Restaurant of the Year and the highest rating, three hats, at the 2025 Cuisine Good Food Awards. Amisfield was named Restaurant of the Year in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Mabee took out the Innovation Award twice and was named the 2019 Chef of the Year.
“This behaviour by an executive chef does not meet our standards of ethical workplace behavior so as a result we can no longer promote Amisfield as the leading restaurant in New Zealand at this time,” Cuisine editor Kelli Brett wrote in a statement on the magazine’s website on Tuesday.
The restaurant would be closed for renovations during May and June, missing the assessment window for the 2026 guide, she said. They would re-visit in 2027.
“We cannot allow our audience to turn to our current guide and be advised that a restaurant where employees were disrespected and abused is, in our opinion, one of the country’s best,” Brett wrote.
“… Despite the fact that Vaughan Mabee has resigned, there is a precedent that must be set here that leaves no room for misinterpretation.
“… No amount of talent or expertise is an excuse for abuse. No high-pressure environment, no matter how monumental the expectations on delivery, make this behaviour acceptable.
“The fact that Mabee has stated, ‘This industry I gave my heart and soul to has changed dramatically over the past 20 years ‒ for the better ‒ and many of us older chefs have had long roads adjusting’, only makes it more crucial that we send an unarguable, irreversible message that standards of excellence go hand-in-hand with respect.”
Brett admitted in her letter from the editor that she was “distressed” with the allegations that have surfaced.
“Cuisine has proudly played a major role in showcasing Aotearoa to the world but that pride must now sit alongside the acknowledgement that, in championing this chef, we inadvertently gave reach and credibility to someone who presided over a culture of harm.”
Newsroom this week confirmed 15 years of complaints of abusive behaviour, much of it towards women. Some felt forced out of the business.
Amisfield owner John Darby said they were aware of complaints against Mabee between 2016 to 2022.
– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand