12 years between pizzas
My chat with Alex Davies
I first met Alex Davies in 2012. I met him in a vacant lot at 70 Kilmore Street in Christchurch one Sunday afternoon where he was making pizzas from an outdoor wood-fired oven that had been built by community volunteers alongside the Pallet Pavilion. I’m not sure how I’d gotten wind of Alex’s pizza pop up, but I had, and I decided I wanted to write about it on the food blog that I was busy gathering content for with my university mate Jack. Our blog was called Conversations About Food. We thought it was unique – telling the stories of the people who made food, rather than just writing about the food – when really it wasn’t. But through Conversations About Food I met some of my oldest friends in Christchurch and was able to nose my way into some of the great stuff that a bunch of progressive younger people were doing in post-quake Christchurch. I was the first ever person to write about Alex and his cooking.
I can vividly remember that pizza. It was a cold but sunny afternoon and I chatted away to Alex and his then girlfriend Martine while Jack snapped photos and Alex shaped out dough by hand and spread the pizza base with a puree of roasted pumpkin and topped it with pieces of roast yam. He finished the cooked pizza with crumbles of goat’s cheese and a little smattering of toasted hazelnuts. Everything that Alex cooked with was sourced from Canterbury-based suppliers – even the flour he made the bases from, and the olive oil he finished the pizza with. The cooked pizzas were served on mismatched second-hand plates, and you ate them perched on whatever makeshift seat you could find in that temporary, community space. The pizzas were $8 a pop. I vividly remember Alex telling me how important it was to him that people were able to access good quality, locally sourced food at affordable prices. After I’d finished with Alex and Martine I met my new mate Anna Worthington (Cakes By Anna) at Shop Eight on New Regent Street and started telling Anna and Liz Phelan, who owned Shop Eight, how extraordinary this pizza making guy that I’d met was.
The original pizza
Where Alex cooked all those years ago - 70 Kilmore Street, Christchurch
Unfortunately, that first ever piece I wrote about Alex has been lost to the internet. It’s not entirely true what they say that once something’s published online it’s there forever. Trust me, I’ve tried to find that original piece of writing, but the old URL isn’t recoverable, and I can no longer access my UC Live email address where I’m sure I’d have filed away an old draft along with copies of criminal law essays. I wish I’d been old fashioned and printed a copy of what I said about Alex. The only evidence I have of that very first encounter – other than the memories that have stuck with me – is a photo that Jack took of me holding Alex’s pizza.
Just before we were due to travel down to Christchurch to spend most of June there, Phil and I were talking about the ways in which the city has evolved post-earthquakes, and the role that people like Alex have played in that evolution. We were talking too about where we wanted to eat while we were in town. Alex’s restaurant, Gatherings, which he’s owned now for seven-and-a-half years, was top of my list. Off the back of those two conversations, Phil suggested that I should see if Alex was up for having a conversation some 12 years later about his food and his work and letting me write about it. Alex was keen, and keen to recreate the yam pizza he’d first cooked for me all of those years earlier. I dug out the old photo Jack had taken and sent it to Alex.
On a cold, grey Monday afternoon I arrived at Alex’s city-fringe restaurant, Gatherings, and found him pottering in his small kitchen, with an oven whirring and a handful of small containers full of mise-en-place set out on the kitchen bench: a roast yam and burnt butter puree, pieces of roast yam, goat’s cheese, and fresh thyme. As Alex stretched out the pizza dough by hand, and I poured us glasses of Pegasus Bay chardonnay, I told him that I’d spent the morning reading through the list I’ve kept of every dinner I’ve eaten since 2015 and picking out the different meals he’d cooked for me. There were early dinners at Shop Eight – the small restaurant on New Regent Street that Alex would eventually have a share in for a time – and pop up meals at Space Academy and the Lyttelton Coffee Co-op. There was the dinner Alex and his brother cooked for my surrogate parents and two of our closest friends at our flat on Purchas Street, and a dinner at the Pallet Pavilion to mark the work of Gap Filler and Life in Vacant Spaces, where he cooked with our mutual friend Aliesha and made an assortment of vegetable dishes that were all based on different colours of the rainbow. “Man, I did some crazy stuff,” Alex said.
In Alex’s kitchen at Gatherings, Papanui Road, Christchurch
Shop Eight was Alex’s first foray into real restaurant life, though calling a permanent space a “real” restaurant discredits the importance of pop ups. They were a hallmark of post-quake Christchurch and they’re still a big part of Alex’s approach today. Alex was approached by Shop Eight’s owner Liz, ended up with a share in the business and started pumping out incredible food from a postage-stamp-sized kitchen at the back of the shop that had only two induction elements. I told Alex I always struggled to comprehend how he could pump out such good food from such a small space. He told me that the smallness forced him to be creative, and that there was some ignorance on his and Liz’s part too - they just made what they had work.
At that point, Alex was still cooking meat, but his philosophy was very much that if you were going to cook meat, you needed to use as much of the animal as possible. One night we took my grandparents to Shop Eight for dinner and my offal-loving grandfather was delighted that one of the dishes on the menu was heart and liver with mushrooms and potato mousse.
Shop Eight was one of those places that you wanted to take your grandparents to, but you also were happy going to for a glass of wine and little plates of Le Panier bread and Akaroa olives, or that you knew you could go to for dinner and invariably end up having a massive night drinking with the friends you’d bumped into out on New Regent Street. Alex and Liz were ahead of the game in many ways - not just as the owners of the first genuinely decent place to eat and drink on New Regent Street, but as the owners of a place that would in ways come to define the post-quake dining scene in Christchurch. Their place was fun, it was generous, the food was the right blend of pared back but interesting, and they started to prove to people that you didn’t need steaks or large spaces with expensive fit-outs to have a good time. A sense of community and a commitment to good produce were the things that would draw people in.
Eventually Alex and Liz fell out and Alex left Shop Eight, though they get on now, and last year celebrated ten years since they ran Shop Eight. After leaving Shop Eight Alex did what was probably natural to him - he returned to running pop ups. For a few years he ran pop up dinners at Space Academy on St Asaph Street and at the Lyttelton Coffee Co-op. He cooked a pop up lunch at the old Weka Pass Railway Station in North Canterbury, with wines matched to the food by Alissa Wilson, who at the time was running a bunch of events designed to get people trying interesting New Zealand wines.
Even without his own bricks and mortar place, the trademark elements of Alex’s approach were there in all these pop ups: bringing people together in community-driven spaces, collaborating with others, continuing to use the very best Canterbury produce he could get his hands on, and serving generous plates of affordable, interesting but pared back seasonal food. The main change at this point was Alex’s shift away from cooking meat, and his focus on vegetarian-only menus. I didn’t ask Alex about the reason for that - I was probably too distracted watching him finish our yam pizzas - but I suspect it was in part about continuing to challenge himself, continuing to find ways to be creative. Some of Alex’s food during that time challenged me a little bit, not because I didn’t like it, I did, but because I worried about whether Christchurch was ready for food like it. I admired the way Alex stuck to his guns and did what he believed in.
In 2017 Alex opened his restaurant Gatherings on the corner of Papanui Road, across the road from the Carlton and Burger King. As we sat down in his wee restaurant to eat our pizzas and drink our bottle of wine, Alex told me that when he was writing his business plan to get a loan from the bank he listed Burger King as one of his nearby competitors. He said they wouldn’t be a risk to his business. Seven years later that’s proven to be true.
Several times over the course of our lunch, Alex seems genuinely bewildered that his restaurant has existed for over seven years. “It’s fucking mad,” he tells me. Given the Covid-19 pandemic and cost of living pressures, it’s probably only fair he feels that way, though Alex is humble too.
The yam pizza 12 years later
We talk about what’s made Gatherings successful. I think there are a few things, and I think Alex would agree with them.
Though it’s a bricks and mortar space - a real restaurant if you will - the truth is that Gatherings isn’t that dissimilar to every other place I’ve known Alex to cook in: it’s small. The kitchen isn’t big, and it’s not full of flash, expensive kit. The restaurant seats about 20. Alex talks about that smallness still forcing him to be creative, and I reckon more intimate spaces help with creating community, which has always been part of Alex’s success.
The food is still local and seasonal, though now Alex serves kaimoana as part of an otherwise vegetable-heavy menu. He tells me that serving seafood and fish was in part because of the relationship he’d developed with Nate Smith from Gravity Fishing, and also about reflecting Aotearoa New Zealand’s unique culture: “Fish is just such a big part of the culture here.” The food is still generous too. I tell Alex that when we recently ate dinner at Gatherings we were blown away by how generous the portion of turbot cooked on the bone was for the price, particularly by contrast to prices we’ve paid at other establishments in the last few months. I tell Alex that I totally get the challenging balance restaurants have in meeting their costs and charging prices customers are prepared to pay, but we talk about the fact that generosity in and of itself is a good business model. “It’s important to be generous, that’s just hospitality isn’t it?” Alex says. Although Alex concedes it’s got harder to stick to that mantra of allowing people to access good, local food at affordable prices that he talked about when he made me pizza 12 years ago, it’s clear that generosity is still a big driver for him. He pays all of his staff a living wage - it’s important to him.
Relationships are clearly still a part of Alex’s success too. There are relationships with suppliers like Nate and the various winemakers from across the South Island that Alex works with, but there are also Alex’s relationships with his staff and the people he collaborates with which he still does a lot - especially through pop ups. He tells me that even with a permanent space, pop ups are still a big part of what he does because they enable him to develop relationships and learn from others. I have more than a hunch that others would quite like learning from Alex, too. And now there are a bunch of people who’ve worked for Alex at Gatherings who’ve gone on to do their own things in the Christchurch food scene. You could say there’s an Alex Davies Generation, but that makes Alex sound older than he really is. There’s Will who has recently opened a restaurant called Lillies on St Asaph Street and is making his own wine and cider; Coretin who runs Butter, a hole in the wall pastry shop; and James who started Bryterlater Wines. Alex continues to support all of these guys - stocking their wine, sharing what they’re doing on his Instagram, encouraging others to go and check them out. Fundamentally, I think customers want to eat at restaurants that are run by nice people. Alex gets that. It’s how you build more than just a restaurant; it’s how you build a community.
I reckon another part of Alex’s success at Gatherings is the life he’s built outside of it. In the time he’s had Gatherings, Alex has married his wife Bryony, and they now have a six-year old daughter Hazel, moved into the city (he lives just round the corner from Gatherings with Bryony, Hazel and Ruby the dog) and travelled back to the United Kingdom (where he hails from) and Europe several times. He seems genuinely fulfilled by the life he has at Gatherings and the life he has outside it. He tells me he’s up early every morning, despite the late nights at the restaurant, so that he can get Hazel to school, and that whenever there’s anything school-related he can help with, he’s there. Recently when What Now? asked Alex if they could bring a few kids into his restaurant to try his food and share their reckons on national television he arranged for Hazel to have the morning off school so that she could be there to help with serving the kids. Bryony and Hazel have dinner at least once a week in the restaurant and Hazel likes to help with setting the tables.
We talk about Alex’s most recent visit to Europe and the UK. He tells me about St John and Rochelle Canteen in London - two places that have clearly influenced his approach and his cooking. Alex tells me he prefers Rochelle Canteen - that it has more of a feminine influence, that the food feels a bit more pared back; that there’s the magic of entering the restaurant from an incognito door into a garden courtyard, and that there’s something about it not having to live up to the hype of being a certain place and certain something, which is the case for St John. But he loves both places and it’s the generosity of each of them that he talks about a lot. And clearly the Hendersons rate Alex too. Not only has he cooked in their restaurants, he once got them along to Ascot in Wellington to eat carrot dogs at one of his Wellington on a Plate pop ups. It was a pleasure to meet them, even if I was a pathetic, ridiculous fan girl and talked ad nauseum to Margot about her ginger crunch that a friend of mine snuck out of her lunch at Loretta in a serviette for me.
Alex is evidently genuinely interested in hospitality, interested in the history and evolution of places, interested in food and where it comes from. We talk about the bogan Italian Mafia-run restaurant he went to in Sicily, and how stupendously good the simple food was. We talk about La Cova Fumada, a small restaurant in Barcelona that Alex has raved about to me several times. I asked him why it was so good. He tells me it’s everything a restaurant should be - that it’s pared back (he talks a lot about things being pared back) and knows what it is; that it’s been there for a really long time. He recalls the diversity of the customers - tradies drinking glasses of wine and eating artichokes at the bar before going back to work, kids running round, “old people who go there every fucking week.” We talk about how people get so caught up in the hype of new places, and their aesthetic, and forget about the past. Alex speaks with genuine admiration for the families that have owned restaurants for a really, really long time. We talk about the way families who own Chinese restaurants do an incredible job of building a huge community around them, without the need for the Instagram crowd to keep them afloat. Alex says to me, “Imagine if I still own this place in 20 years time! I’ll be 60! I wonder what it’ll be like?”
I tell Alex about the first time we ate at Gatherings. It was in August 2020 when we were down in Christchurch for a week after a few months stuck at home during the Covid-19 pandemic. Like Alex, I’m baffled I only went to Gatherings for the first time so long after it had opened. I tell Alex that it was one of those nights that I associate so much with eating at places he cooks in - a night where you finish a huge dinner with a big group of people and then sit around until some ungodly hour of the morning drinking some ungodly amount of alcohol. I remember Alex and Will pulling out multiple magnums of wine that night, and I’m sure we didn’t pay anywhere near as much as we ought to have. Alex tells me that my recollection of the night sounds about right. And I think to myself, this is the success of Alex’s places too: you come and have fun, you’re allowed to be yourself, there are no airs and graces or pretences, it’s really just like sitting in your old mate’s dining room at their place with your community of people.
I wouldn’t mind betting that’s exactly what Gatherings will be like in 20 years’ time. And if Gatherings isn’t around (and it won’t be because Burger King has finally out-competed it - it’ll probably be because cooking takes its toll, and Alex tells me his body is already feeling tired) I’d put money on there being another wave of the Alex Davies Generation trying to emulate everything he’s created here. Generosity, pared back local and seasonal food, a community of really nice and really fun people - the hallmarks of Alex’s style, the hallmarks of success.
My notes of the meals Alex Davies has cooked for me
25 February 2015 - dinner at Shop Eight with Phil
Le Panier bread and butter.
Akaroa olives.
Heirloom tomatoes with feta and pickled walnuts.
Beetroot with housemade young cheese, raspberries and mulberries.
Shiitake broth with truffled cheese tortellini.
18 April 2015 - dinner at Shop Eight with Kate and Kink (my grandparents)
Beetroot silken tofu with pickled walnuts and feta.
Heart and livers with mushrooms and potato mousse.
Clams and mussels in tomato broth.
Pork loin with belly and Jerusalem artichoke.
Bread and cheese with figs.
26 November 2015 - Pallet Pavilion dinner, cooked with Aliesha McGilligan
Wood fired asparagus and scape with cottage cheese and broad beans.
Kumara with pickled pumpkin and carrot sorbet.
Pak choy with miso mayo.
Bread with pink beetroot mayo and radishes.
Barbequed baby gem lettuce with split peas and capers.
Potatoes with butter and thyme.
5 December 2015 - dinner cooked at our place with Siobhan, Pete, Kerry and Katherine
Bone marrow butter on rye toast with radish and parsley salad.
Asparagus with spinach puree and cream cheese.
Seared venison loin with garlic scapes and shiitake mushrooms in miso butter.
Honey cakes with caramelised honey and Mt Grey brie.
11 February 2016 - Gatherings pop up dinner at Space Academy
Mock French onion soup with toast and pecorino.
White beans with slow egg, coriander and chilli.
24 February 2016 - Gatherings pop up dinner at Space Academy
Tomato and sauvignon skin ferment broth with garlic toast.
Cream dumplings with beetroot, apple, potato and dill.
9 March 2016 - Gatherings pop up dinner at Space Academy
Onion cream on toast.
Tofu with beetroot, pumpkin seeds and chilli vinaigrette.
Noodles with 16 hour onion, miso and parsley.
15 October 2016 - Gatherings pop up at Lyttelton Coffee Co-op
Rewana bread with stinging nettle sauce.
Yoghurt and horopito stuffed shallots with watercress and kaffir lime sauce and miner’s lettuce.
Burnt carrot with fermented and dehydrated carrot, herbs and magnolia vinaigrette.
Potato with seaweed.
Apple steak with red cabbage, miso and thyme.
9 August 2019 - Carrot Dogs pop up at Ascot Wine Bar, Wellington
Classic dog.
Rarebit dog.
Kimchi and miso dog.
1 August 2020 - dinner at Gatherings Restaurant with Anna, Jack, Hannah, Simon, Claire, Tom, Jack, Will and Jane
Raw kingfish with umeboshi and orange.
Pickled mussels with miso carrots.
Bread with herby butter.
Deep fried groper wings.
Ling fish bites with tartare and pickled jalapenos.
Whole roasted flounder with brown butter and lemon.
Thrice cooked chips.
Pak choy with walnuts and preserved chilli paste.
Green salad with mustard dressing.
Salt baked celeriac with celeriac remoulade.
Red Leicester and gouda with olive oil crackers and oat bread.
11 September 2020 - dinner at Gatherings Restaurant with the Bains
Jack Mackerel rillettes on toast.
Tempura celeriac fritters with ricotta and cured salmon.
Butterflied gurnard with green sauce and lemon.
Creamy polenta with parmesan and olive oil.
Fennel and herb salad.
Potato doughnuts with walnut dressing and aioli.
10 October 2020 - Gatherings pop up for Wellington on a Plate at Glass Restaurant with Mum and Dad
Oysters and red wine vinegar mignonette.
Dirty radishes with smoked fish and butter sauce.
Pickled mussels and carrots with native celery.
Asparagus with hen and salmon eggs and oyster mushrooms.
Butterflied gurnard with parsley liquor and watercress.
Potato kebabs with garlic aioli.
Lemon curd with clove biscuit and Italian meringue.
28 December 2022 - summer pasta pop up at Gatherings with Hannah and Simon
Confit tomato and basil maccheroni.
Gurnard salsccia with braised silverbeet and parmesan.
Cacio e pepe.
Squid and fennel ragu bianco.
Cos salad with garlic dressing and pickled shallots.
Tiramisu.
Strawberry sorbet with fresh strawberries and EVOO.
4 January 2023 - summer pasta pop up at Gatherings with Mum and Dad, Neil and Carmen
Confit tomato and basil maccheroni.
Gurnard salsccia with braised silverbeet and parmesan.
Cacio e pepe.
Squid and fennel ragu bianco.
Cos salad with garlic dressing and pickled shallots.
Tiramisu.
Strawberry sorbet with fresh strawberries and EVOO.
5 June 2024 - dinner at Gatherings, just us
Bowl of bread with EVOO.
Oysters with fermented hot sauce.
Turbot cooked on the bone with crayfish bisque and black cabbage.
Potato and parmesan risotto with charred brussels sprouts.
Salt-baked beetroots with tamarillos, sherry and silverbeet.
Mixed leaf salad with mustard vinaigrette.
Cardamom panna cotta with wine poached pears.
Frozen citrus parfait with Akaroa olive oil.
17 June 2024 - lunch with Alex at Gatherings
Pizza with yam and brown butter puree, roast yams, goats cheese and thyme.
