Ortega Fish Shack’s Davey McDonald

This guest piece from Alex­an­der Bis­ley

Dav­ey McDon­ald, the affable 29-year-old fath­er of two young kids, man­ages/co-owns Ortega Fish Shack and Bar. At the 2014 Cap­it­al Awards— the Wel­ling­ton region’s premi­er hos­pit­al­ity awards, voted by the industry— McDon­ald won Out­stand­ing Maitre’d of the Year, and Ortega won Best Front of House Team. Ortega was 2014 Run­ner-up Best Spe­cial­ist Res­taur­ant at Cuisine magazine’s nation­wide awards. Des­pite all the acclaim, McDonald’s still the only one who cleans Ortega’s bath­rooms, lead­ing from the front.

I have had col­our­ful exper­i­ences in the kit­chen, loads.  It’s a col­our­ful bunch that make up the industry out there, that’s for sure. Gen­er­ally this industry is packed with good people, but there are a few weird and won­der­ful ones out there. (Not here, we’re a pretty small fam­ily-run shop). I remem­ber one par­tic­u­lar chef who was a psy­cho. Nev­er end­ing swear words pour­ing out of his mouth. He was the type of guy who if someone gave him a plate of green beans and they weren’t cooked prop­erly, next thing you know, a pan would be fly­ing across the kit­chen at someone. He’d be fly­ing off the handle and smash­ing things. Once he cooked a steak for a cus­tom­er and the cus­tom­er sent it back because it wasn’t what he thought was medi­um rare. So the chef appeared with the plate again where he ripped it in half in front of the guy, telling the guy that he had no idea what he was talk­ing about. Not the best for a front of house try­ing to clean up the mess after­wards.

Psy­cho chefs have been brought out into the open with shows like Hell’s Kit­chen and in books writ­ten by Tony Bourdain. (I always enjoy Bourdain. Every­one in hos­pit­al­ity loves cer­tain things more than oth­ers, but he’s just one of those guys who loves it all. He has so much pas­sion for it and gets so much out of it).  For us here, it’s very much a team envir­on­ment. The front of house and the kit­chen get along fam­ously. If there are any issues, they’re brought up and dis­cussed straight away. I’ve worked in plenty of places where it’s ‘Us vs. Them’, which is pretty com­mon in res­taur­ants they aren’t really nail­ing what they want to do. It’s a whole bunch of wasted energy, because instead of wor­ry­ing about the ulti­mate goal and the happy cus­tom­er out there, it’s all about mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for each side of the fence.

We don’t have meet­ings, but every Sat­urday at 4pm, the front of house—and some­times the kit­chen, depend­ing on how busy they are—try to catch up. It’s really inform­al: we might look at a few dif­fer­ent wines to see how they com­pare, or we might try a new dish. We’ve had the team for so long that we all know what’s going on. But we try to make sure that every­one feels com­fort­able with everything. It’s a good oppor­tun­ity for people to chime in, and if they’ve got any great ideas, thoughts, or feel­ings, it’s good to explore them. I met Anna [Limach­er, his wife] work­ing on the floor togeth­er at Cafe Bastille.

The guys in the kit­chen are always think­ing of ideas and work­ing on stuff. Half the time, at least, they’ll put togeth­er a dish and it’s no good. They’ll have an idea, and they’ll try it out. It might not be a whole dish, but they’ll try some­thing like a tech­nique. It’s the same with food and wine match­ing: in the­ory, things might work, but when you put them togeth­er, it’s a dis­aster! Ortega’s chef Mark Limach­er [also ex-Bastille boss/­fath­er-in-law], is always look­ing at things from the customer’s point-of-view.

Rick Stein’s “The simplest dishes are often the most pro­found” sums things up food-wise. It needs to be a start-to-fin­ish exper­i­ence, too. You go into some of the great res­taur­ants in the world and the din­ing room is sterile. I remem­ber when we lived in Sydney, there was this big group of us and we went to Claude’s for din­ner. You walked into the room and it’s egg­shell blue. There was noth­ing to look at, oth­er than a white table­cloth; and the cur­tains were shut so you couldn’t see out­side and people couldn’t see in. We had a good time, but we wanted it to be about the whole envir­on­ment, with the feel of everything com­ing togeth­er to make a great night out.

Sea­food is one of the great treas­ures that we have easy access to in New Zea­l­and. It’s simple, deli­cious, sus­tain­able and great fun to catch, too. Our love for sea­food here is the reas­on we have a fish res­taur­ant, where we are sur­roun­ded by what we love best.

The fish on our menu changes daily, which is determ­ined by which fish we get in fresh in the morn­ing. When I get chance to come in for din­ner, it’s hard to go past the sashimi, which is a staple dish on menu with the tog­ar­ashi and tam­ari lime dress­ing. I’m really enjoy­ing our new Aro­mat­ic Stew of Blue Moki, mus­sels, cockles, golden rais­ins, and pre­served lem­on yogurt. For dessert, I always recom­mend the Catalan crepes or the sum­mery white chocol­ate ter­rine.

I can­’t say I haven’t come in for the beef how­ever, with the fant­ast­ic Cafe de Par­is but­ter and fries.  I love horse. When Bastille was new, we did horse filet mignon steaks with a wine sauce and mashed pota­toes and a few green beans. Awe­some dish—horse is a really good meat. There were a few people who were quite upset about it.

The staff and I have been talk­ing for ages about set­ting up a res­taur­ant exchange. We had someone in last year from a little fish res­taur­ant in Par­is, and it was quite bizarre because some of the stuff was com­pletely dif­fer­ent, but a few things were com­pletely identic­al.

The main focus here is that it’s a nice, relaxed envir­on­ment. People should feel wel­come. When I first got into hos­pit­al­ity, they always said you should treat people how you want to be treated. But how my 85 year old grandma wants to be treated might be a little dif­fer­ent from me or my young­er sis­ter. We want to have a good time look­ing after people, and hope­fully they enjoy it and feel really com­fort­able. It’s relaxed and cas­u­al, but we still pay detailed atten­tion to the little things that make a good exper­i­ence; like vary­ing an inter­est­ing wine and beer list with lots of good non-alco­hol­ic choices.