Chef Sarah Primrose won four gold medals and a scholarship to work overseas during the Fine Food New Zealand culinary competitions. Fresh from her success, she chats to Veronica Johnston about the joys and challenges of competing at such a top level.

Chef Sarah Primrose can’t wait for her next proper day off.
The blue-eyed beauty hasn’t really had much downtime lately.
She’s been working fulltime as a sous chef at the Pear Tree in Kerikeri while training hard to beat the Australian national junior chef team at last month’s Fine Food NZ.
“It’s been about five or six months of straight training.”
“I haven’t had any proper days off for six months because you’re preparing for the competitions on your days off, two days a week.”
Even when she wasn’t training for the event in her own time, she was still checking her emails and making phone calls from work – at 3am in the morning sometimes.
But all the hard work and late nights have definitely been worth it.
Not only did she win gold for her main course and best in the class in the individual cook-offs, she also won a scholarship to work at Clarke’s restaurant in Perth and led her team win gold in the team event (where Australia also drew equal gold).
The team event saw young professional chefs from both countries go head to head for three and a half hours, with two and half hours of service, to produce a five-course gourmet treat for sixteen people.
New Zealand Chefs Association Vice-President Gary Miller sums it up well when he says “competition between the youth teams was fierce and all four teams worked to very high standards, producing some amazing dishes and giving an indication that the future of cuisine in both Australia and New Zealand is in safe hands.”
Primrose says the whole event was “amazing” and that it was the best set-up she’s ever worked in.
Not bad for a girl from Whangarei who says she likes nothing better than a bowl of homemade spaghetti bolognese, when she finds the time to make it.
The twenty-two year old has always loved food and often cooked meals for her family while studying art, hospitality and food technology courses at school.
When she finished seventh form in 2005, she started working in local cafes, bars and restaurants in front of house roles to learn the basics.
“I just worked in as many places as I possibly could,” she says.
Two years later, after a planned move to Australia to become an apprentice chef got canned – her mum suggested she enrol in the Culinary Institute of New Zealand.
So she drove an hour and a half to Kerikeri every day to get her HSI Cookery levels 3 and 4 and City & Guilds qualifications.
She also started working at Kauri Cliffs while studying.
“I worked in the kitchen on the hot bar sending out all the hot food so I was also asking the chef questions about the food and watching everyone in the kitchen.”
When head chef Neil Brazier left for Salt in Paihia, he took Primrose with him. The pair now works at the Pear Tree together.  
Her glittering history with competitions has been equally short but sweet so far too.
She came second in the Junior Chefs Challenge held at the Wellington Culinary Fare in 2009 and was part of the New Zealand team that won the Oceania Pacific Challenge Trophy in Vanuatu later that year.
Primrose also represented the Northland branch of NZCA at the WACS bi-annual congress in Chile this year before securing her place in the NZCA’s national junior representative team that competed at Fine Food NZ.
Right now she wants to keep doing as many competitions as she can because she says they push her to make things with limited resources and work faster in the kitchen.
She definitely has the passion to do her best and make everyone proud.
And that’s what it’s all about.