Kai Pasifika Restaurant

The recently opened Kai Pasifika restaurant is the first Pacific cuisine restaurant to be established in New Zealand. While it aims to celebrate traditional Pacific foods, it also wants to change existing misconceptions about them.

The restaurant is a dream come true for celebrity chef Robert Oliver who has won top awards at the Gourmand World Cookbook awards for his material on Pacific cuisine.

Mr Oliver said he has had to challenge perceptions around Pacific foods being inferior.

"Pacific people know better and I know better," he said

KP Auckland Limited is looking at setting up Kai Pasifika, which will showcase cuisines of the South Pacific Islands region. Fronted by multiple award winning celebrity chef and well known Pacific cuisine expert Robert Oliver, Kai Pasifika hopes to fill a glaring gap in Auckland’s cuisine scene, which features a wide range of the world’s major cuisine styles except the Pacific. This is despite being the world’s largest Polynesian city.

Why the crowd funding route to raise equity?

The project - led by award-winning chef Robert Oliver - will see the first fine-dining Pacific cuisine restaurant established in Auckland.

The Kai Pasifika Restaurant will aim to help boost trade from Pacific Island producers by showcasing products from around the region.

"Here we are with the biggest Polynesian capital in the world and we don't have any sort of a restaurant, like a Pacific cuisine restaurant here in Auckland." said the project's chief financial officer, Kenina Court.