Fleur Sullivan - Inspiring New Zealand

This is Fleur’s Place – home to crispy-skinned muttonbird with Maori potatoes, hearty lamb stew with seaweed dumplings, and kaimoana platters that heave with smoked fish. ‘Naturally Good Food,’ says the blackboard outside, “and that’s what we serve,” says owner Fleur Sullivan.

Fleur’s deep understanding of New Zealand produce and her commitment to using it over imported goods has helped earn her a reputation as one of our country’s top restaurateurs.

“You don’t need to import anything when we’ve got it all here,” she says. “We do our own fish smoking and curing, we make our own bacon. We don’t buy anything in a cardboard box.”

Growing up on the Waitaki River, Fleur learned to forage for food in her backyard. “I was five when the war finished, and back then people did use everything.

“You can use puha and you can use watercress and you can use wild spinach. You just look at all the food out there which is so full of goodness, and it’s just good fun.”

I love history – the history of where you live, the buildings of the era, and the food that’s available in the area.

Before Moeraki, Fleur made a name for herself by establishing the highly successful Olivers restaurant in Clyde. Like Fleur’s Place, the food was regionally focussed and celebrated the culinary heritage of the area.

“At Clyde, I was doing traditional old food from way back. We produced beautiful apple cider from the apples, pickled walnuts, and thyme honey from the thyme in the hills.”

After falling ill in the late 90s, Fleur sold Olivers and moved to Moeraki – a place she had always planned to live in some day.

“You can go fishing, you can go down to the rocks to get shellfish and you can grow vegetables for most of the year. It’s a lovely place to be and you can live very simply.”
Moeraki is Maori for ‘a place to rest by day,’ but the concept of rest seems to have escaped Fleur. She recently established a second restaurant in Oamaru’s heritage precinct, named the Loan & Merc.

“I’ve put something in there that will give people the chance to taste the beautiful fish and produce in the manner it would have been in 1880,” she says.

Clearly, Fleur is engaged in a lifelong love affair with Otago – a place she has always lived and has no plans to ever leave.

“I wouldn’t go anywhere other than New Zealand and I’ve always felt that I’d never go anywhere other than Otago.”

Why? “Because I know where all the good food is,” she says with a grin.