Little Aosta is Big on Family Dining

Arrowtown’s acclaimed restaurant Aosta welcomes its new family-friendly sibling, Little Aosta, to the fold.

The debate between nature and nurture is one that has lasted for centuries. As far as it applies to personality, there are countless examples throughout history of siblings being raised under the same roof, by the same parents, but with diametrically opposed identities. Renowned chef Ben Bayly’s Aosta concept is one such example. On the one hand, there is Aosta – a slick, well-educated, single professional. Next door, Little Aosta – ruggedly handsome, down-to-earth and good with kids.

Rather than competing with one another for the love and attention of diners, however, these two siblings work together in perfect harmony, proving that Arrowtown’s historic gold mining village is indeed big enough for the two of them.

Since 2019, Aosta has been delighting locals and tourists alike with cuisine inspired by the cooking techniques of Northern Italy. Aosta offers its diners a sophisticated and carefully curated experience, which has earned it glowing reviews. Next door, however, Ben and his team have welcomed the more family-friendly Little Aosta.

Michael Hill & Ben Bayly – two of the five partners, Little Aosta

“We wanted a place that people could dine at twice or three times a week if they wanted to… We have an extraordinary amount of regulars at Aosta. But [with Little Aosta, we wanted to create] really sort of a place where kids can run around and the menu that was super approachable, but still interesting,” says Ben.

There is certainly plenty of intrigue on the current menu including the P.P.L. Pizzetta, a combination of pāua, locally grown purple potatoes and lardo. “It's super good, like super, super... My favourite pizza,” Ben gleefully admits. And we couldn’t forget the Fritto Misto (Italian chicken nuggets), inspired by Ben’s travels to Sicily, where he encountered a veteran Italian chef. “It was like one of those moments where you’re just like, ‘How did I not know about this?’ And so, we do Fritto Misto in honour of that experience.”

The menu is divided into antipasti, sourdough wood-fired pizzetta, wood-fired meatballs and salsicce (sausage), hand-crafted family-sized pastas that serve 2-4, secondi (mains) that serve 2-4 and dolci (desserts), with most items on the menu either cooked on a Florentine grill or in the wood-fired pizza oven.

Not only is Little Aosta’s menu more approachable, but it’s also more affordable. The restaurant offers a single price point across its wine list and gives diners the option to order a 375ml carafe rather than by the glass. All this plays into the restaurant’s more relaxed, homestyle feel, because as Ben says, Little Aosta’s wine list is “for drinking, not thinking”.

“You're getting back to the real basics. And like homemade, hand-crafted things that don't cost the world, especially times in COVID […] I really want, with our restaurants, to show the customers that love and care and effort that we put into the food,” says Ben.

Adding to that homemade, hand-crafted spirit are the ingredients which Ben has made a conscious effort to acquire locally. Little Aosta uses almost exclusively local products and produce from selected growers, including Nevis Gardens in Gibbston Valley, as well as breeders, fishermen, hunters, foragers and other suppliers. The homemade sausage mix, for example, is walked right across the road to the local butcher who puts it in a casing. “In all our restaurants, now, every single one of our restaurants, we harvest our own vegetables. Queenstown and Auckland are opening another place, which is a story for another day and we're trying to expand our garden to be able to cope with that,” says Ben. “And so it's just getting back to those grassroots of food and choosing suppliers who grow stuff, best practice, and then choosing suppliers who harvest ingredients, best practice. From how the animal’s reared right through to slaughter. So that's another journey that I'm taking at the moment and redefining who I am and not just ordering duck breast in a vacuum-pack bag, not knowing who grew it, what they ate, you know.”

Ben and his staff are not only harvesting organically grown produce, they’re also composting a lot of their waste as well – something he says has added to wage costs but dramatically decreased food costs.

Aosta Valley – The Inspiration Behind the Restaurant

More than 18,000km away, in the northwest of Italy, lies the Aosta Valley after which the restaurant is named. Bordered by France to the west, Switzerland to the north and Italy to the south and east, it’s an eclectic mix of terrain, languages and culture.

Although Ben’s passion for food has never dwindled, his move to Aosta gave him a much-needed break from the hardcore environment of restaurants in which he spent years working around the world including at the two Michelin-starred The Square in London. While living in Aosta, he and his wife ran a chalet business in Chamonix, less than an hour away, and indulged their love of skiing.

“We used to love going to Aosta. And there's really defined cultures. It's still French speaking… but it's still very Italian as well. So, we'd just go down there on our days off and hang out. And I really enjoyed my time there, just eating pasta,” he says.

Ben was enamoured of the region – the scenery, the culture and, of course, the cuisine. “When you take a train from Milan up through to Aosta, you have the Alps... You can see this really flat landscape hit the Alps and you see rice paddies forever. And it's really weird, like you're in Italy, you can see rice paddies and it's all their arborio and all their short-grain rice they grow for risotto. And you've got the cheeses and cured meats. And then the wines from the north. You got Piedmont, got Alba. Got these fantastic regions and [to] have a wine offering that was just from the north of Italy is really cool. And it's sort of like, I don't want to say [it] too loud, but this is the best region.”

Arrowtown – A New Way of Life

When Ben and his wife eventually returned home, much of his time was (and continues to be) spent in Auckland. “I'm a North Island guy. Just spent all my summers in Raglan or the Coromandel as a kid. And before I left for 10 years overseas, I lived in Auckland. And then when I came back, I lived in Auckland. And I'm a massive Auckland ambassador. I think Auckland is the best city. I love it here,” he says. But when he was contacted by good friend and Aosta’s future brand hero Vicki Onions, she started him on a journey that would open his eyes to a completely new way of living “I realised going down there, how much of a s*** chef I was. I realised that I knew f*** all about New Zealand.” With help from his friends including Vaughan Mabee, executive chef of Amisfield restaurant, Ben began to discover the South Island’s potential and how truly different it is from the north.

“You think about foraging and you go, ‘Oh, the South Island's so cold so there can't be any good foraging and foraging must always be in the north.’ But actually, the foraging is way better and there's way more edible native plants, there’s way more things to grab,” he explains. “The ocean of the deep south is way different from the ocean of the north climate and the ingredients we harvest down there; the game and the wild shot animals are just phenomenal. And so, I realised very quickly that if I was to do this, it's actually like a personal development for myself. And certainly, it hasn't been a money-maker, but it’s certainly been a passion project of teaching myself about another part of New Zealand.”

Even though his experience in the south was a unique one, he couldn’t shake a feeling of déjà vu either. The more time he spent there, the more he came to realise that Central Otago quite literally paralleled Aosta. “And so when I went down to Arrowtown, they suggested a few restaurant concepts and I'd always had this Aosta concept in my head[...]You look through our laneway up to the hills and I was like, ‘Man, I feel like I'm in Aosta here’. And then I started to do some research and I realised that Aosta was of similar [latitude], on the 45th parallel* exactly... Really, exactly the same as Arrowtown."

*The 45^th parallel is a line of latitude that is 45-degrees north or south of the equator

COVID-19 – Ben's New Mindset

Ben’s vision for Little Aosta was one he had held onto for years, and the success of the original Aosta only emboldened him. But the threat of lockdowns and capacity limits loomed large for him and his business partners. Even so, he was determined to follow through with his plan of opening the restaurant because, in his words, he was left with little choice. “You can't, when you start renovating a building or a restaurant, you can't just say to the builders or the people involved, ‘Oh, you guys I actually... We're going to put this on hold for a little bit. Can you guys go do some work somewhere else?’ It's just, life's not like that,” he says.

The choice to forge ahead may not have been completely within his power, but the changing of his mindset was key to ensuring the plan for the restaurant stayed on track. “And so I guess we just had to be honest, just put our heads in the sand, stop reading the news and just get on with being us,” he says. “We had all the staff behind us, we had locals behind us. I believe in the area. I love the area. I love Arrowtown. I just... [I feel] so blessed to be even a part of a venue down there and I just treat it with that respect and believe that it's going to be good and it will be. When you have that sort of mindset, I just think that COVID is going to be... It's just going to be a blip on a radar where we'll be having a beer in 10 years' time going, ‘Wow, do you remember that? How did we get through that?’”.

Darren Lynch, Steven Stepsy & Giulio Barducci, Little Aosta

Not only has Ben evolved his own mindset, he is also determined to instill a new mindset within his staff as well – a lesson he has taken from running multiple restaurants under the cloud of COVID-19, and something which he has built into the brand pillars of his new restaurant. “I always say to the team… I want this to be the last restaurant you work at. This is the last time you're going to be an employee. From here onwards you're going to own your own business. I want, after here, you step away from this venue and open your own place. I want things for you that I have. But what I want you to do is treat this place like you own it. Every customer that walks in this door, I want you to look them in their eyes, figure out what they need. I want you to give them an experience. We're selling an experience here,” he says.

Ben’s ethos for Little Aosta has seen him focus his energy on the customer more than ever. COVID-19 has made him extremely grateful for every one that he receives and he is intent on showing that gratitude at each of his restaurants, including Little Aosta. “You can't take anything for granted. Sometimes I look at a customer coming in the door and I think it's a f*****g miracle they got here. I'm like, ‘Holy, s*** man. How did you get here? How did you know about this? How did you find us? I'm so grateful that you even got here’. That’s the sort of stuff that runs through my mind and just to have gratitude for the people that do keep supporting you, whether that's staff or customers,” he says.

Ben hopes that the culture he is trying to foster within the restaurant will rub off on his customers and that they will feel his team’s “big heart”. And if the opening weekend is anything to go by, the whole of Arrowtown will be feeling it soon enough. “I want to say it was the easiest opening, but I also want to say it's the most organised. So, yeah. No, it was fun. And when it's organised, gosh, you can have some fun.”

Little Aosta is open from 5:00pm Wednesday to Sunday for walk-ins; bookings required for six or more guests. Overflow and walk-ins will be encouraged to enjoy a pre-dinner drink or wait for their table at the adjacent Blue Door bar. During the winter season, the restaurant will be open from 3:00pm for après ski outside by the open fire. For more information and the full menu, visit littleaosta.co.nz