To say Graham Hawkes is a dab hand in the kitchen is a massive understatement.He was running two of Invercargill’s leading hotel kitchens by the age of 25, with 10 years’ cheffing experience already under his belt.Graham Hawkes following being awarded an Honorary Life Membership of the World chefs Board in 1994. Photo: Supplied‘Hawksy’, as he’s affectionately known in hospitality circles, went on to become highly acclaimed, nationally and internationally, in what became a successful 60-year career.One of Southland and New Zealand’s most renowned, award-winning chefs and restaurateurs, Graham’s lost count of the culinary medal haul…dozens, and the honours bestowed upon his cooking prowess awarded by several countries.He served as secretary general on the World Chefs’ Board, which currently has 10 million members, for 13 years.As president of the NZ Chefs’ Association, he hosted the World Congress in Auckland, one in Melbourne too, and was Pacific Area Continental Director for World Chefs.Hawksy (right) and Scott Ritchson at the World Chefs conference in Thessaloniki, Greece. Photo: SuppliedGraham is now an honorary member of the World Chefs’ Association. He’s received the World Chef Award out of Singapore – International Chef of the Month in 2003, and was an inaugural member of the NZ Chefs’ Association Hall of Fame, along with Queenstown’s Grant Jackson.He was also named a member of the Hospitality NZ Hall of Fame in 2021.Graham retires in March (2025), aged 73, but not before he’s organised one more community fundraising degustation dinner, prepared entirely by his young Southland proteges.For him this voluntary work is the greatest honour of all, passing on the baton to an enthusiastic new generation of young culinary wizards, gunning for the big time in an industry where’s there’s increasing demand. His passion in recent years has been to pay his immense experience forward to that next generation coming through so those skills aren’t lost.Scott Ritchson with two SBHS students who won medals at the National Culinary Competitions. Photo: SuppliedGraham works closely with SIT the ILT and Southland Boys’ High School staff to encourage, mentor and nurture that new blood.Graham learned the old-fashioned way from the best, and pity help him back then if he got it wrong, starting out as a trainee restaurant chef from the tender age of 13, beginning a six-year apprenticeship at Invercargill’s Grand Hotel by age 15.A true Southlander, Graham was born in the back of his Uncle Allan’s Vanguard car on the way to the Herbert Street Maternity Home in 1951.Number two in a family of eight kids, the family lived in a garage on an empty section in Grasmere while his dad built their house.He and his brother would bike to their grandparents’ home in Otatara and dig for toheroa at Oreti Beach.“Grandma was a great cook. We’d return with toheroa and she’d say, “You got them. You can cook them’,” Graham says.“I’d always been inquisitive when she was baking or cooking, and she taught me to make the best toheroa soup. I’ve always used her recipe, for oyster soup too, and in all of our restaurants the seafood chowder went, ‘Boom!’.”She taught him to make ice cream too, after bringing him the cow to milk.Graham (left) and his brother John. Photo taken after one-year-old Graham had just won a baby show. Photo: SuppliedFreezers were a very new invention then.“My grandfather only had an ice box, so he got big sheets of ice from the butter factory and put them either side of the bucket. Grandma then made the ice cream batter with unseparated milk and it started to freeze in between the sheets of ice. It was delicious.”Graham’s maternal grandfather Ted Crosland was also a renowned Orepuki baker.Creating great food is definitely in the family.All three of Graham’s sons are now successful Southland restaurateurs and chefs.At 13, Graham simply “stopped going to school” and cooked for a shearing gang, refusing to return to school after the season.Instead, he set up a little baking enterprise from his mum’s kitchen.“We barely had a telephone then, so people left their order at the grocery store or a note in the letterbox. Mum had a Kenwood mixer, and I made a good money.”Graham's collection of medals includes gold and silver medals from the 1987 World Culinary Arts Festival in Vancouver, CanadaBy 14 he was working for Anio’s in Waikiwi, cooking great steaks in her steakhouse under her expert guise.“She also taught me how to bake her famous layered chocolate sponge.”Graham loved cricket and football but at 15 in 1968 that all ended when he scored an apprenticeship, one of the only two in Southland, at the Grand Hotel for manager George Mertz and his European chef.“If you did something wrong you got a kick up the arse back then as most of the European chefs coming out here had big expectations.”His job was to clean out the inside of the wooden fridges and freezers.“It was an absolutely great way to learn.”Pouring through his archives, Graham still has menus that read: ‘Leading Young Chef – G. Hawkes’.Married to Glenise at 21, they headed to Sydney where he gained invaluable hotel a la carte experience, and they both worked at Flannigan’s Afloat Seafood Restaurant.They returned home the next year then Graham took a chef’s role at the Ashburton Hotel in 1975, the ILT soon headhunting him to come back to the Don Lodge and set up The Hungry Knight.A 1968 The Southland Times newspaper clipping featuring Christmas dinner preparations at Invercargill's Grand Hotel. From left Graham Hawles (trainee cook), T.F. Wilson (fourth cook), N.A. Kooy (chef) and J. Graham (second cook). Photo: SuppliedBy 25, Graham was a father of two, managing two kitchens and dining rooms at the Kelvin Hotel, and relieving for the executive chef at the Ascot.“I was running around like a blue-arsed fly.”Finding favour with the board after some younger chefs got up to a few antics, Graham was promoted in 1980 to Ascot Park executive chef, also overseeing the Kelvin for six weeks now father of three at just 30.He thrived on the extra responsibility and before long was invited to be chef at a rundown hotel up for renovation in Whanganui.“Moving is how you learn,” he says.Time off to study Communication English followed before hotel management in Levin where the sister of a troublemaker Graham had pinned to the ground twisted his leg around snapping it in two places.It was back to Invercargill in 1987 where he became general manager of Avenal Tavern and Elmwood Gardens.He and Glenise become caterers to Air NZ, the Lorneville and Makarewa freezing works and Tiwai, bank canteens and the Southland Racetracks.Graham in front of their restaurant's Beef + Lamb Excellence Awards. Flannigan’s and later Paddington Arms was the only restaurant in New Zealand to receive the award for 23 straight years. Photo: Supplied“We had 120 staff when we finished in 1990. We were both knackered.”Graham and Glenise then set up their own businesses, Orchids Café in Queens Park first.Graham then became renowned for Invercargill’s upmarket Donovan Restaurant, which won Best South Island Restaurant, turning that into Flannigan’s Seafood Restaurant and Paddington Arms, helping his sons in their popular restaurants too.For 23 years Flannigan’s and then Paddington Arms received NZ Beef and Lamb Awards of Excellence, the only NZ restaurant to do so.The Hawkes family in 1992. From left, Jeremy, Matthew, Brodie (with Tess the dog), Glenise and Graham, outside their Donovan Restaurant. Photo: SuppliedIt hasn’t all been a piece of culinary cake, like the time the new apprentice dropped Graham’s perfectly prepared pea and ham soup just as it was to be served to former Prime Minister Rob Muldoon at a banquet for 500.However, Graham kept calm, whipping up another 50 or 60 portions just in time.There’s never been a day when he’s been unhappy in his work so it will be hard to retire, but there’s plenty more giving in this old legend yet.Southland Boys’ new Scott Richardson Memorial Chef Training Kitchen will probably not be the last beneficiary after Graham’s finale fundraiser with his beloved students come April at Hansen Hall.The next generation in training. Graham and Glenise's granddaughters, Sofie and Brie, at home learning to cook Afghans, Pistachio Brownies and Pavlova. Photo: Supplied
