In the late seventies, my parents bought an old house on a hill in Sumner. 

It was once used as a home for recovering World War One soldiers. 

It had an endless view of the sea and the second biggest rubber tree in Christchurch.
We knew this because when my mum was sunbathing sans bikini one day a man came up and 

nailed a plaque onto it saying so, without saying a word, or even looking up from the ground.

Blushes saved. Tree officiated.

Odd, out of time New Zealand. Endless seas, endless childhoods, endless officiating.
I loved that house. I loved that time. I loved that tree.

Around us, the world was changing fast. 

The eighties kicked into a furious pace over the last fifty. A decade on steroids. 

The plaqued tree no doubt struggled to keep its ranking.
It didn't take long to be nostalgic for that endlessness.

That nostalgia stuck. The sights, the sounds, the tastes.

Here’s a love story to then - part rom-com, part art house - when fancy french haute cuisine was at the pinnacle.
The classics, but not as you knew them. Made to our rules. For Everybody.
Voila, La Menu Fond de Cuisine