Judith Tabron

  • Hall of Fame
  • 2015

At the heart of Soul there's one woman. Judith Tabron is the owner, the innovator and the boss of what's generally regarded as the most successful and constantly busy restaurant in the city. She's tough, she's smart and she's very sassy.

Judith began her career in 1977, as an apprentice chef at the Logan Park hotel in suburban Auckland. Back then it was unusual for a woman to consider restaurant work as a career, but Judith was up for the tough hours, the constant pressure and the often sexist behaviour in kitchens. She came through with flying colours and never looked back.

In the early 1980s she headed for London, where she worked with some of the best in the game. At L'Escargot, run by Nicholas Lander (now the restaurant writer for London's Financial Times), Judith learned about food and fine ingredients - lessons out of reach for young New Zealanders in an era when our food culture was barely beginning. She returned to New Zealand with a passion for fish cookery, a theme that has run through all her subsequent jobs and in her restaurants.

She's held head chef positions at several high-profile Auckland restaurants, including DeBrett Hotel and Sails, and has consulted at Mikano and at Sky City's restaurants. The first restaurant of her own opened almost 20 years ago, when she started Ramses with the late John Lewis.

Ramses broke new ground for Auckland. It was the sort of place where lunch would last well into the afternoon - and often the evening - and where everyone who was anyone wanted to be. The advertising world, television executives and stars, the wealthy and the wannabes all rolled up regularly to feast on fish and other modern food, and drink the best New Zealand wines.

Judith manned the kitchen, John Lewis fronted the dining room and behind the scenes Gerald Hickey, Judith's father, controlled the finances. This was fortuitous as when John needed to step aside, a victim of the financial industry's fortunes, Gerald managed to extricate Judith and help her settle for outright ownership, probably a first for a woman in the Auckland hospitality scene. Throughout the rest of his life Gerald provided counsel and fiscal guidance to his daughter, advising on the sale of Ramses and subsequent purchase of Soul a couple of years later.

Soul was opened to much acclaim in 2000, and brought new vigour to the Viaduct Harbour. Judith's customers from Ramses were thrilled to have her on the scene again, and overnight the restaurant became a mecca for her old crowd, along with city businessmen who could walk there, and ladies who liked to lunch in the fashionable environment that Soul's terrace offered. It has never looked back.