“Hop in, mate,” said Vaughan Mabee, the jovial mohawked executive chef of Amisfield, from inside his silver pickup. We are just outside the precincts of Queenstown, the most famous city in the New Zealand region of Otago, the birthplace of bungee jumping and the self-proclaimed “adventure capital of the world.” “I will show you there is a lot more to this area than leaping off a fucking bridge.”
Mabee inhabits a different Otago from the one sought out annually by two million thrill-seekers—an Otago I’d come eager to experience. Unfurling beyond the bubble of Queenstown, it’s a part of New Zealand that remains remarkably untrodden, offering a different set of thrills: dynamic wineries producing supple Pinot Noirs; former gold rush outposts reimagined by bold personalities; a culinary and hospitality landscape defined by a uniquely Kiwi ethos. Mabee, for instance, operates Amisfield as an extension of his most ardent obsessions: hunting, foraging, and evangelizing about the area’s natural wonders. Among his most revered dishes is charcuterie made from paradise ducks he’s shot, the cured meat reconstructed to resemble taxidermy, complete with the bird’s actual wings.
We met in late February, the tail end of the country’s summer. Mabee drove first along State Highway 6, passing through the picturesque valleys of two subregions for winemaking: Bannockburn and Gibbston. Then it was up the serpentine curves of Crown Range Road, the highest main artery in the country, where Mabee veered off onto a stretch of gravel and came to a stop. I was confused. In a corner of the world dense with harrowing beauty—flaxen meadows giving way to snowcapped peaks, glaciers abutting rainforests—it seemed he wanted to show me a rare pocket that was not unnervingly scenic.
Then he led me to a thicket of elderberry bushes, plucking a handful of the dark purple orbs. “Eat these,” he commanded. A woodsy tang lit up my taste buds. Across the way were two ancient apple trees. “Now eat these,” he said, tossing a couple of the fruits my way. I realized that Mabee was, in effect, giving me a tour of his pantry. “Bro, this is not some precious farm or orchard,” he said. “This just is.”
Suddenly he began walk-jogging up the road, as if chasing something elusive. When I caught up to him, he was hovering.
“Ah, this here is the bolete, a cousin of the porcini and one of the finest mushrooms on the planet,” Mabee said, marveling at the earthen basilica of its enormous cap. Come fall, the road would be so reliably lined with the fungi that he had already decided to put bolete on the menu. “First of the season,” he said, tugging it loose from the soil.
Later that night while I was dining at Amisfield, a hushed chamber of vaulted ceilings, the gargantuan mushroom arrived at my table as part of a theatrical parade of 25 courses. Plated by Mabee in a kind of terrarium, it appeared less cooked than teleported from its natural habitat on the side of a dusty mountain road, surrounded by golden grass and lichen-covered stones. The entire experience of enjoying something illicitly delicious that I would have otherwise zipped past without notice is perfectly Otago. This land rewards you for slowing down, looking closer, venturing farther.
I’d arrived two days earlier, flying into Queenstown, renting a car, and quickly discovering another of Otago’s principal allures: how close everywhere is to everywhere else. My first stop, 20 minutes out, was Arrowtown, a meticulously preserved village dating back to the 1860s, when Otago was home to a gold rush that attracted upwards of 20,000 prospectors in pursuit of fortune. Like storybook mountain towns the world over, Arrowtown now attracts both the supremely well-off and a certain breed of creative eccentric, as reflected by the number of funky art galleries scattered among the upscale shops and antique stores.