Breakfast ‘Chef’ an entertainment hit

Media Release from Novotel Gardens Queenstown
March 27 2007

Breakfast ‘Chef’ an entertainment hit

Most hotels offer restaurant entertainment during the evening, when they like to attract guests to dine ‘in-house’.

But if you’re Queenstown’s biggest hotel and you do a roaring breakfast trade, then what do you do?

Enter the ‘Singing Chef’ at Queenstown’s Novotel Gardens.

He’s not really a chef, even though he wears whites and chef’s trousers. He’d probably be hard pushed to flip eggs or whip up the perfect latte.

But three mornings a week, Brian Foden takes a break from his day job as Maintenance Technician at the Garden Court Suites & Apartments, hauls himself out of bed in the early hours, grabs his acoustic guitar and sings to his very own ‘Full House’.

Between 6.30am and 7.30am he works his way through a range of popular music for an audience of up to 300 hungry diners.

It’s a very different kind of a gig for a guy who originally hails from the UK, has traveled extensively around the world, and who has always been able to use his ability to play a song to earn a living along the way.

“I’ve played for years, I’m self taught, used to drive my sisters crazy as a teenager,” he says.

“I traveled around the UK in a professional showband for a couple of years and then worked as part of the entertainment team at a UK holiday camp.

“When I was travelling, the guitar meant I could always meet people and earn a meal, but I normally I like to play just for fun.”

When he met Novotel Gardens General Manager Carl Braddock, who proposed the Singing Chef gig, he thought it was a “goofy idea”.

“But it kind of makes sense to entertain the 300 guests who are here, it adds great value to their breakfast experience, and there’s no point putting on evening entertainment to try to pull guests from the other 150 restaurants in Queenstown.

“I started in December and although sometimes I’ve had some surprised looks, I’ve also made a lot of people very happy.

“I take it seriously, there’s up to 300 people in there, and I think it’s worked out really well.

“Occasionally I get requests and thankfully it’s the kind of stuff I know really well, like old favourites, country, folk, big band numbers or standards.”

ends

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