Chef chases the 'most unusual' kitchen jobs

Manawatū Prison catering instructor Barry Fairbanks has made a career out of working in some of New Zealand's most unusual kitchens.

Caption:Chef Barry Fairbanks at Scott Base in Antarctica.Photo credit:Supplied / Barry Fairbanks

From teaching rangatahi to cook in the wilderness at Hillary Outdoors, to feeding hundreds of soldiers at Waiouru Military Camp and serving researchers and crew at Scott Base in Antarctica, Barry Fairbanks has spent decades chasing jobs that are anything but ordinary.

“I have a sort of habit of looking for the most unusual job I can find,” he says.

The Scotland-born chef never planned on a career in cooking. Describing himself as a “terrible cook” when he started out, Fairbanks was driven instead by a desire to travel. That ambition took him across Europe, the United States, Australia and eventually New Zealand, where he settled in 2010.

After selling his Wellington pub business in 2017, Fairbanks gave up on “cooking for money” and switched to the public domain by joining Hillary Outdoors in Tongariro. There, he taught young people to cook all their meals and snacks while they took part in outdoor adventure programmes.

“That was probably one of the best jobs I've ever had,” he says, adding that he could get off work and be “hanging off a cliff on Mead's Wall up on Ruapehu or white water rafting down the Tongariro River”.

While picky eaters weren’t much of a challenge (“you tend to find if they're hungry, they'll eat anything”), allergies and dietary requirements were “a can of worms”, he says.

“It seems to be more than when I was a kid. But is it really because the things we've done to food or is it because science is just better at identifying it? But I don't know.”

Every second counts

Yearning to be closer to his daughter, Fairbanks moved to the Waiouru Military Camp as executive chef. Whilst overseeing three mess halls and helping feed hundreds of personnel each day, it wasn’t uncommon for him to do 13-hour shifts.

“It turned out to be an absolutely huge operation,” he says. “It was staffed by a real sort of gung ho kind of pirates type affair. These guys were like the real sort of cowboys of the kitchen brigade. So they took a lot of managing.”

Fairbanks had to adapt too. Military catering ran to the minute. A meal delayed by even 60 seconds could attract complaints, while a large-scale exercise pushed numbers to 2500 diners one time, he says. And although he was still a civilian, he had to address them as “Sir”.

“In the main mess, this is where your basic soldiers came in, if they were being deployed... they'd rock up for breakfast with their loaded weapons slung over the shoulder.”

The military cooks were so used to using “completely different kitchens” in the field that they were “almost lost in a commercial kitchen”, he says. To stay stocked up for these calorie-burning soldiers, a lorry would turn up with tonnes of dry food and meat, and another just for bread.

Fridges need warming and no corn

After multiple applications over seven years, Fairbanks finally secured a six-month posting as chef at Scott Base in Antarctica in 2025. (He’d already moved to the Department of Corrections by this point and they gave him permission to go.)

Working at Scott Base required more than culinary experience. Staff completed medical, psychological and dental assessments, along with three weeks' emergency training in Christchurch, which included firefighting, using a breathing apparatus and crawling through tight spaces.

Compared with the neighbouring American McMurdo Station, Scott Base was small, housing about 120 people, he says. But feeding them remained central to life on the ice and keeping morale up. Much like the military base, the crew burned through calories – especially those going outdoors – so nutrition was carefully considered, he says.

“It was the same with Hillary outdoors as well. If you're hungry or you're not well fed, you're susceptible to cold, you can't think straight… then mistakes happen, or energy levels drop, decision making drops… same here in prison.”

The freezers were warmer than the outside temperature – so they needed heaters to keep running, he says. This is where the team of three or so chefs would get their 'grocery shopping' done. There’s a year’s worth of supply in the fridges, with fresh food deliveries made from Christchurch every couple of weeks, “if you’re lucky”, he says.

“If you went hard at the start of the season, then by the time it got to sort of January, February, then you were kind of desperate.

“We got down to one point we had sweet corn and spinach was the only vegetable. But the funny thing is we're not even allowed to use sweet corn… it doesn't break down in the poo.”

By Christmas – one of the most important meals of the year - they’d run out of chicken but were still able to turn over a generous spread of pavlova, apple pie, roast vegetables, roast turkey, roast ham, pate and hot smoked salmon.

At prison, they love to bake

Today, Fairbanks is back in New Zealand, teaching prisoners to cook for about 250 inmates at Manawatū Prison. Those who earn kitchen roles learn food safety, safe working practices and even basic knife skills as NZQA unit standards which instructors can assess them on.

“They love to bake cakes, breads, pastries,” Fairbanks says, adding that fry bread is a crowd pleaser.

It’s supposed to be a national menu that rotates every four weeks but there are variations between each site, he says.

“We try not to veer from it too much. But it's good, healthy, home cooked food… We go through about 400kg of potatoes a week. It's all frozen veg. The only fresh veg we have is maybe some carrots, some onions, some cabbage, maybe a pumpkin.”

For Fairbanks, the job is about more than preparing meals. The kitchen offers what he describes as a therapeutic space that separates them from their demons outside the four walls.

“They're traumatised either because of what they've done or because what they've had done to them at some point. So they need to talk about it.”

From the gastronomic capital of France to the stunning blank canvas of Scott’s Base in Antarctica – for a man who says surroundings influence food and cooking, the prison kitchen is apparently not such a grim place.

“I find [the kitchen in general] therapeutic because I know what it's done for me over the years … where it's taken me and how I've been lucky to travel and how I've been lucky to learn a different language and - I mean, I'm not saying it's been easy.

“I've worked with some people that probably should have been in jail and probably are in jail, and that's including myself, you know, I've been sitting at that crossroads where I could have gone that way, or I could have gone that way. And it's worked out good for me.”

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