Executive chef of Heritage Auckland Jinu Abraham has won the New Zealand Vegetarian Dish Challenge 2014 for his organic tofu and pea stuffed potato, smoked tomato and onion dish for the second year.

Abraham said, “Vegetarian dishes are becoming more and more popular and as a chef I am constantly challenging myself to get really creative and develop new ways of delivering vegetarian meals.”

Heritage Auckland was the first hotel in New Zealand to offer vegan/vegetarian options in its main stream menus and Hector’s Restaurant became the first vegetarian accredited restaurant in New Zealand.

In addition to this, the hotel recently launched a raw breakfast bar featuring dishes such as cranberry, coconut yoghurt muesli with raw berry coulis, granola and protein bars and sliced raw cabbage linseed bread with raw fig preserve and chia seed and feijoa coulis.

Abraham said, “This is an opportunity to change the perceptions of hotel food. We are preparing vegetables, fruit, herbs, beans and nuts in ways that retain their natural flavours and nutritional value. Our raw dishes utilise a number of techniques such as preserving, pickling, compression, dehydration and sprouting to enhance the taste.”