Fabien Simon, French chef in Queenstown

A seventieth with three generations around one table. A family gathering that took years to organise. Two people who came to the other side of the world to get married, and still wanted a proper dinner afterwards.

Those are the tables I cook for now. I trained in Bordeaux, cooked at sea, in New Caledonia and at La Grande Vigne, then ran hotel kitchens here in Queenstown — Crowne Plaza, The Millhouse at Millbrook. Good kitchens. But you send the plates out and you never see who they were for.

In a house it is different. I hear the toast. I see who goes quiet over the first course and who asks for the recipe. I am there when someone says this was the night they will remember.

To be trusted with an evening people have waited years for is a privilege. I am grateful for every one of them, and honoured to have been part of so much happiness around the table.