Bruce Leitch
He may be one of Queenstown’s most legendary hospitality icons and restaurateurs, but these days Bruce Leitch is iconic for his own catch of the day.
One of the region’s most sought-after backcountry guides, Bruce has guided some of the world’s most rich and famous.
Raised in Alexandra, Bruce grew up chasing rabbits, fishing and playing ice hockey on the Manorburn Dam. “It was before the days of TV and all the hoohaa that’s twisting minds,” he says.
After completing a refrigeration engineer’s apprenticeship Bruce travelled through South Africa and Europe, scoring a job as house barman at Queenstown’s Vacation Hotel (now Frankton Tavern). After stints at Travelodge and Ramada Hotel, Bruce spent five months at McMurdo Station in Antarctica as “sponge technician” in the kitchens with mate Bazz de Hood. “We smuggled cross country skis down there through the pilots and did a lot of skiing up Mt Erebus. You weren’t allowed to ski in case of accidents.” It took two months for frostbitten fingers to heal after he whipped his glove off to take a photo in minus40deg at Scott’s Hut.
He then opened NZ’s first licensed skifield restaurant at Coronet Peak – Lilly’s Restaurant, running it for two years. Unfortunately it burnt down in 1986. “It was a challenge as, being licensed, it had to be open year round, so in summer we had Contiki busloads up there on the Cresta Run (alpine slide).” Ambulance officer Owen Genty-Nott would be in for coffee every day waiting while they dragged another one down off the hill. “There were some horrendous injuries as they flew off round those corners. Then ACC kicked in and that was the end of that,” says Bruce.
A summer running an unconsented hotdog stand on Mount Maungauni beaches followed.
Back home, Chico Lanz asked Bruce to fill in at Black Forest Inn for three weeks with five-star German chef Ralph Hahn, while Chico went home to Switzerland. “He came back three months later,” grins Bruce. The trio then saw an opportunity to buy Jo Champion’s Joni’s Pancake Parlour in the Mall. “I sold all that I owned, sold my shotgun, and between us we got the deposit.” The three five-star specialists revamped Joni’s into two-star, “cheap and cheerful”, Italian family restaurant, Avanti, which became a really popular locals’ hang-out.
Their seafood chowder and braised lamb shanks - before they were in vogue, became renowned. Avanti was even ranked Best Café in the South Island in food critic Michael Guy’s Guide To Eating Out. Ironically, the $13,000 authentic Italian coffee machine they’d dug deep for two days before the 1987 sharemarket crash saved them, while other top local restaurants didn’t survive. “We became really popular because of that.”
Local paragliders, ‘bungy boys’ and tradies came daily. Avanti turned over 200 to 250 meals on Wednesday Seafood Nights. Regulars, like TV producer Andrew Hillman, dined in every night for four years. They opened an hour early every morning just for (mountaineer) Bruce Grant’s 7am apple strudel and coffee.
A keen skier, Bruce (Leitch) even had his own female ski team – Bella Avanti, boasting world and Olympic champions, who did him proud. Skiing stars Annaliese Coberger and Claudia Riegler, joined local skiers like Fiona Boyer, Janey Blair, Anna Archibald and Katie Deans, taking out the weekly Winter Classic. “They always won, beat the guys like Brown’s, whoever was out there,” says Bruce, who’d arrive with hot food from Avanti to cheer them on.
Bruce won the Winter Festival Waiters’ Race four times and Cocktail of the Year six.
By 2000 he was worn out so sold up, taking over the Robert Harris coffee franchise, then building up Café 111 in Isle Street, before pursuing his passion as a fishing guide, launching Dream Waters Fly Fishing with Henare Dewes nearly 20 years ago.
Among his clients, English cricketer Ian Botham, Google co-founder Larry Page and Alibaba owner Jack Ma, who also hired him to cook breakfast for a week. There’s been the “guy who owns the Empire State Building”, and “Mrs Getty”, who at about 95 went ‘flick, flick’, didn’t enjoy it and asked to go back in the limousine to watch the Super Bowl, says Bruce. “I took another very wealthy wee Chinese lady up the Greenstone with her entourage and bodyguards. She said, ‘I don’t like this’, flew back, leaving me and guide Gordy Watson there with a chilly bin of fine wines and Blanket Bay food, and we got paid!”
It’s not all been a picnic though. Bruce has spent an entire day in the wilderness with a painful barbed fishing hook folding his ear in half after a Brazilian client mistook the wind. “When the chopper returned we went to hospital and the doctor had to look up the computer to see how to inject anaesthetic into my head so I said, ‘If you’ve got to look up how to do it you don’t know, so give me a bullet to bite on and just pull it out!”
