Giulio Sturla is a renowned chef but, according to him, his “test kitchen” Mapu is not a restaurant.

We find it down a nondescript alleyway on the main street of Lyttelton, a harbour town around 20 minutes' drive from central Christchurch. The space is incredibly intimate; only seating six, it’s in a room at the rear of the site that was formerly Sturla’s acclaimed (now closed) restaurant Roots.
The core idea is that it’s a mystery. There’s no menu, but you know it’ll be around five courses plus snacks.

If you arrive at night, you might be easily disorientated. “Call me if you get lost,” says Sturla – and most people do, but seeking it out is all part of the fun. As our lunch group arrives, there’s clear bewilderment and excitement among the party. No one knows quite what to expect.

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We’re given a tour of Sturla’s private garden out the back of the venue. The plot overflows with fresh snow peas, basil and coriander, miner’s lettuce and native New Zealand spinach. Today’s harvest is a colourful flourish of edible blooms including nasturtium, borage, chive, brassica flowers and pineapple sage.

“This garden is just beginning. It’s an oasis, and it provides something no one else has,” says Sturla, standing before two peach trees planted for his daughters. “It’s very secret, very secluded, very special. No one else has a garden in the main street of Lyttelton.”

The Chile-born chef recently celebrated 10 years in the town. He’s become an encyclopaedia of all the flora that grows around the harbour – from kelp and sea lettuce to wild onions and watercress. Sturla’s big on following nature’s course, prioritising sustainability and minimising waste.

He cultivates and grows, harvests and forages – as well as prepping, cooking and cleaning. During a four-hour experience at Mapu, Sturla does it all right in front of you – including providing the entertainment.

“Eating incredible food and great wine is meant to be fun. How do I give people fun? I’ve become a showman,” he says. “I need to have stories, I need to entertain. I can’t just cook in front of six people and be quiet … that would just be weird!”

Sturla’s a natural storyteller as he recounts where the spark for Mapu came from. It was during the lockdown of 2020, when he was cooking takeaways for locals who were under strict stay-at-home orders. “Lockdown really made me think, ‘Why do we need restaurants when I can cook in your house?’ I see the whole pantry in my head. I connect the dots, marry the flavours.”

By April 2021, he’d secured a liquor licence for 8A London Street and begun finessing the concept. Mapu works on a ticketing system, so you book in as you would for an event – with a prepaid ticket for yourself, a pair or a group of up to six people.

Our meal begins with an aperitif: a Greystone Organic 2021 pét-nat from Waipara. Next, we drink Sturla’s handmade fermented cacao water. It’s similar to tepache, a Mexican drink usually made from pineapples, and the chef says he hopes to can and sell it one day. It looks like a cloudy cider, is lightly sparkling and is instantly refreshing with a light acidity that’s softened by a hint of chocolatey creaminess on the nose.

The courses that follow are wildly varied and served on Japanese black glass or Himalayan schist plates. There’s a lotus cracker with buffalo cream and wild onion powder, followed by Sturla’s pan de yuca cheese buns (a well-known signature from his Roots days) made with two-year-old aged cheddar. There's kingfish with banana noodles, broad beans and a koji water sauce; slow-roasted pumpkin with pine nut cream, magnolia leaf, Sancho pepper and hemp oil; barbecue pork with black garlic and shallot paste – and more.

Sturla says he travels abroad a lot, and tries to bring international flavours back here to replicate himself – but using what grows locally. “We don’t grow soy, so we don’t use soy sauce,” he says. “But, I can make a bean or pea sauce easily, [or] fish sauce, pāua sauce – it’s simple.”

The last course is an absolute surprise. Giulio encourages the party to not discuss it until it’s finished, and the flavours are immediately familiar but incredibly difficult to place. It’s not until we’ve all guessed wrong that he reveals it’s porcini ice cream. The mushroom-flavoured dessert is, unsurprisingly, delicious.

When prepping for every new meal, Sturla’s private experiments don’t always work – but he’s always learning from them, and this dish was no exception. “Last year’s mistake is this year’s masterpiece.”

Mapu Test Kitchen
8A London Street, Lyttelton
No phone

Mapu.co.nz
@mapu.lyttelton