Chef and restauranteur, Josh Emett is the co-founder of Rata restaurant in Queenstown and restaurant chain Go-To Collection that includes Madam Woo and Hawker and Roll. Emett worked for Gordon Ramsay for over 10 years, and has been a judge on MasterChef New Zealand.
After finishing his studies Emett worked for a short time at Cin Cin on Auckland’s Quay before setting off overseas, where he worked at Coast restaurant in Mayfair, London, with Steven Terry. His next move took him to Australia where he worked at one of Melbourne’s most highly regarded restaurants, Est Est Est under Donovan Cooke.
In 1999 he headed to the South France, where he worked on luxury yachts. He then moved to London and made contact with Gordon Ramsay, whom Cooke had introduced him to. He went on to work with Ramsay for ten years at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, Claridge’s and the Savoy Grill in London, and then overseas to New York, Los Angeles and Melbourne.
In 2011 Emett left Gordon Ramsay Holdings and opened his first restaurant, Rata, in Queenstown with his business partner Fleur Caulton. A few years later they opened Madam Woo, a casual Malaysian restaurant also in Queenstown. Its huge success has seen them open three more outposts since. In 2017 Emett’s team diversified and opened Hawker and Roll, a fast-casual spin-off of Madam Woo which now has three sites across New Zealand.
