Carlo Buenaventura

INFO

Name	Carlo Buenaventura (he/him)
Born	1986
Country of Birth	Philippines
Place of Residence	Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Ethnicities	Filipino
Artform	Culinary arts
Decades Active	2010s, 2020s

ABOUT

Carlo Buenaventura is a chef, restaurant owner and well-known hospitality figure who cooks food in Aotearoa through a Filipino lens.

Buenaventura was born in Davao, a city in Mindanao, Philippines. Though he admitted “cooking itself wasn’t something he ever aspired to”, he spent his childhood in his grandmother’s kitchen, “dissecting longanisa and quizzing her on its composition before helping to cook.” After high school, Buenaventura completed a Bachelor of Science in Nursing before deciding to attend culinary school in Philippines' capital, Manila.

Shortly after arriving in Aotearoa in 2010, Buenaventura worked at the Crowne Hotel Plaza in Queenstown under Fabien Simon, who Buenaventura credits as teaching him the “basic foundation of organisation and commercial cooking and how to navigate in a multicultural industry.” He then honed his skills at Wellington institution Matterhorn, which had been operating on Cuba St for 54 years prior to closure in 2017. Learning under head chef Dave Verheul, Buenaventura said of the experience, “Dave was my first Kiwi chef and he went above and beyond teaching me how to prepare and showcase New Zealand produce.”

In 2014, Buenaventura started working at Ponsonby Rd restaurant Orphans Kitchen, which that year was named Best Casual Bistro in Metro’s Top 50 Restaurant Awards. There, he reunited with Matterhorn colleague Will Cook, which led to the formation of The Cult Project in 2016, a series of pop-up dinners by the duo of old friends. “It’s called The Cult Project because we want to bring people together on a weekly basis to obsess over food,” Buenaventura told Metro. The Cult Project’s food was “influenced by flavours of Auckland’s multiculturalism” and also informed significantly by Buenaventura’s Filipino upbringing, as well as a “low-waste ethos”. They ran over 40 regular pop-up series at Auckland venues like Madame George, Racket Bar, and Ante Social, as well as collaboration dinners through Aotearoa, including fine-dining restaurant Roots in Lyttelton.

Later on, Buenaventura took over The Cult Project by himself, serving diners in other restaurants like Ozone, Nanam and Annabel and expanding on his personal journey with Filipino cuisine. Buenaventura regularly expresses that his food is a reflection of his Filipino heritage, while also acknowledging that it is an interpretation informed by being in New Zealand. “I feel I’ve allowed myself to adapt in New Zealand: I’m not the Carlo that I was in the Philippines, or who I was when I first came here. There has been a change… that reflects in my cooking.”

In 2018, Buenaventura started to cook food inspired by a popular way of serving seafood in Cebu, Philippines: sutukil, which employs three different kinds of cooking techniques to prepare seafood: sugba (to grill), tuwa (to braise), and kilaw (to marinate). It’s a style of cooking he grew up with — and one that differs from the more common “fiesta-style” food in Aotearoa’s Filipino restaurants. His first pop-up branded as sutikil was at inner-city restaurant Culprit.

While running The Cult Project, Buenaventura also learned the tools of the restaurant trade by working in various front-of-house roles, including at Culprit, fast-paced burger chain Burger Burger, wine bar Lovebucket, and Lebanese restaurant Gemmayze St (where he was the manager).

In 2021, Buenaventura opened Bar Magda with co-owners Matt Venables and Craig Thompson. Located on Cross St and down a set of stairs, Bar Magda is a bar and restaurant known for dishes like “kilaw of swordfish and scallops” (seasonal), raw seafood pickled in something acidic; and lamb ribs “pyanggang”, blackened and coconutty with a green sambal. They are also known for their drinks, particularly cocktails.

The food is informed by sutikil and inspired by Southern Filipino cuisine, though Buenaventura did not want tradition to be the focus. “My aim is not to recreate Filipino dishes; that’s a different narrative for another person. I want to leave some room for creative freedom.” He’s also said he prefers for Bar Magda’s food not to be labelled 'modern Filipino' – rather, “there are flavours in there that people who grew up in the Philippines would find familiar.”

Bar Magda has received multiple awards since 2021, including one hat in Cuisine Magazine’s Good Food Guide 2023/2024; a Top 50 restaurant in Metro’s Restaurant of the Year 2022 awards; and a Top 50 restaurant in Viva’s Top 50 Restaurants 2023 awards.