It doesn’t get any better

Chris Musselle smiles as he gazes at the ocean massaging the sand a stone’s throw from the dining area of his Waterline Restaurant & Beach Bar.
“I really enjoy my office view,” he says. “The sun setting out there every day. It doesn’t get any better.”
Musselle has a long history with the Cook Islands, dating back to his first visit in 1969. English by birth, Musselle returned in 1975 “with the intention of taking a good look at the place and getting to know it”.
“I didn’t make a conscious decision to stay,” he says. “It just happened.”
He split his early years between working pearl farms on Manihiki and operating restaurants on Rarotonga. He owned the Vaima – the second restaurant opened on the island – for a time in the 1970s. In 1980, he bought The Outrigger, which just happened to be Rarotonga’s first restaurant.
“The Outrigger was a fun place,” Musselle says, a touch of wistfulness evident in his voice. He sold the place in 1984. It burned to the ground in the early ’90s.
Asked how he has seen the local restaurant scene change over the past three decades, Musselle says there is obviously more variety now.
“There’s probably close to 40 places to eat whereas, in those days, there were probably only four places on the island,” he says.
There is also a faster turnover.
“They usually have a five- or six-year span and then they change hands,” he says. “There are many reasons for that: some owners go home. Some go broke. Some exhaust themselves – the fun goes out of it.”
Although he once worked the kitchen of his eateries, these days Musselle prefers to man the bar. Working out front instead of slaving behind the scenes is one reason why he has survived where others threw in the dish towel.
“I just have a passion for it,” he says. “I enjoy the social aspect. And I’m extremely nocturnal.”
Musselle owns a boat and enjoys fishing. He has been known to put red snapper, still twitching, on a chest of ice in the Waterline and let patrons select their own meal.
“It certainly is a draw card,” he says. “When people know that I’ve been out and caught the fish and they’re eating it that night.”
Musselle says he enjoys being out on the ocean even more than watching it from his office.
“I fish mostly because I like to fish,” he says. “And if you like to fish, and you’re not under pressure, you usually catch fish.”

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