Home-made taste for cooking
“If I’m happy, everything goes well when I cook. I like to be in a good state of mind and enjoy working.”

Vivian Vucago prefers a work environment filled with smiles and laughter. Considering she is the chef at the Pawpaw Patch Restaurant & Bat, that’s a good thing.
“I’d rather work in a place where I’m happy,” says the 27-year-old native of Fiji. “If I’m happy, everything goes well when I cook. I like to be in a good state of mind and enjoy working.”
Her professional contentment at the Pawpaw Patch has lasted nearly a year now, after two years as a trainee chef at the Rarotongan Beach Resort & Spa and another year spent as the restaurant chef at the Pacific Resort.
She met Pawpaw Patch owner Tokerau (Tooks) Turia when they were fellow students in a Wellington Institute of Technology culinary course hosted by the Hospitality & Tourism Training Centre.
“I’m trying to get as much experience as I can,” Vucago says of the several moves she has made since landing in the Cook Islands in 2005. “I know the Pawpaw Patch is a small place, but Tooks has put me in charge of the kitchen and it’s very challenging. I learn new things every day. It’s a tough job but I enjoy it.”
Vucago’s kitchen career had an early start. Raised in a large family, she was recruited at a young age to help her mother feed all the hungry mouths at home. It was an exercise not only in food preparation but also in proportions. You do not want to miscalculate the amount of supplies needed for tea when you have eight ravenous siblings waiting at the table.
Vucago also accompanied her mother to family weddings and funerals, where they were inevitably assigned to kitchen detail.
“I was always next to her,” she says. “If I didn’t know how to do a dish, she’d show me. I learned some of the international cuisine from her, especially the Asian food: stir-fries, black bean chicken and chilli chicken.”
With a trade certificate in cookery in hand, Vucago’s first step in fulfilling her childhood dream of becoming a chef was to spend six months on a container ship, where she was in charge of feeding the ship’s officers and any tourists who had tagged along.
A stint in an Italian restaurant in Suva followed, during which she also cooked at a camp for the Pacific Students for Christ organization. She also set up her own freelance business, baking cakes for special occasions.
“My dad worked in the Public Works department and when they had seminars and conferences, I made morning and afternoon tea,” Vucago says. “Anyone from there who had a birthday or wedding, I made their cakes.”
Although she grew up on a nearby South Pacific island, Vucago still suffered a bit of culture shock when she first landed on these shores.
“I’d heard this island was something like New Zealand,” she says. “But when I got here I found out it wasn’t anything like New Zealand, except for the fact they use New Zealand money. When I got here, it was like, yeah, it’s just like Fiji – only 20 years ago.”
Vucago says she doesn’t really categorize her style of cuisine.
“For every chef, they have their own way of cooking,” she says. “I always say, you can cook it in any way, as long as it looks presentable and tastes good.”
So how does she cook at home?
“That’s a very good question,” she says. “To tell you the truth, I’d rather have someone else to cook for me. (My friends) want me to cook for them because they say I’m the best cook. I’m like, nah, not again.”

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