A global career in food and he's opened a living room style Bistro in Birkenhead
There’s a new bistro on Hinemoa Street in Birkenhead that feels like someone’s actually thought about you. That’s not an accident. It’s Andrew Clapham’s entire philosophy. We sat down with Andrew to find out how a kid from a horse farm in the Wairarapa ended up running establishments around the world, and opening one of the North Shore’s most talked-about new social spots.
Walk into Clapham’s and something immediately feels different. It’s warm in a way that isn’t performed. The kind of place where you instinctively reach for the wine list before you’ve even taken your coat off. That feeling - comfortable, unhurried, genuinely welcoming - is entirely deliberate.
“Think of it as my living room,” says Andrew, “just with better food and drinks.”
It’s a line that could sound cliche. But spend ten minutes with Andrew and you realise it’s just how he actually thinks.
Andrew grew up on a small horse farm on the outskirts of Masterton, schooled in Wellington, and left New Zealand at 21 with, by his own cheerful admission, literally nothing.
“My younger brother paid for my one-way ticket to Sydney. I arrived at the airport with no money at all. Not a dollar. My mum turned up to say goodbye and slipped me fifty bucks.”
He arrived in Australia on a Sunday, and was at the Commonwealth Employment Bureau just days later. Within weeks he was working double shifts - days in a warehouse, nights in a pub being renovated in the Sydney suburbs. On the fifth night, the owner threw him the keys.
“He said, ‘You’re on tomorrow.’ I was 21. I had no idea. It took me an hour and a half to find the light switches,” he laughs.
Within twelve weeks, he was the general manager: running a restaurant, nightclub, public bar and gaming room in one of the rougher parts of St George. “I learned how to work. I learned systems. I learned everything the hard way.”
London Calling
The hospitality career that followed was impressive: a five-star hotel on Hyde Park where morning dress was the uniform and royalty were occasional guests (“very not-Kiwi,” he laughs). A series of Chelsea brew pubs where he turned one bar into the highest-taking pub per square metre in a chain of four and a half thousand venues. Trips to Europe as company bonuses. Friday nights with a thousand people through the door…
“I think as a manager, you have an influence. Employ personality, don’t employ skills. You can teach the skills. You can’t teach personality.”
Then came Beijing, where Andrew opened the first English pub in China for his employer’s international division. When the global financial crisis hit and the expansion plans evaporated, he found himself weighing up a life as a pub manager in Beijing against the pull of home.
“I’d been away for thirteen years. I had an eighteen-month-old son. I thought, it’s time.”
Coming Home
Back in New Zealand, Andrew co-founded a small pub company with partners John and Gavin (J.A.G, named for the three of them) which laid the foundation for a joint venture that became Barworkz, then Joylab, one of the biggest hospitality groups in the country. He also served as lounge development manager at Air New Zealand, and in business development at DB Breweries, rolling out the Monteiths brew bars across the country.
But Andrew also recalls the harder parts of his story. Corporate life didn’t suit him. Some ventures failed. He went through a period of addiction and alcoholism that he describes plainly as “pretty horrible.” He lost money. He lost years.
“I had one pub left in the background. It was a dodgy little place. But for some reason it survived, and I survived with it. I came out the other side.”
He’s quick to acknowledge the woman who stood by him through all of it. “Donna looked after four kids while I went through everything, and she was the one who stood up and said, ‘Get well.’ She’s one strong woman.”
Recovery, and a stubborn refusal to quit the industry he’d given his life to, eventually brought him to a meeting with a friend who’d found a premises on Hinemoa Street. The building had something about it. The landlord had a vision. And the name above the door, Clapham’s, turned out to be a perfect fit.
“He said, ‘You’ve got a great surname that lends itself to this building.’ And he was right.”
Building a Team
The kitchen came together in the way good things often do, through old friendships and happy accidents. Andrew rang a chef he’d worked with fifteen years ago, who happened to be looking for something new. That chef brought his old sous chef. A five-star pastry chef walked in off the street looking for work.
“This team has come together so well. The senior kitchen staff have real experience and real maturity. On the floor, we’ve got a whole bunch of newcomers who’ve just completely bought in.”
The menu reflects where Andrew’s head is at: French and English classics, elevated just enough, using the best New Zealand ingredients. Proper fish and chips. A Scotch egg with gravy. Sunday roast with Yorkshire pudding. It’s food that knows what it is.
The early weeks weren’t without drama. They planned for twenty Sunday meals and suddenly had sixty. The reviews stung. But Andrew takes it in stride, because you can’t prepare for what you can’t predict, and the numbers have since settled into something that works.
The Living Room
The idea of Clapham’s as a living room didn’t come from Andrew’s imagination alone, rather tracing back to his time in London, where the English pub was genuinely a cultural institution.
“English people live in small houses. The pub is their living room. They might only have one drink, but they’re there every day. It’s part of the social fabric. That changes how you treat people.”
At Clapham’s, the goal is to know your regulars. To remember faces even when the names escape you. To make someone feel like they belong before they’ve ordered anything.
“I’m terrible with names,” Andrew laughs. “But I’m good with faces”.
Look around while you’re there and you’ll notice the walls do some talking of their own. Dotted throughout the bar is a collection of memorabilia from Andrew’s life: family photographs, childhood pictures, and a league photo from the very same year the building was constructed. It’s a story in itself, quietly told. The kind of detail that makes you linger a little longer, lean in a little closer, and realise this place didn’t come from a design brief, it came from a life.
As for where to sit, that’s entirely up to you. Slide into a booth, pull up a bar stool, or claim your own corner. Choose your spot and settle in.
What’s Next
The vision for Clapham’s is still unfolding. Plans are underway for an outdoor seating area that will add another 36 seats for casual drinks and snacks in the warmer months, and exactly the kind of relaxed, drop-in energy Andrew wants the place to have.
And then there’s the small matter of having your name above the door. For all his confidence in business, that part took some getting used to.
“I was resistant to it at first, making it the business name. It felt like a lot.” He pauses. “But I eventually accepted it. Now, I can’t afford to fuck this up.”
It takes a certain kind of resilience to get to that acceptance. The kind that comes not from never falling, but from getting up enough times that falling stops being the thing you fear most. He describes his exterior image like a duck (smooth on top, feet going mad underneath). That’s probably the most honest description of what it looks like to own your own business, with everything on the line, and still make it look effortless.
And if you need any more proof that Andrew means what he says about belonging, ask him what he orders when he sits down at his own place. The answer is instant.
“The Scotch egg and Caesar salad, and a San Pellegrino sparkling water.”
Simple. Considered. Completely him.
Clapham’s is at 243 Hinemoa Street, Birkenhead. Open Tuesday–Thursday from 3pm, Friday–Sunday from 11.30am. Book online at claphams.co.nz or call 09 217 8558.
Words: Pamela McIntosh
Photography: Supplied
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