In a culmination of three years of study, the first bachelor of culinary arts students at Otago Polytechnic put on a memorable dinner last week for friends and associates.
Part of the Excite 2013 student showcase, fEATure demonstrated some of the many approaches to food that the students had explored.
The instructions for 120 guests were to turn up at Maanaki Building by 6.55pm and we were told to wait in the student centre, where tables and chairs were stacked along one side and only half a dozen seats were available.
It built the anticipation that something special was going to happen.
Just after 7pm the door to Technique restaurant opened and we were ushered into a darkened room with illuminated spaceframes and music.
At first it was slightly bewildering, but a table in one corner was loaded with small glass beakers of coloured gin and tonics and cranberry drink with balls of coloured ice in the bottom.
We quickly discovered the food on the spaceframes - small profiteroles filled with goat's cheese and topped with white caramel impaled on nails, crisp strips of bacon with dehydrated apple puree and salted caramel hanging on hooks, and small bites of kumara gel on kumara crisps on another frame illuminated with tea lights.
With the combination of sweet and savoury flavours, the food was intriguing and difficult to identify, although there were labels about ingredients for those who might be on special diets.
This was avant garde food - food as art, food as experience and even food as a puzzle.
Next the black curtains over the doors to the courtyard were drawn back and we filed out into the daylight to find a street food market.
One ''sold'' tacos with pork, spiced carrot and hummus filling, a couple of Asian stalls offered steamed buns and shaken beef salad, and two Middle Eastern stalls served falafels and lamb tagine on couscous.
As people were winding down, someone came around and invited us to take a scroll from a basket, which invited us to get on the buses standing outside. We were taken off to the renovated NMA building in Vogel St.
On the top floor, under the roof trusses, long tables were laid with white tablecloths covered in white paper with wine glasses and bottles and what looked like decorations scattered along the centre.
These turned out to be the cheese course: lavosh, oat and other biscuits, slices of cheese, dollops of cheese spread, fig jam, blackcurrant jelly, fruit leather, candied walnuts, balsamic strawberries, spiced salt and miniature macarons with savoury fillings.
It was an artistic and stylish contemporary presentation of deconstructed food.
Then they folded up the white paper with the remains of the food and handed out plates and cutlery wrapped and tied in calico.
Desserts were put on the table - old-fashioned pavlovas filled with cream and topped with strawberries and kiwifruit, white chocolate and strawberry trifles decorated with pansies, a salted caramel cheesecake, a vegan and gluten-free banoffee brownie cake, and fresh fruit salad in orange syrup served in a bowl made of ice.
It was like family Christmas desserts a month early!
Assoc Prof Richard Mitchell, who heads the course, says the BCA degree programme uses design methods and food fundamentals to help students design and create their own dishes, food products and experiences.
Essentially, it is modelled on the fashion degree, using the same sort of approaches to problem-solving.
Unlike the certificate programmes that train students as chefs, the degree programme opens more possibilities to careers, he said.
''It's not just about becoming a chef. They may be moving into education, professional food blogging, photography, food product development - the range of things they have explored this year.''