Dana Hanson, Restauranteur, lives in Nelson with her husband Joe and daughter.
I grew up in the Midwest of the United States and have always loved to travel. After University, I worked in Investment Banking for five years before I felt the need to see the world once more. I loved helping successful people buy and sell businesses, but I wanted to own a business for myself one day, I just wasn’t quite sure what kind of business. After traveling around North and South America for a couple of years, I found myself picking apples on the North Island of New Zealand. Not long after, I met a charming Chef from England who had recently opened up a restaurant on the waterfront in Nelson. The restaurant was starting to get busy and it needed a business partner with the ability to help it scale up. Within twelve months of moving to Nelson, I owned a business, The Styx Restaurant.
That charming Chef and I have been together for ten years now and our family consists of a clever, headstrong three year old and an emotional English Staffordshire, with one more baby due in October. We live for the outdoors of this region. We love that fact that we have spent mornings in the snow of the mountains and afternoons kayaking on the sea. We hike as many trails and mountains as we can fit into our lives and we are happiest when we are trying to get a fire started, in a cold hut in the hills.
I love that our friends hail from all over the world. Even though we don’t get to travel as much these days, we still get a good mixture of food, culture, and language from our friends. Nelson Tasman is filled with young people from around the world. You walk down the street and you hear multiple languages, you go to the markets and eat food from around the world, and we get to celebrate holidays that we never celebrated growing up in England and the U.S.
Owning a restaurant means that I get to know the people who make up this beautiful community, but I also get to meet the tourists who are traveling through our region. It sure keeps things interesting! Our restaurant is located within the harbour of Nelson, which means I look out to the Tasman Sea and the Kahurangi Range every single day. We get to work with dozens of local food and drink producers in this region to showcase their creations in our restaurant. We are all dependent on one another and being in business for over a decade means that these farmers, fishermen, winemakers, and brewers are like family. They have supported us through difficult times and we have continued to support them through drastic weather conditions or uncertainty in the marketplace. Even though I am thousands of kilometers from my family, the community that I’ve met within Nelson Tasman makes me feel like I’m part of this family. I couldn’t imagine life any other way.