Reza Mokhtar
- Additional Crew
Reza Mokhtar was born in Iran but grew up in New Zealand where he
attended Auckland University while studying mechanical engineering. To
support himself through school he worked at an Italian restaurant in
Mission Bay called La Mafia, making fresh pasta and learning how to
harness his alchemist tendencies and engineering skills with food.
After working in several more restaurants around Auckland, he met Ian
Hunter - a caterer who was an early pioneer in the New Zealand film
industry. It was there that Ian and his head chef, Becky Wiseman,
mentored Reza on the fine art of cooking on set and managing a mobile
kitchen in some unusual locations. His first film catering experience
was Once Were Warriors, followed by Hercules and various other TV
shows. Reza and Ian worked together for a couple of years before Reza
moved to Australia when he was 23.
In Sydney, Reza soon teamed up with Kerry Fetzer whom he worked for at Kollage Katering for 3 years before going out on his own on the film Babe and starting Mighty Bites Catering in 1997. For the next 8 years Reza catered for some of Australia's biggest film productions, such as Me, Myself & I, Birthday Girl, Moulin Rouge!, South Pacific, The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Reloaded, Scooby Doo, Peter Pan, Little Fish, Superman Returns and Charlotte's Web, as well as numerous TV.
In 2005 Reza took a break from the film industry to start his own restaurant - Fidel's Bar in Pyrmont - an Italian-Mexican fusion-style cuisine with a spaghetti Western-type ambience. Fidels received good reviews in the Sydney Morning Herald Life and Good Living sections, and was considered "one of the top ten best pizza's in Sydney" in the 2008 Good Food Guide, and named one of the best authentic Mexican restaurants in Sydney by food critic Helen Greenwood of the SMH.
In 2008 Reza closed Fidel's and decided to return to film catering to work on Baz Luhrmann's Australia and so began his new venture, Catering By Reza. Since then he has worked on major film and TV productions such as Tomorrow When The War Began, The Jesters, Sleeping Beauty, Burning Man, Underbelly II and III, Laid, My Place and My Place II, as well as heaps of TV commercials.
In Sydney, Reza soon teamed up with Kerry Fetzer whom he worked for at Kollage Katering for 3 years before going out on his own on the film Babe and starting Mighty Bites Catering in 1997. For the next 8 years Reza catered for some of Australia's biggest film productions, such as Me, Myself & I, Birthday Girl, Moulin Rouge!, South Pacific, The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Reloaded, Scooby Doo, Peter Pan, Little Fish, Superman Returns and Charlotte's Web, as well as numerous TV.
In 2005 Reza took a break from the film industry to start his own restaurant - Fidel's Bar in Pyrmont - an Italian-Mexican fusion-style cuisine with a spaghetti Western-type ambience. Fidels received good reviews in the Sydney Morning Herald Life and Good Living sections, and was considered "one of the top ten best pizza's in Sydney" in the 2008 Good Food Guide, and named one of the best authentic Mexican restaurants in Sydney by food critic Helen Greenwood of the SMH.
In 2008 Reza closed Fidel's and decided to return to film catering to work on Baz Luhrmann's Australia and so began his new venture, Catering By Reza. Since then he has worked on major film and TV productions such as Tomorrow When The War Began, The Jesters, Sleeping Beauty, Burning Man, Underbelly II and III, Laid, My Place and My Place II, as well as heaps of TV commercials.