He ran catering across the Gulf for years, came home jobless, and bought a struggling Pakuranga steakhouse.
It’s mid-morning at Pakuranga Plaza.
Outside The Porterhouse, Eastern Busway works are grinding through another stretch of Ti Rakau Drive.
Road cones, stop-go signs and the rumble of machinery have followed this corner of East Auckland for the better part of two years.
Inside, Ali Dahche is talking new leases.
“We’re the migrant family. We were based out in Botany the whole time, just down the road from ice skating,” Dahche told the Howick & Eastern Post.
He arrived from Abu Dhabi in 1995, he said, at seven or eight, and went to Somerville Intermediate and then Howick College.
“First job was at KFC Botany, just like any typical Kiwi kid,” he said.
Then came Sky City, and a restaurant called The Observatory near the top of the Sky Tower.
“I worked in it as a bartender, waiter, kitchen steward, you know, worked my way around the whole F and B,” he said.
A hospitality diploma at MIT and a degree at AUT followed.
Then he left for Dubai, managing a restaurant in a five-star hotel before moving into industrial catering.
That took him, on his account, to Yas Island in Abu Dhabi, home to Ferrari World, Warner Brothers and the Formula One circuit.
The work covered maintenance, security, landscaping, property leasing and feeding the blue-collar crews and engineers building the island, he said.
“It was, like, a $1.5 billion New Zealand dollar contract a year,” he said.
He left Yas Island for another Gulf employer.
“I was headhunted by some prominent people over there. I’m not gonna name them,” he said.
“And I’ve worked with them for eighteen years, built an empire for them, which is the biggest catering facility management company in the Middle East, employed 15,000 people.”
“I was ranked the twentieth most powerful CEO in the Middle East in facility management.”
Then he stopped.
“In 2022, I thought, that’s it. I had enough. Time to move back to New Zealand and be with my parents, which are growing older,” he said.
None of the Gulf years made finding work here any easier.
“I couldn’t find a job because I don’t have the New Zealand experience, typical excuse, or I’m overqualified. So I sat down jobless for a year,” he said.
The opening came from an unlikely direction.
The Porterhouse, which he described as a struggling steakhouse in the Plaza, was up for sale.
“We do love challenges, the three of us, and we believe that there is a potential for this restaurant,” he said.
“It was stuck as a steakhouse.”
The three are Dahche and two chef friends, Michael and George.
Between them the chefs had run centralised kitchens with more than 500 staff under them, feeding schools, mining sites and army contracts.
They did not start with a restaurant.
“We’ve originally started out of one house. One of the houses that we own, me and the boys,” he said.
“Although I’m not a chef, but I was helping them out.”
The company they bought The Porterhouse under, AMG Hospitality, is simply their three first initials.
Their first move was the menu rather than the balance sheet.
“You can’t just run on a steakhouse. You need to cater for all the communities, religions, and everything available,” he said.
Seafood, pasta, vegetarian dishes and Lebanese charcoal barbecue joined the steaks.
They took over mid-construction.
Works for the $152 million Ra Hihi flyover on Reeves Road had been running through the town centre for many years, and it finally opened in October 2025.
The Eastern Busway’s own works followed straight after, on Ti Rakau Drive and Pakuranga Road, and Auckland Transport expects them to continue into 2027.
“It’s been challenging. Honestly, it’s been really challenging for the last year and a half,” Dahche said.
“There’s no support to any kind of businesses, and this is one of the reasons a lot of businesses have shut down in Pakuranga Plaza.”
Dahche puts the closures down to more than the roadworks.
“Back in the days, the easiest way to get into New Zealand was through, you know, a green visa, being a chef. And the easiest thing to actually buy from overseas is a chef certificate,” he said.
“So we got all these people flying in and opening restaurants and, you know, fast food outlets. They’re not actually chefs.”
His own operation is different, he argues, because all three partners are on top of the business rather than running it from a distance.
The Porterhouse is now profitable, he said, and AMG is expanding rather than pulling back.
Three more shops in the Plaza are signed and due to open within three months, all fast food.
Beyond that he wants to move into contract catering, competing with Compass and Cater Plus.
Dahche is also standing for the ACT Party in Botany at this year’s general election, having run unsuccessfully for the Howick Local Board last year.
“As you know, I wasn’t successful, but it doesn’t mean that I gave up,” he said.
He said he is standing this time because too much in the country needs changing.
“I reckon we need to change a lot of things in New Zealand,” he said.
“I’ll be listening to the people, just to start off with. And anything that anyone has, I will take it back into parliament and fight for the people of Botany, basically.”
He expects the Plaza and his own trade to come back once the construction is finished.
“The Plaza will be the place to go to because, I mean, you’re the entrance of East Auckland at the end of the day,” he said.
He is also counting on the bus station down the road, which he expects to open by December and to bring a lot of foot traffic.
What he keeps coming back to is the people who leave and do not return.
“I’m one of those people that went overseas, but I came back, and I came back to give back to this community that gave to me,” he said.
