Braving the crowds
On festivals, community and a fluffy cheesecake snack.
Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s weekly food newsletter presented in partnership with BurgerFuel. Written by me, Lucinda Bennett. I hope you’re hungry!
It’s 2024 and it still feels strange to be amidst a crowd of strangers. I still clock it whenever I’m indoors, in close proximity to a lot of people, when I catch a crowded bus, attend an event, eat at a busy restaurant. I’m lucky that I no longer feel the need to avoid crowds, that I can attend happy hour, an opening, a birthday party.
This past weekend, I did many things I haven’t done since before the pandemic. I went to a gig and stayed out until 3am, felt sweaty bodies writhing on the dancefloor next to mine, ended the night with the hallowed ritual of a hot cheese slice and three garlic knots from Sal’s Pizza. On Saturday, heavily caffeinated, I worked on a stall at Pasifika Festival (as well as writing about food and art, I also work in art education). On my lunch break, I braved the crowds and pollen-ridden winds to secure a pack of lovo (Fijian style earth oven cooking, similar to hangi or Samoan umu), $20 for a generous portion of chicken, fatty pork, soft crescents of taro, nutty cassava, palusami and a pottle of rich smoky gravy.
I chose lovo because I’d never had it before, and the line at this particular stall was long enough to tell me it was good while still being short enough that I’d have time to enjoy my kai – which I did, immensely, scooping bits of toasty pork fat onto each bite of tender taro like butter onto toast. Later in the afternoon, a little girl I’d befriended at my stall brought me a pink cupcake wrapper filled with fresh coconut shavings and cream she and her brother had made. Touched, I ate it with my fingers while I walked to the place my boyfriend had agreed to pick me up from, grinding the sweet flakes of coconut meat between my teeth.
By Sunday I was exhausted, but the bright sunshine beckoned me out of bed. Knowing this could be the last properly sunny day for months, I stuck to my plans to meet a friend at Kelmarna Festival. If you’ve never been, Kelmarna is a community farm in suburban Ponsonby. To visit on a non-festival day is to enter a place of such green and peace that I always consider leaving my whole life behind to move to the country and tend a garden just like this one. Presumably I am not the only one as they run a popular volunteer programme, as well as a range of workshops, tours, a local compost initiative and an organic farm shop that’s open every Wednesday and Saturday (I like to bring a Tupperware to fill with their famous salad mix, which is fresh-picked so it lasts over a week in the fridge – quite unlike the sad bags of mesclun you find at the supermarket).
I found coffee before I found my friend, who texted me that she was “by the hotdogs”, and when I finally spotted her I was just in time to order a venison hotdog from the tent run by my favourite place in Tāmaki, Cazador. It was perfect, a long hot gamey sausage in a soft milky bun topped with tart pickles and, ingeniously, crunchy fried shallots. A woman sharing the same patch of shade as us was eating a custard slice and I made a mental note to find myself one of those, but by the time we had finished chatting and bumping into people, almost every stall was sold out, so we decamped to Duck Island for a fragrant scoop of fig leaf raspberry ripple.
Come Monday I was ready for another weekend to recover from this one, but my cup – and my belly – felt so full. Cheesy as it is, eating my way through these festivals made me feel like I was part of a community. Food was the excuse, the thing that got me out the door, but it wasn’t the reason my cheeks hurt from smiling. It’s a small thing, but feeling attached to your communities and the ones you live alongside can shift the way you move through your city, and the feeling of connection can feed you when things are grim.
Fuel up, clock up and get hooked up with BurgerFuel VIB Club
Want exclusive BurgerFuel offers, rewards, wheels and deals? The BurgerFuel VIB Club is the home of all the greatest exclusive offers. Sign up as a VIB Club member today to earn with every dollar spent and get access to exclusive VIB Club goodies. Download the BurgerFuel VIB Club app in your app store now to start earning.
Weekly bites
Having worked public sector roles in the past, I can confirm that there is no sweeter sound than a colleague calling out that they’re off to make a plunger and would anyone like one? With our government seemingly hell bent on dismantling every good thing in this country, we should have known it was only a matter of time before they came for our coffee – or more specifically, the ground coffee available in for staffers of the Ministry of Social Development. Like all ministries, MSD are required to meet an efficiency dividend of 6.5 percent. Making some quick calculations, Samuel Scott was able to discover just how little would actually be saved in removing this one small luxury from the staffroom, especially given instant coffee (alongside tea and hot chocolate) would remain available.
Spurred by the desire to highlight the most well-loved dishes being served up across Tāmaki Makaurau, each year Tātaki Auckland Unlimited invite the public to put forward their favourites. From there, contributions are moderated and whittled down to become the annual 100 Auckland Iconic Eats list. It’s always fun to see what’s made the cut, to raise an eyebrow at those you deem undeserving and salivate over the ones that truly are. The 2024 version includes some of my own favourites – egg tarts from Yuan Taste, adobo del diablo from Hapunan, koko Samoa cupcakes from Blue Rose – as well as plenty I’ve now bookmarked to try, starting with the cream paua and fried bread at Captain Kai Moana, ika mata at Homeland and pandan sago dumplings at Butter Baby.
I’ve lived and dined through small plates, giant platters and walk-ins only, but there is one restaurant trend that increasingly seems like it’s here to stay: no-show and cancellation charges. In a New York Times article this week, it was noted that there was an uptick in no-shows and cancellations after social distancing rules and vaccine mandates were relaxed as well as the advent of reservation apps that allow restaurants to take a credit card number when making a booking. In a cost of living crisis that seems like it will never end, it’s unsurprising that restaurateurs in Aotearoa are also continuing to implement such fail-safes to cover the ever-expanding costs of produce, wages, etcetera. It will be interesting to see if our hospitality industry picks up on the new trend for restaurant surge pricing, a strategy that follows the simple logic of hiking the price for supply in response to spikes in demand, flexing prices in the style of Uber or airlines at Christmas.
Meet three Pacific youth enchanted by K-pop
Boba has loved K-pop since they were eight. Ethan dances to express his emotions, and K-pop is a bridge that connects him to others. Ashley has been into K-pop since 2009, when it rekindled her love of dance. The three are K-polys – Polynesian K-pop fans.K-pop began as a musical genre in South Korea in the 1990s and has grown into a global cultural phenomenon. It’s associated with dancing, fashion, and a dedicated fan community. Here, K-polys have found freedom of expression and belonging. Premiering Tuesday 19 March on The Spinoff, K-POLYS presents three intimate portraits of young people drawn between cultures. Made with the support of NZ On Air.
Snack of the week
AJI Semi-Cooked Cheesecake $5.99 for 200g (6 cakes) at Yi Cart Asian Supermarket Mt Roskill: Does anyone else remember Tāmaki in 2017 when Uncle Tetsu’s – home to the world’s most coveted Japanese cheesecakes – first opened to huge lines every day for months? They only sold two products, fluffy cheesecakes and honey madeleines, and in my opinion they were worth the wait. Ethereally light and spongey but with an unctuous custardy flavour, I ate the full-size cake all by myself. It was with visions of this happy meal that I purchased this pack of AJI Semi-Cooked Cheesecake, the bright yolk-yellow packaging with its buoyant oblong cakes seeming to promise something fluffy and eggy, a perfect rainy afternoon pick-me-up. Unsurprisingly, these pre-packaged cakes were not quite the jiggly, cloud-like cheesecakes of my dreams – but they weren’t bad. Upon first bite, my immediate thought was dry, and how could they be anything but with a tiny sachet of oxygen absorber in each individual cake packet? They remind me of the packaged cakes people love to eat for breakfast in Italy, small airy brioches studded with chocolate chips, more sugar than sustenance, dipped into a strong black coffee as you’re halfway out the door. But as the cake moistened in my mouth, I could taste the egginess, the subtle cheesiness and even subtler sweetness that I desire from a Japanese-style cheesecake. The texture, though a little dry, is light and spongy, the crumb extremely smooth and uniform. Before I know it, I’ve eaten the whole cake and am soon contemplating another – these could turn out to be quite addictive. A solid 7.5/10.
Mā te wā,
Lucinda
Stick to writing about food and leave your political bias for another forum. Its a food column.