How to eat alone
On why eating alone doesn't have to be lonely, the kiwifruit industry's reliance on hazardous chemicals, plus Leonie Hayden's favourite places to eat.
Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s weekly food newsletter produced in partnership with Boring Oat Milk. Written by me, Charlotte Muru-Lanning. It’s lovely to have you here!
The act of eating alone, especially in public spaces, is often imbued with associations of gloom-filled loneliness.
Sometimes I wonder whether those connotations are a residual of high-school insecurities propped up by American movies: only weirdos eat lunch alone at the cafeteria, right? Or, perhaps it’s an unintended consequence of our well-meaning (and honestly quite beautiful) preoccupation with the idea of food as a tool for cultivating friendship, love and connection.
But as I reflect upon my own relationship with eating alone, I recall how as a 16-year old, letting go of that discomfort about solitary kai felt liberating. Any potential reclusive shame washed away with every sip of my unaccompanied caramel frappe at the (now closed) George Court Starbucks, or with every bite of food-court sushi in silent bliss. Still, one of my biggest joys in life is eating alone.
I say all this because I’ve been reflecting on an essay by American writer Mari Andrew in The Atlantic exploring the slippery slope between “solitude food” and “sad food”. As we enter the Christmas season, a season that so often accentuates loneliness, it feels especially important to consider the relationship between loneliness and kai. As much as I love eating alone, that’s because it’s usually a choice – that’s not the case for everyone.
Andrew argues that there is in fact a “sad” genre of solitary foods, but that food eaten alone is in itself not inherently sad. “You see, Sad Food is not the same as Solitude Food,” she writes. “Solitude Food celebrates the luxury of being intentionally alone.” And she lists examples like ordering room service on a work trip, or being perched at a tiny cafe table where a croissant, coffee and book compete for space. But, she adds, “as we’ve all experienced, Solitude Food can become a Lonely Food—and that’s when it turns sad”. All it takes, she writes, is an accidental sad song playing on your Spotify shuffle, a cooking disaster or a disappointing restaurant choice to flip the switch. But at the end of the day, “there’s nothing sad about a meal all to oneself if it’s being enjoyed”.
Iced coffee season is here.
The sun is getting hotter and higher in the sky, and the days are stretching out in preparation for summer. Admittedly we’ve been chugging oat iced lattes all year long, but for those of you still leaning into Mother Nature, this is the PSA you’ve been waiting for. It’s officially iced coffee season. Head to boringmilk.com for your summer supply of New Zealand-made oat milk, straight from the source.
Weekly bites
The local kiwifruit industry’s reliance on a hazardous chemical will likely increase dramatically as regions get warmer, despite the Environmental Protection Authority actively looking to ban it, reports Newsroom. Hydrogen cyanamide is in Hi-Cane, a spray used by growers to help form buds after winter, but research suggests that the benefits of the chemical are outweighed by the environmental risks and adverse health effects. The chemical was first brought to New Zealand in 1988, and is banned in Europe. Zespri released its Adapting to Thrive in a Changing Climate report last week, which said, “As New Zealand’s winters gradually warm, hydrogen cyanamide (or any future alternatives) will be an important tool for growers to adapt to climate change”.
After nearly a decade of prosecco-filled coupes, bowls of mapo tofu and perfectly grilled summer corn, the Karangahape Road haunt Peach Pit closed its doors for good over the weekend. They made a name for themselves with a vibe that was easy yet buzzing and food that was adventurous but wonderfully well-priced. I was miffed that I wasn’t able to pop in for a planned penultimate visit (I had food poisoning last week) before they closed, but I happily marked their closing vicariously through the flurry of final meal pics posted on social media.
Whittakers is famously one of New Zealand’s most trusted companies. But as The Spinoff editor Madeleine Chapman finds in her latest ranking of the 54 bars from worst to best, some flavours are more trusty than others.
There’s a gap of 30,000 staff in our local hospitality industry to cover the busy summer period according to The Restaurant Association. And Stuff has reported that number is in line with numbers that hospitality recruitment firm Barcats has estimated. It’s not an issue unique to Aotearoa though, with restaurants in the UK reportedly struggling to find enough staff for the holiday period which some are describing as an “existential threat” to the sector. Despite staffing woes, it’s not all doom and gloom for hospitality: New Zealand’s industry turned over about $13.4 billion in the year to September, exceeding annual revenue pre-pandemic. According to the latest Restaurant Association hospitality report, the 2022 industry turnover was up 15% on the $12b recorded in 2019 before the onset of Covid-19.
The alcoholic kombucha saga continues with Foodstuffs North Island – which operates New World and Pak’nSave supermarkets – releasing a notice this week asking supermarkets to remove Daily Organics Kombucha products from the shelves as a precautionary measure, along with recall notices for customers. Daily Organics Kombucha is sold as a non-alcoholic beverage but an investigation by Re:News last month found the alcohol contents of some flavours were more than twice the legal alcohol limit for a product to be sold as non-alcoholic. Daily Organics have contested the results of the testing.
A quarter of all house fires start in the kitchen in Aotearoa, and around 50% of all fatal house fires involve alcohol or drugs. In response, Fire and Emergency New Zealand have launched a campaign that’s aiming to “help Aotearoa’s under the influence chefs make late-night food, without causing a fire or hurting themselves”. Developed in collaboration with Jamie Johnston of Everybody Eats, You’re Cooked comprises an e-book and cooking videos with perfectly chaotic/ grotty recipes for late-night snacks that don't involve a stove. Think: kiwi onion dip noodles and crushed hundreds and thousands biscuits on sliced bread – I’ve never been more excited for end-of-the-night feasting.
Five places with Leonie Hayden
Amid her abundance of talents, former editor of The Spinoff Ātea Leonie Hayden (Ngāti Whātua o Kaipara, Ngāti Rango) has impeccable taste in kai. She’s also had a busy year, and so I’ve been patiently waiting for a slight gap in that crowded schedule before making any requests, but this week Hayden has blessed The Boil Up with her five favourite food pit stops.
Yans Brothers Food Station, Panmure: I love yum cha but if I’m honest, it’s mostly a ploy for me to get at the steamed rice rolls – them delicate, rice flour pancakes wrapped around prawns or char siu and served with salty-sweet sauce. I do like to take myself out to eat alone but I tried solo yum cha only once and it was… bleak, so colour me delighted when I found out there was a place in Panmure that has fresh chee cheong fun on the menu.
Caspian Store, Mt Eden: Obsessed with this Persian grocer. It’s filled with fresh dips, pastries, breads and cool pantry staples. Go here if you signed up to do desserts for a dinner party but ended up being too lazy/time poor, and grab one of their beautiful boxes of baklava and a tub of the pistachio and saffron ice-cream from the freezer. There’s a yummy, malted fizzy lemon drink I always grab to drink on my way home.
The tofu stall, Avondale markets: You’ll find my partner Harry at Avondale markets every Sunday, come rain or shine, often shopping for friends who don’t have as much spare time because he’s an angel. I’ll admit, I’m a slightly more fair-weather customer, and it’s usually fuelled by my desire for a pot of the silken tofu and gravy with chilli oil, pickled mustard greens, coriander and a still-warm youtiao on the side for dipping. Best eaten super fresh and luckily they have a couple of tables at the back you can hunker down at, knee-to-knee with other devotees.
Bhana Brothers cheese counter: Bhana Brothers grocery store has been a local institution in Ponsonby since the ‘30s and although it has been bought by another family and renamed My Grocer, the iconic sign remains and it’s hard not to keep using the old handle. At any rate, you might be thinking because of the minimalist refit that they’ve jacked the prices up but you need to head directly to the cheese section. There’s nothing about our current economy that explains how they sell such an amazing range of cheese for such low prices. It’s best not to question it.
Ōtāhuhu: I cheated and named a whole suburb because it contains so many of my favourite places and things to eat, sorry not sorry: Snapper and fried eggs meal from Toby’s Seafood (kina, raw fish and fry bread to take home), South City Seafoods for whole fish and mussels, Try It Out for soul-healing phở (and they’re just so damn nice), and chilli crab and char kuey teow with the smokiest wok hei from Treasure Kitchen, who also do a rendang that will curl your toes.
Talk next week!
Hei kōnā mai, Charlotte
