The art of the three-day birthday
On celebratory meals, celebrating local producers and a near perfect snack.
Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s weekly food newsletter presented in partnership with Farro. I hope you’re hungry!
How do you celebrate your birthday? Do you celebrate at all? For a self-confessed birthday diva such as myself, it came as a shock when I first learned this latter type of person existed, let alone that members of my own family fall into this camp. As children, we celebrated Dad’s birthday for him, never realising it was actually more for us. In her adult life, my sister has edged towards non-celebration, or perhaps more a kind of conscientious objection as she often opts to leave town for her birthday, finding the pressure of celebration all too much.
I now know that people with all kinds of birthday philosophies exist, from those who turn up to work like it’s any other day, never saying a damn thing, to the ones who start treating themselves as soon as their birthday month rolls around, citing their upcoming anniversary as a justification for every extravagance. Last Friday was my birthday, which meant that really, the entire weekend was my birthday, which meant much of April was absorbed into planning where and what I would be eating over a three-day period. Out of a sensitivity to the schedules of various interested parties as well as, you know, my own greed, I decided there would be three separate celebrations this year: Friday night dinner and (mandatory) karaoke with friends, birthday edition date night on Saturday and a Sunday morning yum cha with family. In the interests of sharing (not bragging!) what was an almost perfect weekend of celebratory eating so that readers might purloin ideas for their own celebrations, below is a brief itinerary of where I went and what I ate.
Friday: Where could be better for birthday breakfast than Burnt Butter Diner, where cake for breakfast is literally on the menu? My partner and I shared an unholy combination of dishes – mussel fritters and a slab of hot custardy clafoutis served on a bed of pink rhubarb, topped with milo whip and a generous scatter of blueberry granola – while the chef kindly accommodated my vegan friend by swapping out the dairy elements of their savoury gnocchi dish. We then headed to the hot pools for a soak, after which I went at my obligatory takeaway slice of cake from Burnt Butter with my bare hands, scooping bits of torched meringue into my mouth with chlorine-scented fingers. As is our ritual, we stopped at Hapunan for lunch and I had my favourite Filipino dishes, achingly tender beef kare kare and silky just-sweet taho. That evening, we headed to Go Go Music Café for smoky skewers, cucumber and black fungus slick with chili oil and golden beer towers shaped like trophies before a hīkoi up to Mr Wang’s for karaoke and too much soju.
Saturday: A gentle day was required after the evening’s festivities, but by nightfall we were fully recovered and ready to eat some vegetables and so we headed to Forest, where they do them better than anyone. Despite writing this newsletter, I don’t eat at fancy restaurants very often – perhaps if I did, I wouldn’t appreciate meals like this quite as much as I did. Every bite was so thoughtful, so flavourful – some to the point of being almost too much, the little nerves around my eyes flickering at the sourness of feijoa skin sherbet before the balm of smooth earl grey custard. This was a special meal, one I won’t be forgetting any time soon.
Sunday: Wearing loose fitting trousers, we headed for yum cha at Pearl Garden where we ordered lavishly: egg tarts, golden custard buns, prawn balls, duck dumplings, stuffed aubergine, sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves, crispy pork, shao mai, all washed down with smoky tea and glasses of vivid red watermelon juice. Full to the gills, we rolled back to my place for coffee and birthday cake – a ricotta and hazelnut torte made by my mum, slathered in sweet apricot jam and a flurry of dark chocolate shavings.
It’s Autumn in the Farro Deli
The Farro deli cabinet is an Auckland institution, and with every change in season comes a shake-up of the menu and a fresh roll out of delicious salads, snacks, and sammies (don’t worry – the cult classic Lady Scuttlebutt is staying put). Our picks from the new autumn line-up are the maple roasted root veg salad, the New Yorker pastrami roll, the cheesy baked spud, and the long-awaited return of the croque monsieur.
Head on down to one of their seven Auckland stores to load up on lunch.
Weekly bites
Had I known about Mind Your Temper before my birthday, I’d have bought myself a box as a present. Based in Ōtautahi, this boutique chocolatier was named Supreme Champion at the 2024 Outstanding Food Producer Awards for their Black Forest Bonbon, a glossy crimson dome of dark chocolate filled with “tart sour cherry gel and single origin Piura Kirsch ganache.” Described by the judges as “faultless”, creator Nel Vincencio says people are often surprised to discover his chocolates are vegan, with coconut powder used to give them a creamy mouthfeel. Other 2024 top food products and producers include a peppery sea salt from Opito Bay Salt Company, single person start up Wild Child Ferments and two gelatos from two different producers – Matakana-made Charlies and Island Gelato Co.
In 2022, sustainability influencer @ethicallykate didn’t buy any clothes at all. In 2024, she is setting herself a new challenge: to only buy Aotearoa-made or grown food. Four months in, she’s learned a lot about what is produced here – quinoa, coffee, bananas, salt! – but also how hard it can be to find these amid a sea of products made by global conglomerates who write really confusing labels (what is “curated in NZ?”). As this Herald article highlights, this way of living isn’t new with ethical eating having been borne out of necessity in the 1900s. One long term ethical eater encourages supermarket shoppers to consider whether the products they are purchasing would have been available in the 1970s and whether they could make it themselves – advice that sounds very similar to what naturopath Bryn Roberts told me on our supermarket tour!
A little sign in a window caught my eye when I was last in Waipū, making an emergency pie stop en route home from an Easter camping trip. The golden sign read “Top NZ Cheese Store 2024” but the store was closed and so I made a mental note to return next time I visited the sunny North. As it turns out, the store was Origin Northland, a boutique grocery built on the ethos of stocking products with the lowest possible food miles: produce from Left Fields, tropical fruit from Aotearoa Grown, fresh bread from Pinenut Bakery, kai moana from Tasty Tucker and cheese from Origin owners own award-winning creamery, Belle Chèvre. Boutique cheesemakers Jennifer and David Rodrigue opened Origin last year in response to the EU Fair Trade Agreement, which will see lower cost cheese imported into the country while local makers will no longer be able to use names such as feta, halloumi and gorgonzola. Another good reminder to support local producers, especially when they are offering the likes of Manaia Ma – a fudgy, ash-rinded goat cheese – or my current favourite, Meyer Cheese’s Old Master – a salty, funky aged parmesan to rival any Parmigiano-Reggiano.
More-ish
Picasso said it took him a lifetime to paint like a child, and after watching children reviewing restaurant food, I am ready to pass the food writing mantle to them. Please enjoy this charming What Now? segment in which three small, blunt yet generous critics give their honest thoughts on the quality kai at Ōtautahi restaurant Gatherings.
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Snack of the week
朱可光葡式蛋挞 Zhu Keguang Portuguese Egg Tart (frozen) $19.99 for 6 tarts from Yi Cart
Egg tarts, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Hong Kong egg tart, pasteis de Nata, English custard tarts or even Hokkaido cheese tarts which, while not technically an egg tart, are a wonderful, very-close option for anyone egg-averse or allergic. It is likely I inherited my love of egg tarts from my dad, as well as my inability not to buy them whenever I see them available – dangerous, given how often I visit Folds Patisserie (gloriously eggy) and Wheatz Bakery (palm-sized, croissant-like flakes), and the fact that they sell the Nata ones in the bakery section of my local Woolies (a little on the sweet side but lightyears above anything else in those cabinets).
With so many egg tarts under my belt, I feel confident reporting that these frozen ones – although expensive – are worth your while. $19.99 is a small price to pay to be able to have a hot, heavenly pastry in your belly in less than half an hour, and at approximately $3.30 a pop, they are still cheaper than any of those listed above. I cooked mine at 210°C for 16 minutes in my terrible oven and they were perfect – warm, flaky pastry, a milky flavour and pudding-like centre, barely set and barely sweet. I ate three in one sitting and could have eaten all six had my boyfriend not already devoured them. If I am being very picky, the bottom was slightly undercooked, but I attribute this to the quality of my oven (which has a tendency to overbrown the top of cakes) more than the quality of the pastries. If you have a pizza stone or a nice thick sheet pan that you can heat in the oven, only adding your frozen pastries once everything is hot as hell, that should remedy any slight sogginess. 10/10
Mā te wā,
Lucinda
Love the articles, the links are also a great way of finding new foods and suppliers, ngā mihi nui, keep up the good work
Kia ora, wonderful newsletter, but how can you leave us hanging without a ricotta and hazelnut torte recipe?!