The kids behind the counter
On the new season of Takeout Kids, the stuff that happens around kai, and a crunchy snack.
Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s weekly food newsletter.
There was a little boy who often helped behind the counter at the local roast chicken shop we used to frequent when I was a kid in suburban Sydney. Sometimes he would be the one to hand over our order, fetching the foil-wrapped chicken from the Greek uncle at the rotisserie station, or else I’d see him slowly loading cans of Fanta into the fridges, carefully positioning each one so the label faced out. Because the rizogalo (Greek rice pudding) and chicken salted chips from this takeout were my favourite foods in the world, I thought he was just about the luckiest kid ever.
Such children are the subject of Takeout Kids, an observational documentary series directed by Julie Zhu (of Conversations with My Immigrant Parents) currently releasing its second season. In each short episode, we are granted access the private world of a different child growing up within a small business owned by their immigrant whānau. Last week we saw Priyan, whose parents run Sandringham Bulk Foods & Rocky’s Superette, help in the shops, play cricket with his dad, and attend his very first day of school.
Watching Priyan and his whānau felt particularly poignant because I have met them – we always top up our cleaning supplies at Bulk Foods – but in those brief in-store moments, I’ve only had fleeting impressions of a quiet, smiling little boy, a friendly dad weighing my laundry powder with a tiny girl balanced on his hip. In the episode, we are given privileged access to Priyan in each of the three spaces that make up his world – the shops, but also his home and school – and are able to form a picture of who he is in each place: his shyness and growing understanding of the classroom; big emotions at home; and his desire to help his parents at the shop, something he does by stacking the drinks fridge, bottle by bottle, dedicated to a job he clearly feels a sense of ownership over.
In this week’s episode, we are in Taupō with Dom, whose mum works across Thai Delight Restaurant and The Mira. Dom seems to be living my takeout dream when he casually orders fried banana and Hainanese chicken at his mum’s restaurants or plays video games in the back room – although he also helps out, laying tablecloths and serving customers.
There isn’t a massive amount of kai in these episodes, but there is a lot of the stuff that happens around it. For both Dom and Priyan, their family businesses are almost an extension of the home, especially in the way they feed them, and how that food creates moments for connection. For Dom, he orders his dinner from the chef, asks his mum if he can have dessert. In one scene, we see them sharing a meal in an empty restaurant before service, discussing the difficult topic of Dom’s estranged father. For Priyan, choosing nuts and dried fruits from the bulk food store to put in his lunchbox is part of preparing for his first day of school, and later, reading their labels is a way to practice his growing skills. Ice blocks are shared behind the dairy counter, bags of Cheetos consumed while sitting on the ice cream fridges. Serious mother-son conversations happen at a restaurant table, after the customers have gone home. Snacks, dinner, parenting, bonding, life – for these families, it all happens around, alongside and in between the mahi of operating a restaurant or store.
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Weekly bites
It’s a buffet of Shanti Mathias articles in the Kai section at present and they’re all gems, although her interview with an anonymous supermarket worker is particularly illuminating, shedding light on the flow-on effects of chronic understaffing and demoralising top-down management. Given that union negotiations and strike action have still not resulted in a living wage, safer staffing levels and fair compensation for working unsociable hours, it’s no wonder Woolworths workers were chagrined when the company asked them to dress up as Disney characters to support a new promotion.
As part of our What’s Eating Aotearoa project, Shanti has also created a ranking of common nuts in Aotearoa – controversial, in my opinion, for its stance on hazelnuts, although I agree on the #1 nut – and asked where the pork products lining our supermarket shelves are from (mostly not Aotearoa, mostly countries with much lower animal welfare standards).
And if this news takes bacon off the menu for you, might I suggest replacing it with a more sustainable, extremely nutritious protein? How about some locusts? Not keen? What if we called them “sky prawns” instead? Shanti has done some boots on the ground – or in the kitchen – investigative journalism, not only researching the current state of the bug food industry, but cooking some up and having a taste, even offering some thoughts on other recipes that could be used to help incorporate them into her diet.
Snack Review
Want Want Seaweed Rice Crackers 136g for $5.99 at New Eats in Royal Oak (also available at major supermarkets)
Ever since I read the excellent book There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, I’ve been searching for the best rice crackers. In the novel, one of the temporary jobs the main character takes at a rice cracker factory, where she writes trivia for the packaging, but the variety and nuance of flavours described sounds incredible.
Want Want Seaweed Rice Crackers aren’t far from how I imagine the crackers in the book, although they are a standard flavour. They come in a larger bag full of smaller, individually wrapped portions with two big crackers in each – a good size serving, perfect for chucking in your bag as you head out (although I do usually try to avoid individually packaged goods).
The crackers themselves are attractive: perfectly round, browned in neat stripes, generous strands of seaweed confetti stuck to the surface. The flavour is seaweed-forward and a little fishy from the bonito, more savoury than salty but with a pleasing sweetness from the mirin. They give a loud, satisfying crunch when bitten into, but then they’re gone in a minute and I’m left feeling hungry. Which I suppose is the way with such crackers, but I do feel like for all the waste created by that packaging, they should at least keep hunger at bay for an hour or so. Overall, 7.5/10 feels like the fairest score.
Mā te wā,
Lucinda