21 June 2012
MUSINGS ON IMMIGRANT CUISINE
I attended the Fine Food show in Auckland this week. It’s an event set up exclusively for the hospitality and retail trade to view the latest trends and equipment in food and other products that can impact businesses. It’s a terrific show and because it’s not open to the public there’s none of that grabbing and squeezing to get around in other large food shows.
By walking fairly swiftly through the first time round, I got an overall sense of what was trending and what new food are offering. As I said on Facebook earlier this week, over the last five years the more recent immigrant groups have started to impact on the food market. Ethnic food is big.
The Chinese had taken a large area and although most of their product was display only, they made quite an impression with their eagerness to engage with show visitors. I saw many Indian, Korean, Greek, Middle -eastern, French, Italian and other ethnic food products that were well made, well presented and promising.
Many immigrants who arrive in a new country are not able, for various reasons to find jobs in the field they’re trained in. So, they end up turning to something they know very well. Food. They’ve been eating their own familiar cuisine all their lives, and they no doubt miss authentic fare, so that’s what they do and they do it well. They are having a big impact in supermarkets and small ethnic restaurants and cafes, and the next generation will be eating very different food from the fare their grandparents ate.
Two weeks ago I went to Oamaru in search of food stories in my Listener column, and while there I came across the Hearts of Haukinima Dairy, pictured above. Oamaru has a significant Tongan community, attracted there to fill the local rugby team. Api Fifita’s husband, Tevita is a rugby player, they have four children and Api needed a job. So she used her initiative and with a fair helping of faith, started a dairy. On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays she makes take-out Tongan food for the locals and it’s so popular her sister has come to live in Oamaru to help her.
It’s a very heartening and heart warming story. Api comes from a very humble village in Tonga, and has taken her village name for the dairy. She’s doing exactly what many of our new New Zealanders have done, and although I don’t see imagine that her products will get to the Fine Food Show, you never know.
If you pass through Oamaru, call in and see her at 36A Arun St, opposite the school, in most desirable residential district within the town.