Today on the show we are talking about food as a whole and the concept of food design with Jane Armour-Raudon. What is food design exactly? What do we mean when we say something we eat is sustainable? How can food design invigorate our relationship with the food we put into our mouth? Lets chat with Jane the Food Smith and find out!
Welcome again to the Kiwi Foodcast. Today on the show we have Kevin Ngadisastra, one half of the duo behind the Popup that has been taking Wellington by storm, Townhouse Ramen. Kevin’s ramen journey began in 2016 with a trip to Japan. But he is actually a systems analyst by day and not a chef! How did Kevin’s love affair with ramen begin? Can you run a successful food business if you also work full time? How can YOU score a seat at one of his pop ups? Let’s chat to him and find out!
Julie Gillingham was a dental hygienist when she fell in love with the keto lifestyle. After giving birth to two children, she loved how keto made her feel. The sleep was better, she had more energy and of course, the weight loss was a bonus. She did miss eating ice cream though. And pizza! "When my family was following keto strictly, we would have pizza once a week but could never find a pizza base that was both tasty and affordable." So she decided to try making them herself. Julie had hit on ...
Sachie came to New Zealand after graduating high school, mainly to speak English. What was she most surprised with on coming here? She says, "I was surprised with the size...not of the country but with the size of vegetables here. In Japan, a capsicum may be the size of an egg while here it's more like an apple!" Sachie's journey in entrepreneurship started rather serendipitously while she was working in hospitality sales. She went in one morning and learned of a colleague that had passed away f...
Monisha's journey cooking and eating fresh, healthy food started long before she joined Instagram. In India, she worked as a naturopath, as an aerobic instructor and a yoga teacher. Life changed when her family and she decided to move to New Zealand. They began their journey in Invercargill where Monisha was unable to resurrect her career in naturopathy and started working in a meat and freezing works. A seven-month stint at the local Pita Pit reminded her how much she loved being around fresh f...
Ash Razmi was on a trip in the States when he tasted his first quality craft beef jerky and couldn’t get enough. After he came back home he was determined to replicate those flavours and used a home dehydrator to try making his own jerky. It took him hundreds of attempts to get the balance perfect and because beef jerky is not made the same day there was lots of recording involved to see what worked. Most of the biltong and jerky available in NZ is made by large manufacturing brands and has a lo...
When my mum and I moved to New Zealand, I was always the odd one out at school. Other kids brought sandwiches while mum always packed me some Indian leftovers. "What's that, butter chicken?", my Kiwi friends would ask while I waited near the microwave for my food to be heated. My eyes would roll inside my head. If only they knew the joys of a true Indian dish. It took growing up, moving back to India and missing the oddly orange 'Kiwi' butter chicken, to realise that it wasn't anyone's fault. Af...
Jayshri was born in New Zealand. However, she grew up eating primarily Gujarati food at home. For her mum, like many Indian mums, food was the primary love language. Jayshri didn't learn how to cook Indian food until she left home to study. She would try calling her mum to ask her how to cook something and would often be told to add 'a little bit of this and a little bit of that'. It's a quandary many of us have faced. Not wanting her family secrets to be lost, Jayshri started noting the recipes...
The FoodBowl is for food entrepreneurs what the Willy Wonka Chocolate factory was for kids. Supported by Callaghan Innovation and run by the Auckland chapter of the NZ Food Innovation Network, the FoodBowl is an open access facility whose core business is to increase the value of New Zealand's food sector by encouraging companies to develop and commercialise new products. We all know that developing a new product or process can be an exciting journey. But it's also exhausting. FoodBowl provides...
Adlena Wong grew up in Singapore. Her mix of Chinese, Indonesian and Malaysian heritage meant that she grew up eating a lot of sambal and dodo's (a sticky taffy like pudding) as well as having Tau Huay (soy bean pudding sweetened with ginger and vanilla) for breakfast every weekend at the local hawker stall with her grandmum. At the end of 2020, Singapore hawker culture was added to UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. A whole generation of Singaporean ba...
New Zealanders spend more than $118million annually on pies consuming close to 66 million pies a year. From a gas station to a supermarket to a bistro, they are just about everywhere and for us Kiwis, the ultimate comfort food. The Kiwi pie is famous mainly because of our pastry. Back in 1981, Tom and Ben's father, Eddie, started Dads Pies in a small pie shop at Red Beach. Word spread fast and they went from a small pie shop to a pie factory in Silverdale to being stocked at Wild Bean Café's acr...
Since selling their first scoop in December 2017, they've now built their own creamery in Nelson, won a whole bunch of awards for their icecream and export their premium icecreams to Singapore and Australia. Made using real milk, real cream and in most cases local fruit, Appleby Farms Icecream is a worthy addition to your supermarket trolley. On the show today we talk about: Dairy farming in New Zealand - how it's different from the rest of the world A2 milk - what is it really and what's the fu...
Indika came for a day visit to Waiheke when he had just moved to New Zealand. He loved it so much he decided to start living there. For someone from Srilanka, "it was like home, just without the coconut trees". Today, he owns his own food truck, Indy's Curry pot which serves up delicious Srilankan curries and fusion Srilankan food on Waiheke Island. But the journey to this seemingly 'dream job' has taken a serious amount of hustle on Indika's part. He's gone from cooking a curry as the staff mea...
New Zealand's hospitality industry is worth more than $11 billion and as of 2019 employed close to 130,000 people. Yet as many of us know, succeeding and owning a profitable hospitality business that lasts a long time is notoriously difficult. That's where the Restaurant Association comes in. The Restaurant Association supports NZ's diverse and creative hospitality businesses. They give advice, provide buying groups, give discounts and make sure our industry's voice is heard in both the media an...
Starting and growing a food business is a long, hard hustle. There are many hoops to jump through before you can get your product on those grocery shelves and hit the bigtime. But, what if you had the opportunity to go from 1 - 1000 fast? If all the doors that you needed opening for your business simply opened, would you race through? If you nodded yes, then you need to know about FoodStarter. It's a nationwide search for NZ's most innovative food and beverage products with the ultimate prize be...
How often have you been cooking in the kitchen and wished you had a second pair of hands? Or perhaps you bought a gadget (I’m sure someone else also owns a yogurt maker that’s still in its box) to help you with some of the kitchen drudgery or to help you make more exciting meals only to have it loiter on your pantry shelf unused for months? I was in the same boat until I came across the Thermomix. The Thermomix claims to be a smart connected kitchen that in our guest Odette’s words changes your ...
Akemi grew up in Osaka, Japan savouring her grandmother’s pork and chive dumplings or gyoza as the Japanese call them. Gyoza was her favourite thing to eat and her Grandmum would always make them for her as long as Akemi helped her. As a result, Akemi learnt what went into the perfect gyoza and how to form them by hand when she was just six years old. When Akemi came to New Zealand in 2009 she started working as a kitchen hand at a vineyard in Matakana and in her own words she “somehow became a ...
The Papatoetoe Food Hub is a community-driven project that aims to nurture and develop new approaches to food. They are reimagining how food can be served and shared in a way that enables healthy lifestyles. A collective is made up Roots Creative Entrepreneurs, Kai Tupuna, Taiohi Whai Oranga and Auckland Teaching Gardens, supported by The Southern Initiative, Healthy Families South Auckland, Otara Papatoetoe Local Board and Panuku Development Auckland. It’s a community driven project. Their aim ...
Clare Gallagher and Lauren Taylor have seven kids between them. They believe in the magic of home baking but know firsthand how messy baking with kids can be. They also know how busy life can get and recognized that while we’d all like a plate of treats to share baking from scratch can be tedious. When Lulu lost her job during the Covid lockdown they put their heads together and came up with an 8th baby. Their business, Secret Kiwi Kitchen. Secret Kiwi Kitchen makes all natural, artisan baking m...
Bread and Butter are a Ponsonby based bakery and cafe that specialises in traditional European foods and naturally leavened bread made using organic ingredients. Curiously Isabel Pasch, the owner of Bread and Butter is neither a baker now a pastry chef. She is actually a trained microbiologist and prior to the bakery owned a company that specialised in science PR. However, growing up in Germany meant that Isabel grew up around bread and cake. Her family loved baking and Isabel and her sister gre...
Connie Clarkson has been cooking food and writing about it for a large part of her life. After operating Auckland’s French Café, contributing to Metro magazine, writing a cookbook and even being a judge, she now is the Head of Commercial Place Operations at Auckland’s Panuku Development. Connie describes her role as the job of a lifetime. At Panuku, she pulls on all her experience and connections she’s made over decades to regenerate spaces like the Auckland Waterfront or Wynyard Quarter and add...
Many of us covet flow in our busy lives, that optimum state when your brain is focused, and you are able to create magic at work, in your studies, or at home. Various coffee and energy drink brands have built their fortunes on the back of this need for flow. Though, as we are finding out now, those aren’t the most optimal beverages to be addicted to and can have adverse effects over the years. Angus Brown started questioning this a few years ago. “As a student that hardly drank any caffeine myse...
Unlike a lot of food companies that start with the goal of conquering the local NZ market, Zealandia Honey was born out of international demand for premium, native New Zealand honey. Co-founders Sri Govindaraju, Sunil Pinnamaneni and Robin de Gues are passionate about honey and believe that people can benefit not only from Mānuka honey but other types of New Zealand native honeys because of their high antioxidant and polyphenol content. Zealandia don’t make their own honey. Instead, they collab...
Inspiration for First Table sparked when Mat Weir discovered a new approach to dining that he’d never come across before. Tucked away in Queenstown, New Zealand, was a small French restaurant offering 50% off their first table of the night. By discounting the ‘first table’ the restaurant could build a great atmosphere from the start of service which in turn attracted more customers. For Mat and his family, having the discount meant they could sample daring local delicacies and a good bottle of w...
The Rolling Pin brings a unique twist to South East Asian cuisine. They wanted to show Kiwi’s that there is more to Asian food that noodles and fried rice and have brought a unique twist to the Asian food scene in NZ with their Dumplings & Slaw, Noodle Salad Bowls and Stuffed Bao’s. After serving several thousand dumplings and receiving acclaim as one of Auckland’s best dumplings, they now have a permanent spot in Wynyard Quarter as well. On the show, we talk about: Being a chef v/s a cook: ...
There’s a new-ish farmers’ market in Auckland, the Te Puna market in Henderson. While the market launched in February this year, it has taken them eight months to get to business as usual mode. Kai West is the group behind the birth of the Te Puna market. Kai West is a collaboration between Healthy Families Waitakere, Panuku, and other community organisations that work towards connecting people to local growers so we can be aware of what we are eating and where that food comes from. On the show,...
“If you really want to make a friend go to someone’s house and eat with him…the people who give you their food give you their heart” - Chef Cesar Chavez At Eat with Me, Archana cooks for you and you eat in her dining room or she will come cook for you at yours. From the stock to the salad to the meat, everything is made by Archana from scratch. She also runs a monthly supper club where you can get together with other strangers and come together over a meal that she’s cooked for you. Such home di...
Sue Arthur thought Over the Moon Dairy would be a great retirement project of sorts. What she ended up starting was not one but two amazing businesses with cheese at the center. Sue has always loved cheese. Living in Waikato, she has been surrounded with the perfect dairying conditions for more than 20 years. On her travels around the world she saw that despite New Zealand having such a big dairy industry, our supermarket shelves were lined with just the basic edam and cheddar cheese – she wante...
Maggie Gray came to NZ on an OE, worked with Mastercard during the Rugby World Cup and then fell in love with the place. Somewhat unusually, she started a food truck just after she became a Mum. She wanted flexibility on the job and the ability to work around her kids’ needs, something her corporate career was unable to give her. Maggie was on a run in her local park while training for the half marathon when she spotted a Mr. Whippy truck pull up and people start gravitating towards it. As a bus...
Inspired by La Cocina in San Francisco – one of the most successful kitchen incubators in the United States – The Kitchen Project is a partnership set up by Auckland’s urban regeneration agency, Panuku Development Auckland and Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED) with support from Healthy Families South Auckland and Healthy Families Waitakere. Essentially, it is a part-time 26-week programme that covers everything from regulations, food safety and business planning, to finan...
