The Gardens

Changing the world... because of Christmas

DAVID WILLIAMS has been drinking coffee in the Crave cafe in Kingsland for months. But only recently did he sit down with the two guys behind the operation, Nigel and Blue, to discover just how much of the cafe’s mission has to do with the Christmas story.

When Nigel Cottle uses the word ‘neighbourhood’ he has in mind an area that’s roughly equivalent to a one kilometre radius around the cafe he manages—Crave, in McDonald St, Kingsland.

He uses the word a lot. Sometimes it stands in for ‘community’, as in the neighbourhood of people that live within a geographical area bordered roughly by Great North, Morningside, St Lukes and Sandringham Rds. 

At other times though Nigel is speaking more of the global community, and the neighbourhood of poverty and suffering that exists in other countries.

Whatever the context though, the sense behind his use of the word is the same: the neighbourhood is the community of people to which you belong, those people who live beside you. In old-fashioned terms, the neighbourhood is Nigel’s mission field. It’s the place his heart goes when he most wants to live out his faith—which has a lot to do with a certain Christmas story, a baby who was born to bring ‘joy to the world’, and who would grow up to declare that we should all ‘love our neighbour as ourselves.’

You might say Nigel, and his partner in mission Blue Bradley, have taken those words literally.

Some six years ago they moved into the Kingsland area with a view to seeing how they could impact the neighbourhood by connecting with the people who lived and worked there, and by helping those ‘cool’ but somewhat disconnected people get to know one another.

They invested their money into two interconnected apartments, above where the current Crave cafe operates, and where their families still live. Meanwhile, downstairs, a failing cafe was stumbling towards inevitable closure. 

As Nigel says, there are so many reasons why a cafe shouldn’t work in that spot—and it eventually closed. Those reasons still exist—it’s a terrible location, has poor frontage, and minimal parking.

And yet, here’s Crave—several years on, still thriving, and to a huge degree fulfilling the mission they set out to achieve—operating as a hub for the local residential and business community; actively engaging in activities such as street parties and cooking classes to connect with their neighbours; and raising funds that get pumped back into the community—and not just here, but in places like India.

Nigel recalls a turning point, of sorts—their very first street party, which looked as if it would end up a massive fail.

‘Blue is a hunter, and he had a pig that he shot—and we were like, What do we do with that? And so, Oh well, let’s hire a spit, chuck it on, run a garage sale. Garage sales are a great way to get to know your neighbours. People come in and want to check through your stuff and you talk to them. And so we said, Come back tonight, we’ve got a pig on a spit.

‘At about five to six we put the spit on the road, we had some tables and chairs. But there was no-one here. One of the things moving in was that we’d like to have some epic failures, you know? Things that we try and they don’t succeed. So Blue and I reckoned this was going to be our first failure—it’s gonna be good.

‘And then literally, like a scene from a movie or something, everyone sort of came out of their houses and joined forces and walked around the corner—70 people just walked around, like a mob. And then within a couple of minutes of seeing that, the whole place is full of people and it was awesome. Just beautiful.’

In Nigel’s telling of the Crave history, once the cafe downstairs closed they were faced with a decision—would they get involved? With minimal experience, they decided to take it on, but had someone else operate the new business for two years. It was at that point they felt able to take it on themselves, and did so—extending the space to its current size, and by changing the ownership and governance structure of the cafe. The Crave Collective was formed, a group of 15 people who buy into the cafe with cash, and commitment—whatever they can manage—and who run it as a not-for-profit company, with Nigel as manager. 

All of Crave’s profits go back into the community—80 percent to local needs, and 20 percent to global projects. ‘Local’ projects are defined as those that are being run by people who live within the Crave neighbourhood. 

At the same time, a Christian ‘faith community’ sits alongside the Crave Collective. Nigel is wary of calling the community a ‘church’ or using language that sounds too much like traditional understandings of Christians and church. Both he and Blue are affiliated with the Baptist Church, but you don’t see signs of this affiliation in the cafe. And that’s how they want it. Once you get to know them though, the model of faith, hope and love by which they work is evident.

What sets this community apart from other, more traditional churches, is their focus on the neighbourhood—their mission of getting neighbours talking to neighbours. 

‘Because it’s a very transit community, people come and go all the time,’ says Nigel. ‘And so the level of engagement just shot up. It was amazing. I can’t really tell you why, I don’t know what happened—it just happened. And the people we’d been talking to, suddenly they engaged, and then they’d share. And it was awesome. And that was the start of going forward.

‘One of the things in terms of neighbourhoods is that if people are passing through, they’re renters not owners—and they won’t engage because they know they’re off soon. And so part of our job is working out how do we make people feel like they belong—even for a season, so they invest heavily while they’re here, and then they can invest heavily in the next place. 

‘And the good thing is there’s freshness and stuff—the bad thing is that people do go. So you’re engaging, investing, and it’s all good stuff—and then they move to the next place, but that’s good. 

‘One of our underlying things is how do we influence people for good. At our last street party, one of the guys came up to me and talked to me about how he’s so privileged to have spent this last season here with us. And he says, Look around, my kids will grow up remembering the days that we used to be part of this thing. And there’s a sense of like, yeah that’s cool because even if they move to the next bit, they take that with them.

‘The bonus for us is having been here six years, we’re now like pillars in the community, we’re the rocks. In another place it’d take you two generations to get to that same thing. So that’s the bonus of it, it hasn’t taken us that long to kind of engage.’

In October, Crave’s community involvement went to a new level, when several members of the collective, along with other young professionals, headed to India to explore how they might help Auckland-based charity Freeset in its work with Indian sex slaves.

Freeset’s objective is to set up so-called ‘freedom businesses’, businesses that disrupt the pre-existing economy based on kidnapping and sex slavery by giving women alternative employment opportunities.

Friends of Nigel are there to establish a business making hand-crafted leather bags which will be exported to NZ for sale. Freeset is working in both the red light districts and a local town which has been recognised as a source of trafficking. If they can disrupt the trade from its source, fewer women will be trafficked in the first place. It’s the ambulance at the foot of the cliff versus the railings at the top of the cliff model. 

‘They’re dealing with women that are just wrecked and unemployable because they’ve got all sorts of diseases, they’ve got no education, no skills and they’ve got serious post traumatic stress. They find sweeping the floor too hard sometimes.’

The trip gave the Crave Collective a close-up view not just of the issues local women face, but of the intrinsic corruption and bureaucratic and criminal systems that stand in their way.

‘It’s a different world—different social structure and system. We really got a sense of just how difficult it is, the tasks they’re up against. 

‘The idea is that they are trying to grow a bunch of small businesses that employ about 50 women because that seems to be what they can manage. And there’s two types of freedom—one is freedom from prostitution, and then there’s freedom from internal demons that come from that. The post traumatic stress and the emotional freedom is much harder to achieve than the physical freedom, in that sense—but if you can prevent it from the word go ... 

‘When we were up in one of the source districts, we read in the paper that the day before six 12-year-old girls had been abducted just off the street. And we just know that they will be down in the red light area in a short period of time. It was quite heart-breaking.’

Getting involved in the long-standing issues of a specific region in India would seem a far cry from the localised, neighbourhood mission of Crave. But for Nigel, they are complementary missions—and he points to the mission statement on the wall at Crave for context.

‘Basically, we want to fight poverty of any kind. And our main thing is that in this area here [Kingsland], social poverty is the main form of poverty. There are lots of great people that aren’t connected, so we want to help them to live in this neighbourhood that they exist in. 

‘Then we’ve got all the bro’town Morningside stuff that happens around us, and mental health stuff that happens around us. So we’re doing some Christmas meals, getting the neighbours on the wealthier side to help out the neighbours on the less wealthy side. And I think that will go really well. We’re putting some brown bags out next week for that. That’s all local.

‘But we’ve still got this thing with 20 percent of our money, which will go into global poverty stuff. We are aware that we are global citizens and we are targeting particularly sex trafficking as a core global issue right now. 

‘We’re trying not to just say, here’s 20 percent, to a big multi-national NGO, but we are asking how do we engage? We are basically saying we are going to put 10 years into this and then we’ll see. Because nothing happens in two, three years, you know. Everything takes longer.’ 

As Nigel says, whether the focus is on Morningside or in a specific region in India, the key is relationships. 

And on any given day of the week, that’s what you see forming in Crave—relationships that are changing the neighbourhood, and which might just change the world.

Auckland Grammar: where men are made MARK GARRISON goes on a tour of Auckland Grammar School and discovers more than dusty old secret rooms and names chalked on walls—he discovers a rich history and a proud tradition that has continued for more than 160 years.

Standing proudly on the lower slopes of Mt Eden, Auckland Grammar School is perhaps one of the most strikingly beautiful and architecturally distinctive buildings in the city, if not the country. The edifice of the school, however, is not the primary key to the institution’s lasting significance. Rather, it is the long list of students who have walked the hallways, studied in the classrooms and played sport on the fields who have made Auckland Grammar School the treasure it is today.

Edmund Hillary, Raoul Franklin, Peter Gluckman, Richard Chandler and Kenneth Keith are just a few of the long list of ‘Grammar Men’ who have gone on to achieve fame in science, business, sport and public service. The school doesn’t just teach students to read and write—it teaches them to become men. 

‘It is called being a Grammar man. Some boys are Grammar men and some aren’t. For some it is everything they ever wanted and for some it isn’t.’ This from Paul Paton, who taught English and Social Studies at the school for 20 years (1988-2008), and now serves as the archivist for the school. 

He remains incredibly proud of the school, its students and its history. 

‘I have always felt proud to say I have taught here. I like what it stands for,’ he says.

The school was established by Governor Grey in 1850 ‘for the welfare and educational advancement of persons of all classes and races who may inhabit the colony.’ The school was first housed in the old Immigration Barracks on Howe Street. In 1871, it was moved into the Albert Barracks on Princes Street and again to Symonds Street. Finally, the Crown gave the school 15 acres of prison land on its present site on Mountain Rd to erect a new building, and construction got underway in 1912. 

The end result was the stunningly beautiful main building built in a Spanish-Californian Mission style, which is still used today. Far from being a relic of the past, the main building feels akin to the hallowed halls of Cambridge. You can sense the history as you walk throughout the building. Everywhere you look you can see tributes to the boys who once walked these halls, burdened with stacks of books, driven by dedicated teachers to became forward thinkers in their own right.

No one respects the traditions and vital importance of the school more than Paul Paton. As we tour the campus together, Paul’s enthusiasm and love for the school becomes infectious. As we stand to reflect on the photos of the Masters who taught at the school for more than 25 years, Paul says, ‘It is a tribute to the school that people want to stay here for a long time.

‘It is the best, that’s why. It has tradition. It has high standards in sport, culture and academia. It offers all sorts of things to people. You can play sport if you want to. If you don’t want to you don’t have to. If you want to work hard and do well in exams you will. It is as simple as that really.’

As we continue our tour, we walk past a vast row of glass-fronted shelves filled with an array of cups and trophies. The silver and gold gleams in the cases and is an imposing display of the serious talent which has been nurtured within the hallowed halls.

‘All over the school were all these old cups and trophies; in cupboards, under stairs and in the attic. Headmaster [Tim] O’Connor’s idea was to get them all together on display, in a case and showcase the traditions of the school. Students walk by the case every day and they see boys like themselves are rewarded by having their name on the wall or on a shield or a cup.’

The staffroom is lined with faded pictures of former staff, imposing, rigid and formal. ‘They are all men, of course. They have all got moustaches. There is Mr Tibbs, a headmaster whose son was a champion swimmer and ironically drowned in the war.’ 

In a small room tucked away high up a narrow and steep staircase, just under the eaves, is a treasure trove of school memorabilia which Paul has lovingly and carefully rescued and collected from various sources. He carefully makes his way around the crammed room. Old school blazers line the walls and bookshelves are crammed with programmes and school publications dating back to the institution’s earliest days. Essentially, Paul has quietly compiled a museum-worthy collection, referencing back generations of students. 

‘At least they have come back to us rather than being chucked out. I have got them from op shops, you know. They have come back home. They turn up on TradeMe too.

‘I appointed myself archivist when I saw a lot of stuff being lost or thrown out. There is a blazer in the library which somebody brought into the office. They said we are going to take it to the tip, do you want it? Of course we want it. It is amazing what turns up still. We welcome anything, anything at all; ephemera, or anything to do with the school.’

At the end of the room is a door which leads out to the bottom of one of the school’s characteristic cupolas. 

‘This is the one I used to bring my form class up to on the last day of the year and let them write their names in chalk on the wall,’ Paul admits. The school didn’t mind this but then again Paul says he never asked anyone either. He reflects on the names as he slowly reads each one. 

‘Hamill; Gillies was a nice boy; Slade; Howlett.’ Peering high up towards the rafters he notices a name proudly scrawled. ‘Some orangutan has climbed right up there. Look! Imagine that! He risked his life to write his name on the wall.’ 

As our visit winds down I ask Paul how he feels about his time teaching at Auckland Grammar. 

‘I was very apprehensive to come here because this is the best school in Auckland and you have to be pretty good to get here. I had done well in my other school, so I was greatly honoured and thrilled to be teaching here. I have always been very proud to say I taught here.’ 

He looks wistfully at a photo of the school student body and faculty. 

SHARE. ‘BABA’ TEREZA TURNED 100 ON NOVEMBER 17, AND IF EVER THERE WAS A CELEBRATION OF LIFE AND LOVE IN HONOUR OF A PERSON WHO HAS LIVED A LIFE OF GRACE, IT WAS THIS. NATALIE OLDFIELD REPORTS ON A MOST EXTRAORDINARY EVENT.

When ‘Baba’ Tereza Barecevich expresses delight her eyes go wide, she makes a special ‘ooh’ sound through pursed lips, and then she looks around the room to immediately share it with others.

That single moment says everything there is to know about Baba—her love of life, the joy she has experienced right up until the present, and the graciousness with which she has shared her life, and love, with family and friends.

And in turn, her family pay Baba the greatest honour by showing the same openness and love to others—which is why so many people gathered to celebrate her 100th birthday on November 17, and why every one of them felt like part of the family.

There’s nothing quite like being welcomed in to a celebration of someone extraordinary to make a person feel blessed and, yes, humbled.

And this is how I felt at Baba’s birthday celebrations, which took place beneath a marquee at the  Ilich family farm in Northland.

In actual fact, I felt it before then—it began when I met Baba to prepare the story for last month’s issue of The Gardens. That same feeling of grace and love was present then, and made its way into our story, which sparked a big response from our readers.

Baba’s actual birthday celebrations turned up the dial on the grace and love, and pretty much everyone on the day felt like they had been given an amazing gift. It’s hard to describe, as I don’t know that I’ve ever felt it outside of my own family before. Let’s just say, when you’re immersed in the deep love and joy a family has for each other, and for the elderly matriarch who has made it all possible, you’re probably being shown the heart of what life is all about.

All the elements of the day contributed to this: including, of course, the vast banquet of food that was on offer all afternoon, from the lamb and chickens on a spit, to the traditional croatian salads, and the amazing array of desserts. There was so much food, and it all reflected the abundance of Baba’s own life.

And throughout the afternoon lots of memories were being created by the little things: children playing rugby on the front lawn; ladies sharing laughs in the kitchen as they put their hearts and souls into the food; family friend Sir John Kirwan talking rugby with anyone who wanted to bend his ear; unique renditions of the national anthem, traditional croatian sing-alongs, and crowd favourites. 

How quickly you are embraced as one of the family, when that family is as open and gracious as the family of ‘Baba’ Tereza Barecevich.

And they don’t come much more gracious than grandson Andrew Ilich, who coordinated the day’s events and was master of ceremonies for the day.

Andrew’s speech paid tribute to Baba in a very special way, referring to the extraordinary story behind her trip to NZ, and what her life of love had meant to the family.

‘Just when I thought I had attended every type of function possible, and experienced most things in life, my grandmother pulls this one out of the bag for me,’ Andrew said to guests. ‘As I suspect for most of us here today, attending my first 100th birthday party is quite a lifetime experience, particularly when it is for such a special, kind, fair, and gracious person like my grandmother.’

Andrew’s weren’t the only damp eyes that afternoon. To be sure, as the tributes flowed, so did the tears.

‘I often think to myself—how did she go from an independent, vibrant young woman in Novi, to a happily married woman within days of arrival in NZ—and be responsible enough and mature enough to cope with the day to day expectations of being in a relationship—learning to compromise in a partnership as wife and housewife, running a household, and the finances associated with their family and later their business? How did she train herself? Who coached her? Who was her mentor, who set the bar for her? Because we all know the bar was pretty high—we all had to be on form whenever Baba and Dida were involved in a function or family visit.’

The bar was set pretty high this day, and, apart from the presentation of telegrams from the Queen and Prime Minister John Key, among others, the highlight of the day was Baba’s own response—up on her feet with the energy of someone many years younger, holding the microphone and addressing her family and friends as if she did this every day. It was beautiful to see how much enjoyment she took away from this day—no wonder that the night before she had bid goodnight to her family with the words, ‘Lucka norch [good night]—I see you when I am 100!’

Encounter. The tables were turned for this month’s encounter, as Natalie Oldfield opened up her home to some very special guests.

It’s no secret that the thing that drives me most in life, and particularly in business and publishing, is the desire to honour my Gran, Dulcie May Booker. 

The simple reason for this is that, of anyone I know, she has made the biggest impact on my life, by her selfless love of others—that unconditional love that would accept anyone, no matter their particular quirks or life situation.

On many occasion, I saw her welcome into her home, and to her table, people  who others found difficult. And she did it with a level of understanding and grace that always took my breath away. 

Her love and grace for these people were shown predominantly around food. Food was the meeting place, from where Granny would open her arms and accept anyone, sharing with them the love she had put into the making of whatever she placed upon the table.

She was a special lady who made an impression on everyone who came into contact with her. 

Over the past five years I have had the privilege of honouring Dulcie through my store in Mt Eden and in my cookbooks, all of them filled with her inspiration. And this month, for the final Encounter of this year, I was able to honour her with a meal that I know she would have loved.

Readers of this series will know that over the past few issues, residents from around the distribution area of the magazine have opened their homes to David and myself, and shared meals with us so that we can ‘encounter’ them around food.

We wanted to say thank you to all those people by hosting a dinner at my home, which also gave them the opportunity to encounter one another. Many of them had never met, so it was a first for most of us.

And I don’t need to say how amazing it was to catch up with everyone again. If the gift of grace is a special thing, then the experience of shared grace takes it to another level—and these wonderfully gracious people brought their own magic into my home in a very memorable way.

And of course, as Dulcie taught me very early in life, nothing brings people together better than food prepared with love. For this occasion, we planned an evening meal in two halves—the first a very casual time around beautiful cheeses, meats, relishes, pickles, honey, breads and dips. These were accompanied with French champagne and several bottles of syrah and sauvignon. 

The second half was a more formal setting, fitting of the courses of desserts that I had been looking forward to preparing for months!

As the rain held off, we gathered outside on the deck for the ‘main event’ (since dessert is the main event of every meal for me!!). We had four courses—vanilla bean semifreddo with stewed rhubarb and nut crumble; valrhona chocolate log; Dulcie’s famous Christmas pudding with nutmeg sauce and fresh cream (see the recipe in this section); and petit fours of chocolate-dipped strawberries, lemon tarts, and choc-dipped mint macaroons. 

Amazingly, as the night progressed we discovered that several guests were on a dietary ‘detox’—I guess it says something about the desserts that everyone’s detox was broken for just one night.

I’ll never forget the look on Gran’s face when she was able to see the reaction in others to the food that she shared. That special delight in other people’s joy really is something else.

And I guess that the best way to have honoured Gran this past year is to have experienced something of that feeling myself. Without her, perhaps I never would have known what that feeling was. But thanks to her, I recognise it as love, which truly does make all good things even better.

—with David Williams

BAKE.

Christmas Day would not be complete without my Gran’s famous Christmas pudding—it was the highlight of the day. The smell of it cooking and the taste … mmm, sensational. It’s still the perfect example of how the taste of food brings back such wonderful memories. It was only ever eaten one day a year so there was never any left. And the highlight for me was the nutmeg sauce. Gran’s tip was to always use whole nutmegs and grate them yourself… Natalie Oldfield.

Granny's Famous Christmas Pudding

PUDDING

5 large cups Flour

2 lbs (900g) Sultanas

1 lb (455g) Currants

1 lb (455g) Raisins

1½ ozs (42g) Lemon Peel, finely chopped

1 lb (455g) Suet (Shortening) 

1 teaspoon Salt

4 teaspoons Baking Powder

4 Eggs

1 lb (455g) Raw Sugar

2 teaspoons Vanilla

1 tablespoon Golden Syrup

2 cups Milk

2 cups Water

NUTMEG SAUCE

3 tablespoons Butter

6 flat tablespoons Flour

4 tablespoons Sugar

½ teaspoon Salt

1½ Whole Nutmegs, grated

¼ cup Cold Water

Up Close and Dangerous MARK GARRISON sits down with restaurant rock star Tony Astle of Antoine’s, and discovers a man whose particular genius was honed in the face of estrangement and loss.

The term survivor has become a dreaded cliché, but there simply isn’t a better word to use when describing chef Tony Astle. In the notoriously cutthroat and demanding restaurant industry, Tony has remained at the top of his game, giving the new legion of Young Turks a run for their money. 

For 40 years Tony has manned the stove at his eponymous restaurant Antoine’s, in Parnell.  He has toiled all those years in the ‘same funny little kitchen that hasn’t changed much. It looks like a prison and it is a prison.’ 

Tony has mentored many of the city’s top chefs—he counts many of his regulars as friends, yet food critics misunderstand him, and he rarely ventures out. He is hardly an enigma however. Tony’s mouth is notorious.  He is a proud provocateur. Get him started on a topic, any topic, and watch the flames fly. He uses sharp words like butcher knives, quick and ruthless, cutting to the bone. His skills as a raconteur are as tightly-honed as his palate.

He is temperamental, talented and unapologetically stubborn. His dedication to his craft is matched by his fierce work ethic. However, like most chefs he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. What is apparent however, even to casual acquaintances, is that Tony is an original through-and-through. 

Growing up as a youngster in Christchurch the stove called out to him. Not necessarily as an artistic vessel, but rather because it simply made him popular. It was obvious even then that cooking was his forté. He was entrusted with cooking the sacred Sunday dinner and as a result got permission to duck out of Sunday school.  Traditionally it was the roast hogget which was prepared for Sunday dinners in New Zealand. 

‘Lamb was too expensive so it was hogget,’ Tony says. ‘It was very strong, smelly stuff. Our whole house reeked of lamb. In those days you put the roast on at 9 am and didn’t eat it until one, so it was really yuck.’ He was just eight years old.

Tony also loved to bake cakes, but not necessarily because he loved sweets. 

‘You were quite popular if you could bake cakes, and I liked being popular. It was very calculated.

‘I actually liked baking for some reason. I hate baking now but I enjoyed making cakes because it was easier to do those. We didn’t really eat anything but meat, sausages and stuff. New Zealanders really didn’t eat much; just meat which was boiled or stewed. You had your lamb on Sunday, on Monday you had it as shepherd’s pie—the bone was made into soup and the whole hogget lasted a week. We didn’t go to restaurants except Chinese restaurants for birthdays.’

Graham Kerr, famous as the Galloping Gourmet, proved to be a huge influence on the budding chef.  ‘I fell in love with the idea of being an entertainer more than a cook. Boys didn’t cook. Definitely boys did not cook. You didn’t do that sort of stuff. Especially my father; he couldn’t cope with it.’

Despite his father’s disapproval, or perhaps because of it, Tony began to investigate the Christchurch restaurant scene for an apprenticeship. 

‘There was no way I was going to be allowed university because my parents couldn’t afford it. My father came back from the war and had no job. He ended up working for the railway his whole life. They wanted me to do that sort of stuff. Go and work for the government because you could have a job for life. That would have lasted five minutes. My mother wanted me to be a Woolworth’s manager, and I went into a traineeship. That lasted two Saturdays because they caught me stealing the sweets and eating them.

‘There were two hotels in Christchurch and they were the only place you could do an apprenticeship. They were both upmarket hotels. I went to Warners Hotel for an interview. There was a seven-year apprenticeship and I thought “God, I’ll be old before I get out of there.” I couldn’t imagine seven years learning. We ate there, and it was the worst sausage I had ever eaten in my life. I thought, seven years to learn how to cook this! Nah, I can cook better than this already.

‘I went home and I wrote to Graham Kerr.  I told him I wanted to cook and asked him how I could become famous like him. Funnily enough I got a reply, saying, This is very unusual—a boy wanting to cook. He said, If you are that interested I can get you an interview at Le Normandie restaurant, which was in Wellington. I didn’t tell my parents I wrote, I just did it.”

Graham introduced Tony to Madame Louise, the owner of Le Normandie. 

‘It was the most upmarket thing I had ever seen. It had flock wallpaper, it had silver. It had men waiters. No one had ever seen a waiter before. They were all foreigners. Men didn’t wait tables in NZ in those days. It was little old ladies in white coats used to do the waiting.

‘Madame Louise was a big imposing woman. She was French and very famous at the time. Of course, she fell in love with a young boy from Christchurch. She thought I could be her son, and employed me as a waiter. As soon as I turned 15 I left home.’ 

Tony moved to Wellington and served tables while he attended cooking classes at Graham Kerr’s International Food School.

‘We didn’t tell my father until the day I was going,’ says Tony. ‘He wouldn’t have signed my leaving papers from school, so my mother had to do all that. The careers advisor at Shirley Boys High decided they didn’t want to have a boy from Shirley cooking. They just didn’t think it was a manly thing to do.

‘Madame Louise used to dress me up and every three months she would have to change my jacket because I was growing too quickly. I was very precocious. I used to make £5 a week and £20 a week in tips because I used to tell everyone I was an orphan—and they used to give me money because they felt sorry for me.’ 

While he enjoyed the experience of waiting tables, he discovered he did not have much of an aptitude for the technical demands of French silver service. 

‘We used to do a lot of cooking at the table. I was flambéing a chicken and caught a lady’s hair on fire. I put the ice bucket on her head and that was that. I ran into the toilet and didn’t come out for the whole night. Everything was cooked in the kitchen and finished up in the dining room. I thought, the flames aren’t big enough—so I poured half a bottle of brandy in and, of course, the whole thing blew up and so did her bouffant hairdo. That was the end of my waiting career.

‘There was no way Madame Louise was going to sack me. She wanted me to end up owning her restaurant. I was employed there to be her son forever. She looked after me like a mother. All she had was older foreign waiters and all of a sudden she had someone to look after. I didn’t repay her with kindness, because I left.’

Tony headed back to Christchurch, and The Coachman, which is where he says his career really started.

‘The Coachman was an entertaining restaurant. It was the first restaurant I had worked in that had a chef’s bar where your customers would sit in front of you so you could pretend you were somebody, flames came popping out. We were just exhibitionists really.’

Then one day a woman walked into his life and became his partner in both life and business. 

‘I have been very lucky to find someone like Beth,’ says Tony, who married in 1972. ‘Beth has worked here the whole time and still works here. We only see each other on Sunday. If you divide by seven we haven’t been married very long. We used to work day and night together but now she just does days and does the books. I really don’t see her until Sundays because I don’t get home until two in the morning and she is here at 6am. She does the vacuuming and polishes the silver.

‘We don’t have a life. This is our life. This restaurant is a funny one and that’s why it has probably lasted so long. Our customers are our friends and after 40 years the grandchildren of our original customers are now themselves customers. It is quite interesting. The restaurant is my social life. At night time, out of 10 of the tables I will know about five of the tables. We still have that loyalty. There are not many restaurants that have loyalty.’

When Tony received the lifetime achievement award from Cuisine magazine he didn’t go to the ceremony. When he hadn’t arrived he got a panic-stricken call asking where he was. 

‘You’re receiving an award. Get down here,’ he was told. Begrudgingly, Tony left the restaurant in his chef’s jacket and went to the ceremony. Tony got letters two days later: “You weren’t here, and we came here especially to see you.” Customers want to see you. Now if I have to go away or I am sick, we close.

‘I think it’s a trust thing. We have our detractors as you can imagine. Some of the food writers don’t get me. That’s fine, I don’t like them much either. I’m too opinionated for them. Someone once asked me if I had ever Googled myself. I thought no, I have never done that. Where did they get all this from? There is pages, and pages and pages. I spent three hours reading about myself.’

One of Tony’s enduring claims to fame is his mentorship of many of the city’s most successful chefs. ‘Some of them are famous and some of them aren’t. Simon Gault has been hugely successful and he was my first apprentice. Michael Meredith was a trainee chef with me. I haven’t been to Meredith’s yet but my wife has been many times. I am very proud of them both and the success they have achieved.’

Despite his reputation as a mentor, Tony is less enamoured with today’s current crop of chef wannabes. 

‘Young apprentices today take you to task. They don’t have to work. You can’t say they are no good; but rather they are not yet competent. Give me a break! If you are useless you are useless. I try and tell people I think you should change your job because you are never ever going to do this. You know if someone’s going to cook or they’re not. When people go through the motions, I would like to give them a smack in the head.’

How long can he keep his energy and spirit up for the restaurant? 

‘I am thinking 45 years now. I’m still healthy and still energetic,’ he says, knocking on wood. ‘Maybe another 10 years. I don’t know. I don’t think Beth thinks that’s a good idea.”

 The conversation turns unexpectedly sombre when Tony recalls his estrangement with his father over his choice of career. 

‘In 1965 boys didn’t cook and it wasn’t a sexy job. I didn’t exist to my father for 10 years. I went down to Christchurch after being away for five years and I went out with my family. My father was a very good cricketer and we were out, and his friends asked who I was.  I’m his son.  They would say, you can’t be, he’s only got four children. He never said I existed because he was embarrassed I was cooking for a living. That was the worst time of my life; finding out I didn’t exist anymore. I never forgave him. 

‘We had a big dinner here. It was probably our 20th birthday. I got him up to Auckland. He had never worn a dinner suit and it was all black tie. He stood up and apologised in front of all these people, and I stood up and said I’m sorry, I am not accepting it. Of course, the rest of the people thought I was the worst person in the whole world, because I couldn’t accept my father’s apology.

‘I spent a week with him before he died and we did sort of make-up. I still didn’t apologise to him. I didn’t see why I had to accept his apology. He ruined 10 years of my life, and it pissed me off quite frankly.’

With the demands of his own business taking precedence, Tony rarely gets the chance to sample the offerings of the city’s vibrant and oft-changing dining scene. 

‘I went to Ponsonby the other night and that’s probably the first time in three years I have been there. When do I go out late at night? They are all lazy bastards around this town. They all close at nine o’clock. I take my last booking at eleven. If someone wants to come in at eleven, I’ll take them.’ 

And this is where the conversation winds down. Tony is, and will undoubtedly continue to be, a renegade. He is the original restaurant rock star. Running his business his way and taking no prisoners. Like him or leave him, Tony Astle will not be ignored.

The year really did come full circle for me as I prepared the content for this issue’s food section. 

Exactly one year ago, I was being interviewed by The Gardens about my philosophy of food and love, particularly around my Gran Dulcie May’s famous quote, which is up on our blackboard at Dulcie May Kitchen: ‘It’s not what you do but how much love you put into the doing.’

Fast forward one year, and I’m sitting in a guest room at the Langham Hotel in Auckland, interviewing the US philosopher and educator from whom I learnt so much about love, and who continues to shape my understanding of life, relationships, and even business.

And I’m conducting that interview with the very person who interviewed me for The Gardens. 

When David interviewed me last year, his focus was on Dulcie’s quote, and if I’m honest I think he was trying to catch me out—testing whether it was just a nice quote up on the wall, or whether it actually made a difference to how Dulcie May Kitchen operates. David had focused on this topic in his academic work, so it was dear to his heart.

He discovered that it’s not only integral to my approach to food, but it’s central to all life for me. And I came to this mainly through the influence of two people—my Gran Dulcie May, and educator John Demartini.

Demartini is known around the world for his unique understanding of how love is central to the physical laws of the universe. And he uses this to help people focus on relationships, business, personal goals, money—every aspect of life.

So when we heard that he was back in Auckland for another series of seminars and public meetings, it seemed fitting to finish the year by talking to the very man who had been such an important part of that first Gardens interview.

And it was a fascinating hour, with Dr Demartini and Dr Williams going at it for almost 59 minutes on some very deep, philosophical discussion.

I had one question that I wanted to ask ... but I had to wait my turn while these two great minds went at it.

We heard some amazing things about Demartini’s story, particularly the pivotal moment that changed his life. It came after a difficult few teen years, during which he had been travelling as a surfer with little more to look forward to than the ocean and drugs. After a key encounter with a teacher in Hawaii, he decided to turn his life around and become an educator—but then failed in his first attempt to enter college. With his vision in tatters, Demartini was devastated.

‘I drove home crying,’ he told us. ‘I came into the living room at my parents’ house, went on the floor, curled up under this little bible stand and just literally bawled. Because I couldn’t see my vision. The vision I saw was being a teacher around the world—now the vision was blank. All I could hear was my first grade teacher: I would never be able to read or write or communicate or amount to anything or go very far in life.

‘My mother came home and saw me laying on the floor crying. She said, Son what happened? I said, Mum, I blew the test. I needed 72 to pass, I got 27. I guess I’m dyslexic.

‘She just paused. At that moment she didn’t know what to say. But then she spoke up and said something only a mother can say. She put her hand on my shoulder and she said, Son, whether you become a great teacher, healer and philosopher, and travel the world like you dream; whether you return to Hawaii and ride giant waves like you’ve done; or whether you return to the streets panhandling as a bum like you’ve done; I just want to let you know that your father and I are going to love you no matter what.

‘So in that moment, there was an unconditional love. When she said that my hand went into a fist and I looked up and I saw that vision, of me standing up and speaking before a million people. I saw that vision and I said to myself, spontaneously, I’m going to master this thing called reading; I’m going to master this thing called studying, teaching, philosophy. I’m going to do whatever it takes, travel whatever distance, pay whatever price, to give my service to love. I’m not going to let any human being on the face of the earth stop me from my mission. As far as I’m concerned there’s no alternative.

‘I was 18. I hugged my mum and that’s when I knew the power of love. 

‘Unconditional love has a power that is hard to describe. Things happen.’

After an hour of this type of discussion, I probably should have known the answer to my question before I asked it. But I wanted to know—if John Demartini was unable to speak, but was able to say one thing to whoever he met for the rest of his life, what would it be? He paused for a very brief moment, and answered:

‘Thank you, I love you.’

And that pretty much sums up the year for me—discovering more about grace and love in the context of family and business life, and almost always around food. 

With Demartini’s words in my ears, I can truly say how grateful I am for 2013, and how excited I am about what 2014 will bring.

Very crafty! Never one to let an opportunity pass him by, intrepid writer MARK GARRISON heads to the Lumsden pub in Newmarket for a special report. Yeah, right Mark! ‘Special report’!

A trip to a pub or bar in Auckland can be a frustrating experience for fans of beer.  Generally, beer drinkers are faced with similar selections of mass-produced products, making a visit to your local watering hole a sometimes stultifying experience. A customer’s right to variety has fallen victim to the brewing giants’ need to control the offerings of as many bars as possible. 

There is hope, however, for the palates of beer connoisseurs. The craft beer revolution, which has been spreading throughout the country from epicentres like Wellington and Nelson, is finally reaching Auckland, and beer fans are rejoicing. Savvy bar owners, like Evan King of the Lumsden Freehouse in Newmarket, are embracing the craft trend and rejecting the traditional dominance of the major brewers over the region’s bars.

On April 1, the Lumsden changed its name and became officially known as the Lumsden Freehouse, a change which reflects the bar’s new status as the city’s premiere destination for serious beer fans.

With more 113 craft beers on its list and 14 beers on tap, the Lumsden Freehouse is truly revelling in its newfound freedom from the exceedingly strict contracts of the major breweries. Fans of specific beers such as IPAs now regularly ask for the IPA list, and are always curious about what new beers the bar plans to stock. The tap beers still account for the largest percentage of sales and the bar has now begun to sell flights of five different tap beers, totalling a litre of beer, for $22. The huge variety of bottled craft beers on offer are a great way to experience new flavours and new regions, says Evan.  

‘We are not incumbent to any brewery,’ he adds. ‘We are not signed to a contract with anybody. We don’t have to sell anybody’s product. We can do whatever we want.’

It is a change he has been aching to make ever since he bought the business seven years ago, operating it as the successful American-style saloon, the Mustang Bar and Grill. 

‘I always wanted this space, but then I had to take on the brewery contract the previous owner had signed,’ says Evan, who also owns Newmarket hotspot Sugar Bar. ‘It was a pretty horrendous contract. It was a long-term, high volume kind of thing. 

‘There has always been a duopoly in this country. DB and Lion have owned everything. No matter where you go, when you walk into a bar and look at the taps you know immediately whether you are in a DB bar or a Lion bar. They will fight tooth and nail to get your business.’

While the contracts can be beneficial to the breweries and the bar owners, customers pay the price in terms of choice.

‘Everybody’s happy except the customer. People are looking for a different experience. They are bored of the same old Lion and DB bars. They want variety and new products.’

The Lumsden Freehouse stocks new labels like Deep Creek, Harrington’s and Yeastie Boy’s. While it’s proud of its huge range of independent labels, fans of major-label products shouldn’t feel alienated. The bar still carries some major brands and often offers Beck’s and Guinness on tap. 

Evan is also working towards building the largest collection of bourbon in Auckland. They already have 15 bourbons on the back bar with more to come. The goal, Evan says, is to ‘give the customer the best experience we can give them. It’s a pub, but it’s a nice pub.’

There's a moment in the conversation with Ashley Church, CEO of the Newmarket Business Association, when he stops himself from suggesting how a particular point might be framed in this story, and says 'I sound like David Brent now.'

He's referring, of course, to the character played with excruciatingly cringing perfection by Ricky Gervais, in the classic British comedy, The Office.

And while Church is nothing like Brent, there are some peculiar similarities. There's a massive intellect, for one thing, and an ability to take the conversation to humour without notice. There's a vast knowledge of history, politics and popular culture, for another. And there's the not so-well-known musical past—where Brent mucked around with a pop band called Foregone Conclusion, Church has three musicals to his credit.

And, just like Brent, Church is particularly difficult to categorise. With a CV that is one part politics, one part business, he's probably best described as a 'fixer'—the person who's brought in to an organisation to work out what's going wrong, then staying at the helm as it moves towards solutions.

It's precisely what he's achieved at Newmarket Business Association, a role that's allowed him to draw on expertise he's developed across his previous roles.

Which is why 'the fixer' is the label he's most comfortable with.

'In a very simplistic sense, I've had two careers over my lifetime ... nine years as a city councillor, in Napier, which provided an enormous apprenticeship, I suppose, in a whole range of stuff—all around how to do things across large groups, how to fuel economic development in the context of a community.

'I lost my seat in 1998, and so then there was a corporate career—that was a series of roles which was very much about fixing broken things.' 

As an extreme example, he cites his role at Pulse Energy.

'They were in big trouble—they had 400 customers after about five years and had blown through $25 million of shareholder investment. I’d like to think that my contribution was to recognise that they still had options. So, I started a new retail business within the company called Just Energy, and we went out and got another 20,000 customers in the first year. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that that probably saved the company. 

'That's an extreme one but there's elements of that in pretty much everything that I've done—which led me to this role.'

'This role' being CEO of one of the largest business associations in the country.

For all intents and purposes, Church says, NBA was facing some major challenges when he joined it in October 2010. Retail sales had been dropping year-on-year and there was discord among the members.

The past three years have been about implementing the strategies he presented to the board as part of his appointment.

'There was a whole range of projects. For example, there was the need to broaden the base of retail businesses that we promoted. We used to focus mostly on high fashion. So, if I look back on the achievements, one of them was to significantly increase the profile on Newmarket hospitality, which is now taken quite seriously and which now rates strongly in consumer surveys. And even within the fashion space, while we recognised the importance of fashion to our brand—we broadened it so it wasn't just about high end fashion. It's now about fashion across the board. 

'Two thirds of Newmarket's businesses aren't retailers, and so we had to look at the services that we provided in that space as well. So there's a whole range of things that we do now around providing value-added services to members that aren't in the retailers' space but have other objectives for operating their business out of Newmarket. 

'And the events thing's a big deal—we’ve gone from pretty much zero events to nine or 10 high profile events, and probably 40 events overall in the year to drive people to come here. And I take quite a lot of pride in that because that didn't exist at all—that's completely new off the canvas.'

I put to Church that it appears from his career highlights that he is best suited to taking on an organisation that's already found its niche—that he's not so much an innovator, as a manager.

Church muses. Then disagrees.

‘I don’t know if it’s really for me to say—but I’d like to think I have a strong innovative streak. In terms of those events, for example, I've driven the design of all of them. Catwalk on the Street, for example, which you might think, well so what, it's a fashion parade—it's very specifically designed. There's a number of fashion events in Auckland at the moment, and they're mostly about promoting next year's range. We made a deliberate decision not to do that and to make ‘Catwalk’ about what’s in-store right now. It's designed for people to see [what's available] now so that they can actually go and buy it. Another example would be the Next Face of Newmarket, which is not just a contest, it's a segue into our promotional programme.

'So the innovation there was coming up with a contest which tied in with our ethos as a business community, but which ended up with somebody who we could then use in our promotional campaigns. 

'Writing is also a big passion for me. I've written three stage show musicals over the past few years, and I feel like I have at least three books in here [tapping his head] that will pop out at some stage. I'm reasonably clear on the form that they'll take. A couple of them are novels and one's a non-fiction.'

Which brings us to the key question. 'Fixers' aren't people who stick around for long. Their shelf life in a role typically aligns with the time it takes to steer an organisation back on track—then they look for the next challenge. 

'Three years is actually a reasonable stint,' says Church, with typical candour. 'But yes, I recognise that there probably does need to be some new blood and some new vision in this role at some stage in the next 12 months. I’m also conscious that I want my next challenge to be something with substantially more longevity—the type of role that I can stay with for a long time'

If this conversation were an episode of The Office, Brent would typically have the final word—a summary statement of his philosophy on life and work. 

I put this to Church, and he doesn't disappoint:

'I've got this really strong philosophy that people come to work for a third of their life, so it's really important that not only are they happy, but they can see where that leads them. 

My wife recently bought a new car. It is black and shiny and has an engine that doesn’t sound like it’s straining out a poo. It has one of those things on the back that makes it go faster—I’m not sure how it does this, but I’m assured it has something to do with the wind.

In short, it’s very much a man’s car. But there’s only one manly driver in my home, and she doesn’t let me anywhere near it. 

Meanwhile, my car is like a battery-powered children’s toy. It has so little power it may as well be a scooter with doors. 

I shouldn’t complain though. I have had a very poor history with cars, and frankly my wife has lost faith in my ability to operate a vehicle with any more power than a ride-on lawn mower.

I don’t think I am a particularly bad driver. But I am very ignorant in the things that, as a man, I should have known about cars from birth. I have man friends who know what words like cam and drive shaft and chassis actually mean, and what their relevance is to daily life and their prowess in the bedroom. I have been with these friends when they have bought cars, and marvelled at the level of authenticity with which they did such things as check the water colour, or the texture of the oil, to determine whether or not the car was a ‘good buy’. 

I have since mimicked their behaviour in order to impress such people as car salesmen, AA patrol officers, and children. But no matter how faithfully I reproduce the way they lift the bonnet, examine the dipstick, or stick my finger in the radiator, I’m convinced that anyone watching can see that I have no idea what I am doing.

I have adopted this trait from my father, who is the ultimate ‘Bullshitting Man’. People like us hear the words and repeat them—we see the behaviour and copy it—but we have no idea what we are doing.

It was my father who taught me how to kick start a vehicle from first gear, which I always believed was a slightly magical way of resurrecting a car that had broken down or run out of petrol. And early on in my courtship, I had the opportunity to impress my wife with that very technique, when my Ford Escort refused to start outside her house. While she pushed the car by herself, I sat in the driver’s seat, my foot manipulating the clutch and the gear stick just the way dad had showed me. We went around an entire block, my wife pushing the car like Xena Warrior Princess. But the magic just didn’t happen. By the end we, or rather she, had pushed the car all the way round to the front of her house again, and she was close to a cardiac arrest. I was slightly put out. We called the AA.

Some years later, I ran out of petrol on a country road, driving my wife and mother-in-law back to the city. My mother-in-law is at her most fierce when ridiculing men who fail to keep their cars fuelled up—so she was not happy at all. She’s a very gracious woman though, and, perhaps because my wife was pregnant, offered to push the car while I kick started it. So yes, I sat in the driver’s seat again while my mother-in-law pushed my rather large Holden down a hill, as I attempted to bring the car back to life. But no matter how hard she shoved, the car wouldn’t move more than a few centimetres. She put her old shoulder into it and pushed and pushed, to no avail. Unable to tell whether her sweating was from the effort or from menopause, we all agreed that she should take a small break. And that’s when I noticed I’d had the handbrake on the whole time. Of course, I never admitted it. But I did make up for it by congratulating her heartily once the car was finally started.

My most embarrassing motor vehicle moment happened not on the road but on the race track. Yes, the race track. 

The circumstances were these: I had been invited by Australia’s then Formula Ford champion to drive his race car around a local raceway as a way of introducing me to his world, on the understanding that I would become something like his biographer. I would attend the upcoming championships and document his flourishing career, and all this would begin by stepping into his shoes and experiencing the thrill of racing his precious vehicle at high speed.

In my defence, I never once told him that I knew the slightest thing about vehicles, particularly high powered ones. He just assumed that since I was a man I would be able to drive a car very fast. But not only was he wrong about this, I couldn’t even move the vehicle away from the garage.

There is nothing more terrifying than sitting in the cockpit of a race car and being told to rev the engine higher and higher and higher, until you feel your innards will spill from your bottom. To the uninitiated, the sound and the energy coming from an engine revving so high beggars belief. And as the Champ shouted at me through my visor to push the vehicle harder, I came very close to tears. On the verge of hyperventilation, and probably death, I did as I was told, and finally the car moved.

I managed two and a half laps before my accident happened. As I approached a notorious crested hair-pin, I locked the gears and the car flew into a 360 spin. And then remained in the middle of the track, pointing the wrong way (okay, so perhaps a 180 spin). 

I heard from the Australian national Formula Ford champion only once after that day. There was no biography. No trip to the national championships. Just a curt phone call to inform me that the damage to the gearbox had cost $20,000 to fix.

‘Was it me?’ I said, in my least manly voice. 

To which he merely sighed—as men do when faced with the reality that not all men are made of the same stuff.

Off the shelf

Lou Reed: The Life Mick Wall

The world lost a true creative genius with the October 27 passing of Lou Reed. Famed rock biographer Mick Wall has already put his name to histories of Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Metallica and Iron Maiden and now turns his brilliant spotlight on one of the world’s most beloved indie musicians. Singer, songwriter and guitarist Lou Reed was born on March 2, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York. In 1965, he co-founded the Velvet Underground, a rock band managed by Andy Warhol. Reed went solo in the 1970s, scoring a hit with the song Walk on the Wild Side and releasing more than 16 albums, including Coney Island Baby and Berlin. We have limited stock of this definitive biography – get in quick for a copy of this seminal read for December. 

The Big New Yorker Book of Cats The New Yorker Magazine

The highly anticipated feline sequel to last year’s canine edition—a shiny, well-fed tome that gathers the best cat-related articles, essays, short stories, poems, cartoons, covers, and other feats of literature and art from the New Yorker archives. Spanning nearly nine decades, this collection features contributions from such celebrated minds as John Updike, Margaret Atwood, James Thurber, Susan Orlean, and even the patron saint of ‘the other side,’ famed dog-lover E. B. White. A big, beautiful book for the cat-lover in your life!

Dead Interviews Dan Crowe

These ingenious interviews will amuse, provoke and delight. Veering from the intensely serious to the wildly silly, Dead Interviews grants living writers the chance to sit down with their heroes and flex their cerebral muscles, or simply indulge in some bookish gossip with a deceased icon. Contributors include: David Mitchell on Samuel Johnson, Cynthia Ozick on Henry James, AM Homes on Richard Nixon, Ian Rankin on Conan Doyle, Geoff Dyer on Nietzsche, Rick Moody on Jimi Hendrix and Douglas Coupland on Andy Warhol, who complains that ’nobody dies any more’.

The Book of Legendary Lands Umberto Eco

GEMMA TAYLOR divides her time between studies and work. She’s our very own Bridget Jones, mulling over relationships and the deep questions of life. This month, she’s on about forgiveness—how right it is, and how hard it is. And yes, there’s a boy involved!

I forgave someone the other day. It was a boy, as they usually are. It wasn’t grand or magical, just a sort of release—almost like a small puff of residual smoke evaporated from my smoking gun of a heart. And in that moment, I was done.

I have been reading a wee bit of Anne Lamott lately; she is a tenacious Christian activist, with a beautiful simplicity about her. She says swear words and has dread locks and that is half the reason I like her. Anyway, she says that forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past. 

When I first read this I thought, ‘Oh no Anne, we must never give up hope. How terrible of you to suggest so.’ But then as I pondered every dead horse I had ever flogged, I noticed that not a single one of them had jumped up and cantered away happily. It was then that I exhaled.

I know that it all seems painfully simple, forgive and forget, and live and let live and all that. But half of the time I don’t think it is. I, too, am trying to get down to the heart of the matter, Mr Don Henley (subtle reference there to the brilliant Henley song about forgiveness, The Heart of the Matter). And I too think it’s about forgiveness—but I’m wondering, why is it so bloody hard?

What about when someone doesn’t refill the toilet roll and you find yourself in a sticky—hopefully not literally—situation? Or when I am misrepresented and under-appreciated? Or worse still, when I am completely and utterly wronged, my innocence still in tack while the perpetrator pokes me with a stick? What then, Mr Henley?

I think it costs us to forgive because it requires us to lay aside any sort of claim of justice and allow the other to move forward free of guilt. And we don’t always want to do that. It is deeply unfair to allow the baddy a free pass when we have been taught from the get-go to punish the sucker! 

But maybe, it is more than that; maybe it costs us to forgive because it highlights in ourselves our own potential to make bad choices and hurt the people we love. Maybe, in forgiving we are exposed and find that we are not so innocent after all.

That was certainly the state I found myself in as I carried around my heavy, cast iron case of resentment. As I set it down, not only did my arms heave a sigh of relief, my hands were free to make a peace sign and shake on it. No longer chasing justice, I am free to love. And I realise that this could be problematic, but maybe it is possible to love someone in spite of how they have hurt us.

Stu Cross, coffee roaster extraordinaire, continues his series for us. This issue, the love that goes into a great cafe

There are some great cafes in Auckland these days. From the food, to the coffee, to the whole social aspect of catching up with friends or colleagues, cafes have taken on a great importance in the lives of Kiwis. 

We’re not quite as passionate about coffee as the Italians, but we’re not far off. Every household in Italy has a stove top, so I don’t think we’re quite at that level. But we do have a food and coffee culture that’s unique to NZ. How many of us regularly say, Let’s meet at the local cafe and have breakfast? It’s such a huge thing. 

So, what’s the secret to running a cafe that people want to come back to again and again? Let’s think about what it might be.

For one thing, we have some amazing chefs in this country. We have chefs who are recognised overseas, and they are bringing some of that overseas culture back with them. Yes, we’ve had some great restaurants—we all know that. But now we’re starting to develop some great cafes. 

Up to now, it’s always been about the eggs benny and the big breakfast. But now people are a bit more focussed on their food, and the expectations are higher. It’s the same in the pubs. You can go into a pub these days and get an amazing meal—it’s basically restaurant-quality food without the prices.

Plus, I think awareness of great food is growing generally. We’ve just had the Taste event in Auckland—hugely popular. We have food pages in all the top publications in Auckland (including this one!). People can’t get enough of TV shows featuring celebrity chefs. Everybody is loving their food.

So, of course, cafes that have great food and great coffee are going to be popular. But it’s not just about the food and coffee. It’s about the vibe. And the vibe comes from a very specific place.

When people are gathered in a cafe and they are enjoying their food and their coffee together with great friends, there’s a lot of love at that table. You can just feel it. And when there’s a lot of love at that table, there’s a lot of love from the staff. It filters through the whole place.

And when you walk into a cafe you can instantly tell whether or not it has a nice atmosphere. You know whether the chef gets on with the front of house. Or whether the owner gives a shit or doesn’t. It’s totally reflected in the vibe of the place. 

I’ve had a couple of businesses now, so I speak from experience when I say that I’ve walked into a few businesses and fallen in love with the place before any work was done. You can put some of that down to the high ceilings, which I love, or the old school feel. But most of it comes from the people that work there.

Let’s face it—most successful cafes are busy all the time because of the feeling that filters down from the owner. There are some people in the industry who are professionals, and some who are fly-by-night. What you’re looking for in a great cafe comes from the owners, so if, for them, it’s all about the money, it won’t be a great experience. But if they love good food and good coffee, it will show. 

And there’s a reason why successful cafes retain their staff. 

So, to summarise, there are some key ingredients to a successful cafe. And they are all to do with passion and love. 

Everybody’s interested in something. For some people, their passion is model planes. I’m not one of them, but there you have it. You can be a good operator, a good chef—whatever. I’m not the hungriest, best business operator, but I love what I do. Theoretically, that shows. 

Annaliese Jones is a local naturopath who keeps her feet firmly on the ground. She begins a regular feature for The Gardens with a closer look at that peculiar vegetable asparagus—its benefits, its peculiarities, and why it makes our pee smell funny.

Talk about starting on a contentious note. For a vegetable, asparagus has some issues. It’s quite a process to grow, it makes your urine smell strange, and it’s got a distinct nana-like air about it. It probably has those white bread asparagus rolls to thank for that. But asparagus deserves a place on your plate as much as super foods like broccoli and kale. Packed with impressive amounts of nutrients, asparagus also has the unique ability to tell you something very interesting about yourself. This something is whether or not you have the quite fortunate condition ‘asparagus anosmia’. More about that later.

Where does it originate?

It’s funny to think of asparagus being native to somewhere. It seems more like a plant that needs careful cultivation. I can’t quite imagine seeing it just poking out of the ground by the side of the road in Russia, but its roots, so to speak, are Eastern European. By 3000BC its popularity had spread as far as Africa, where it was a sought-after delicacy for offering to the Egyptian gods. The first emperor of Rome apparently had a fleet of men solely for the purpose of hauling asparagus. I’m not sure if this was around the Empire during conquests or just from the gardens to his kitchen. Either way it would be a great job title: Asparagus Hauler. 

In more recent times it has been very popular in France, where monks have grown it in monasteries since the 1400s. French monasteries somehow give asparagus a romantic air, and the fact that the French refer to the tips of the asparagus as points d’amour (love tips) after King Louis XV’s mistress, adds to the romance. That’s the kind of scandal that asparagus’s dowdy reputation could do with!

Here are some other good reasons to get into asparagus.

1. It’ll make your skin glow

Those green spears are bursting with Vitamin A, which is a well known friend of your skin cells. In fact, it gives you 20 percent of your daily requirement for health, and it’s not just your skin that will thank you. One of vitamin A’s most important functions is keeping certain cells in the body lubricated. When a deficiency of vitamin A develops we can get dry eyes, dry nasal passages, as well as damaged digestive and urinary tracts. This is because vitamin A is essential for the health of our epithelial cells, a key component of the aforementioned tissues. Without vitamin A, epithelial cells become dry, damaged and prone to infection. Another sign of vitamin A deficiency I commonly see in the clinic is follicular hyperkeratosis. This is where you get dry scaly pustules or bumps around hair follicles on the upper arm, elbow and other places. Sound familiar?

Vitamin A also has famous benefits for our vision, as brought to light by another vegetable, the carrot. Carrots are bursting with vitamin A and as such have become the poster food for healthy eyesight and night vision. While carrots deserve that claim to fame, there is only so much of one vegetable you can eat. So add some asparagus for variety!

2. Asparagus can strengthen your bones while helping your blood clot.

A whopping 70 percent of your daily vitamin K requirement can be had in just one cup of asparagus. Among other things, Vitamin K contributes to the healthy clotting of our blood, and to a strong skeleton. It’s even been shown to boost bone density and reduce hip fractures.

Interestingly, our intestinal flora make a large amount of vitamin K too, so prolonged use of antibiotics, and subsequent reduction in our healthy gut bugs, reduces one of our body’s main sources of this important vitamin. The other main food source of vitamin K is beef liver. Give me asparagus any day!

Asparagus also contains folate and iron, which are essential for a myriad of functions in the body. Folate is also known as folic acid or B9, and most people’s knowledge of it stems from its standard prescription in pregnancy. It is important for reproduction because it plays a big role in DNA synthesis and repair. Pregnancy is, of course, a time of extremely rapid cell division and DNA synthesis. We also need folate for the growth of healthy red blood cells and the prevention of anaemia along with iron. Speaking of iron, you will find a dose of that in asparagus too. In fact, you will get 11 percent of your daily requirement from roughly 2/3 cup. Not bad.

3. Storage

In order to maintain good levels of all these nutrients you must be careful about the way you store your spears. Asparagus has what’s called a fast respiration rate, meaning it perishes quickly and in the process loses nutrient content after picking. Refrigeration helps and wrapping your asparagus in a wet paper towel will also slow the process. Seek out fresh asparagus and be sure to eat it within two days of purchase to get the full benefit nutritionally.

Can you smell it?

Mark Mcconnell takes a break from watching movies and listening to music and talks to us about A Theology of the Ordinary, the mundane and the routine, and what probably happened the day jesus was born.

When I’m not watching movies, listening to music or thinking about how zombies instruct us in what it means to be human, I teach theology. Weird, you might think. I know—I sometimes think it’s weird as well. What does theology have to do with ‘real’ life? What difference does all this God-talk make anyways? Don’t religious types live in some sort of unhealthy detachment from everyday reality? These are questions I continually ask myself … and sometimes struggle to find answers to.

Christmas is supposed to be that time of the year when we think more about religious and spiritual themes, but ironically, I often feel that the familiar imagery and telling of the ‘Christmas story’ actually adds to my struggle. You know the one: Mary and Joseph arrive late at night in Bethlehem to register for the census. It’s not their home town; they need to find somewhere to stay. The inn-keeper of the local inn tells them he has no spare rooms. With no other option, and wearied from their journey, the couple spend the night in a stable, and there the child is born. 

The scene is firmly fixed in our imaginations—the baby Jesus born in a secluded stable surrounded by some sort of mystical glow, perhaps even with a star shining down on the baby through a hole in a thatched stable roof. It’s all very romantic, which adds to that nice warm Christmassy feeling. But chances are, it didn’t happen like this. Chances are it was way more ordinary. In fact, what the traditional romantic stable scene does is distance the story from everyday reality.

Sorry to break it to you, but there was most likely no inn-keeper. Just read the original story and you’ll see there is no mention. Yes, you’ll read the word ‘inn’ but that can be translated ‘guest room’. Rather than there being ‘no room in the inn’, there was in fact ‘no room in the guest room’. The only room available was the common living room. Back in the day there was no separate stable for the animals. At night they shared the same space as people and added to the warmth. Not only was there no inn-keeper, there was almost certainly no stable.

Here’s probably what happened. Joseph arrives with Mary in Bethlehem and they most likely head to the home of a distant relative who has a large house with a guest room attached (which was not unusual). But the guest room is already occupied. Therefore the relative says that Mary and Joseph can stay with the rest of the family in the main living area. It’s the equivalent of ‘Sorry, you can’t sleep in our spare room but you are very welcome to sleep on the couch.’

And so, rather than being born in a stable, the baby is born in the main family room, where all the other family eat and sleep and where the animals are brought in at night. It’s ordinary; it’s not particularly romantic, and it doesn’t have a mystical glow about it. But it is ultimately disruptive because the Christian theological claim is that this is love in action. 

This is really a story about God showing up in the ultimate, but totally counter-intuitive, God-like way. And it happens in the middle of the banal and the everyday – in this case, an overcrowded, commonplace Jewish house; in the ordinariness of a nine-to-five, seven day a week, world. And, of course, this has to be the reality of love. If it’s not then I think I would rather be an atheist.

I actually think that we are all doing theology every day. But theology at its best is supposed to be disruptive. Dispelling our unhealthy romantic notions of what life should be like; bringing something new and startling; showing us what is real; breaking in with hope when there seems no hope—all right in the middle of the mundane and the routine. 

And I see this all over the place—in our best movies and TV shows; in the best of our popular music; in those moments of transcendence when we are least expecting them; in the surprising creativity of the human spirit; in open and honest relationships and friendships; and in simple acts of caring and compassion.