Author. Stone Soup — 02/ 08/ 2022
By Sarah Hopkinson
Imagine thriving food production systems within Aotearoa that are not only environmentally just, but socially equitable too.
Author. Stone Soup — 31/ 10/ 2018
These images are based on two ideas.
Artisans create value through years of trial through time and effort.
Where is the line between a meal and a work of art.
The images are presented as questions of outcome.
Ellen J Hemmings
Author. Stone Soup — 31/ 10/ 2018
In the fine dining Creole restaurants of New Orleans, great waiters are revered as much as the great food. Jacqui Gibson meets waiter Troy Becker who recently traded restaurant management for waiting tables at Commander’s Palace – and hasn’t looked back.
Author. Angela Clifford — 19/ 10/ 2018
As a family, we love mushroom hunting, and from open paddocks for ‘fieldies’ to forests for porcini, North Canterbury provides no end of habitat for adventure. It was pretty exciting stuff when my babies were little – nature’s own treasure hunt, full of intrigue and mystery. They would make so much noise that I’d tell them that if they weren’t quieter, the mushrooms would get scared and pull their heads below ground again.
Author. Lottie Hedley — 19/ 10/ 2018
Barbecue is a serious pastime in Texas. In Austin, folks line up outside the doors to Franklin Barbecue at six in the morning so they are first in when it opens at 11. The barbecue enthusiasts bring camp chairs to sit on and coolers full of snacks and beer; they throw footballs and befriend the folks next to them who have also made the pilgrimage.
Author. Ruby White — 17/ 10/ 2018
We were welcomed with overwhelming stillness. The house was perfect; thatched roof, mud walls, aged wind turbines turning lethargically in the garden. We knew we were in the right place when we saw the front door, a triple glazed shoji. With the Japanese sensibility radiating from everything, I felt like I’d been spirited away.
Author. Stone Soup — 11/ 10/ 2018
What could be better as a chef than to have a direct relationship with the people who grow your produce and an influence over what they grow? Or as a grower committed to producing high-quality produce to have an assured market, which is passionate about what you do and how you do it?
Author. Aaron McLean — 11/ 10/ 2018
Matt Lamason didn’t realise when he started Peoples Coffee in Wellington 14 years ago that one day it would provide a platform from which he could do some utopian walking. But lessons from his adventures in pursuit of the perfect bean reinforced the principles he had been inspired by in his studies, and inspired him to aim for the horizon. And now, as they say, he’s ‘making a path by walking’, one that his community will be able to drive down propelled by biodiesel made by their cooperative action, out of the waste from Kāpiti’s fish & chip shops.
Author. Stone Soup — 08/ 10/ 2018
Alesha Bilbrough-Collins of Christchurch’s BearLion Foods lays down a challenge to her fellow restaurateurs.
I really have no idea where to start. Someone once told me when you’re trying to train staff, start with the negatives then end on the positives, so they take away something good and hopefully things will improve.
Author. Stone Soup — 03/ 10/ 2018
Alice Neville is a female human who likes to drink beer, and she’s just about had it up to here with your sexist shit.
‘Smash the beer patriarchy’ is a phrase I trot out good-naturedly whenever I encounter an example of everyday beer sexism — the likes of being immediately directed to the wine list at a dedicated craft beer bar, or when some bloke attempts to mansplain the IPA I’m drinking to me.
Author. Stone Soup — 03/ 10/ 2018
When your dumpling lands with a thud on your table
William Chen finds out why service doesn’t always come with a smile at Asian eateries.
Author. Stone Soup — 03/ 10/ 2018
Finding good staff is no mean feat for restaurants in New Zealand. With much of our hospitality talent seeking experience abroad, we have a vacuum of local talent, which is eagerly filled by visitors from abroad.
Author. Martyn Pepperell — 02/ 10/ 2018
“When people come here, we want them to feel like they’re transported to Ethiopia,” explains Iman Mahyup. “We want them to be able to experience traditional Ethiopian cuisine, coffee ceremonies, music, and culture. We’re working on growing the experience. It will take time, but we’re getting there.” Iman is talking about Blue Nile, the Ethiopian restaurant she opened last year in a business partnership with her mother Fathia Sadd and her close friend Almaz Nrea.
Author. Leisha Jones — 02/ 10/ 2018
Chefs don’t always eat well, especially after a long shift in a sticky kitchen. I know a fine-dining chef – who I’m sure would rather remain nameless – who dreams of putting his stinky feet up and ordering a trashy chicken pizza from Domino’s after service.
Author. Stone Soup — 18/ 09/ 2018
We like crowdsourcing information as well as funding at Stone Soup. And we like celebrating exceptional food as well as hidden gems. So we asked some questions of possibly the best source of information about where to eat, our country’s most celebrated chefs and restaurateurs. These people are some of the most passionate, obsessive and fussy eaters around — as restaurants are what they live and breath.
Author. Stone Soup — 18/ 09/ 2018
Stone Soup is an age-old parable in which hungry, itinerant strangers arrive in a town with nothing but an empty pot. The villagers refuse to share any food with them, so they melt snow to fill a pot with water, drop in a stone and bring it to the boil over a fire in the town square. The curious villagers ask the strangers what they’re making. “Stone Soup,” they explain. “It’s delicious, as you’ll see, but would taste even better if you could spare a sprig of parsley!”
Author. Stone Soup — 15/ 09/ 2018
Stone Soup Syndicate Presents – Bladecrafters: a series of mini doco’s by brewery.studio which in this second installment introduces us to Zander Blades
Author. Stone Soup — 07/ 09/ 2018
Our friend Niva Kay from Pakaraka Permaculture has been learning film-making, and naturally turned her talents to the farm.
Author. Stone Soup — 28/ 06/ 2018
Sick Leave podcast: Honest and open discussions with Chef’s/leaders/owners/operators in the hospitality industry throughout New Zealand about their journeys with mental health, depression, and anxiety. Hosted by Shaun K Anderson
Author. Stone Soup — 25/ 06/ 2018
Stone Soup Syndicate presents the first in a series of short documentaries on New Zealand knife makers by Jacob Brown of brewery.studio
Author. Stone Soup — 18/ 06/ 2018
Stone Soup films and Roots restaurant in Lyttelton made this documentary of the collaboration between Giulio and his Roots family and Andoni Luis Aduriz and his team from Mugaritz in San Sebastian in Spain, to celebrate Roots 5th anniversary. We’ve launched the film on the 20th anniversary of Mugaritz.
Author. Stone Soup — 26/ 03/ 2018
Monique Fiso’s Hiakai project is currently taking on the world. We are very proud to have been there to document the beginning, to give people a glimpse into Monique’s graft and determination and to give her the space to tell her story.
Author. Stone Soup — 05/ 03/ 2018
Rain & Shine is a celebration of modern soul, disco, jazz and gospel records that are previously unreleased or have never been reissued. We made an early decision to give all profits back to the artists/their families. Why? These beautiful people are living what is likely their last decade on earth, so it didn’t feel right to negotiate anything beyond cost recovery of pressing and distributing the records, so that we can maximise their earnings while they are still around! A small token of reciprocity for music that has been a big part of my life.
Author. Stone Soup — 03/ 03/ 2018
I have to confess I am already a fully signed-up cow-shit lover. Woofers that stay with us at Maunga Kereru, our biodynamic lifestyle block 45 minutes north of Auckland, will tell you that you can’t stay here long without getting down and dirty with our cows’ green gold.
Author. Ginny Grant — 03/ 03/ 2018
I just couldn’t seem to co-ordinate a time to get to one of Jerome’s sourdough baking classes. But knowing half a dozen bread obsessives that have done his class, the odds of getting my hands on some starter and the recipe was always looking good.
Author. Stone Soup — 03/ 03/ 2018
Beneath the zigzag matrix of divaricating shrubs a layer of leaf litter reveals a microcosm of life in the first light of dawn.
I can only just hear them rustle in the undergrowth above the celebratory dawn chorus, barely visible to the untrained eye. A myriad of creatures – springtails, millipedes, slaters, spiders, beetles, earwigs, worms and, if I’m lucky, a weta or gecko will accidentally reveal itself. What they all have in common is their pivotal role in maintaining soil ecology through their voracious appetite for plant material, and one another.
Author. Mark McAllister — 03/ 03/ 2018
Tequila, it gets a bad wrap a lot of the time. I reckon for the same reason that people turn their nose up at foods they dislike, they’ve just had a bad experience with it. Too often tequila cocktails are served in bars using cheap tequila, sickly sweet syrups and mass produced packet juices. Enter hangover, and an inevitable bad experience.
Author. Stone Soup — 03/ 03/ 2018
I could go on all day about the rich, fragrant and laborious beef pho that awaits you at Try It Out, an Auckland restaurant serving up one of the best and most mispronounced noodle soups in the city. I could divulge the secret to their signature made-from-scratch broth, which is boiled daily in a 60-litre stock pot and takes 15 hours to reach its best. Or I could shout the praises of an establishment that represents everything diverse, compelling and thriving about New Zealand’s multicultural food landscape…
Author. Stone Soup — 03/ 03/ 2018
This issue we talk to Kevin Morris of Dante’s Pizzeria as we continue our journey through the hospitality world via nomination by our previous subject. Naomi Nakama of Takapuna’s ARK Coffee says she often goes to his Takapuna shop “where they make beautiful pizza and the service is always great”.
Author. Stone Soup — 02/ 03/ 2018
You’d have to be hiding under a rock if you hadn’t heard the freaky statistics about plastic pollution in the environment.
Microbeads and microfibres in our waterways, plastic waste leaching toxic chemicals into our soil, more plastic by weight than fish in the sea by 2050: you can ignore those facts, but what you should not ignore is the fact that plastic has entered the food chain.
Author. Martyn Pepperell — 02/ 03/ 2018
Over the last five years, Olly Perryman, the Christchurch-raised electronic music producer better known as Fis, has marked himself out on the world stage as one of New Zealand’s most adventurous, open-eared and celebrated experimental music makers.
Author. Aaron McLean — 02/ 03/ 2018
I recently interviewed an inspiring group of food thinkers – chefs, critics, farmers and eaters* – and asked them whether we could define New Zealand’s food culture, whether we had a distinct cuisine and whether it mattered.
Author. Kate Richards — 02/ 03/ 2018
It wasn’t until I told my workmates that I’d been testing aphrodisiac foods on them to see if they would fall in love with me, and someone pointed out that that was a weird thing to do, that I thought anything of it. Before that, it made perfect sense: interactive workplace fun.
