Rewi Spraggon (Ngāti Hine, Te Waiohua) wants to put Aotearoa's oldest dish on the menu as frequently and for as many people as he can, with his business Hāngī Master.
Kupe, the first person to set foot on land here, was cooking hāngī — there's no question that it isour national dish. But it's not easy to make a hāngī eatery work — we just don't have the numbers to make it financially viable. Hāngī is about as slow as food gets; hours and hours of staff working away before you've even served anything up. We tried to make it work with The Māori Kitchen on Queens Wharf, but we just didn't have the numbers. The roadworks were a problem, and then Covid came along and we lost the cruise-ship customers overnight.
Rewi Spraggon cooking hāngī, featured in forthcoming book Auckland Eats. Photo / Faanati Mamea.
But I learned heaps from that about how to build a hāngī business that's sustainable. I'm getting it into schools and next, I want to get it into hospitals and supermarkets. I want everyone anywhere in the country to be able to get their hands on hāngī if they feel like eating it.
I've hooked up with a mate who runs the tuck shops at 40 secondary schools, serving more than 50,000 students. I've made these $6 hāngī packs for the tuck shops. You get a protein — chicken or pork — three veges, stuffing and watercress gravy. I did a bit of research on what kids want — they don't want greens. Well, not yet . . . I'm gonna sneak some cabbage in later . . . They like potatoes and kūmara, and our nutritionist has said these hāngī packs are bloody healthy. I've always wanted to get our kids eating proper food again . . . seeing the s**t they eat. From Westlake and Takapuna to schools outside Auckland, and we've got kura kaupapa keen to get our hāngī in . . . we'll be reaching a diverse range of kids. The more numbers we can rack up, the cheaper we can make it — 50,000 kids is a good start.
Rewi Spraggon of Hāngī Master. Photo / Faanati Mamea.
The other area I've looked at is hospitals — patients want proper food; they're sick and tired of s**t food. The smoke flavour is a real appetite booster, too — people whose taste buds have been affected by treatments tend to love the taste of hāngī.
A lot of this all came out of Covid. A week into lockdown I was getting bloody frustrated, and thought there must be a way around it . . . so I rang a few of my cop mates and asked if they wanted hāngī, and ended up doing hāngī for hundreds of DHB workers as well. I made myself an essential hāngī worker.
Rewi Spraggon preparing produce for a hāngī. Photo / Faanati Mamea.
2021 will be full-on. With the America's Cup on, mana whenua invited me to come and feed, and educate, people on North Head. I'll have three pits and do six cooks a day to feed heaps of people watching from there on the big race days.
A lot of what I'm doing is training — passing on the methodology to a big team. The knowledge was passed down to me by my father, and to him by his father. I never met my grandfather but I cook with his hāngī stones. Good hāngī stones will last forever; they're precious. When I cook, I cook with my father and grandfather, my ancestors on my shoulders.
