KEY POINTS:
Stepping on to the deck from the crunchy macadamia nut-shelled driveway at MacNut Farms in Helensville, the clear view across the valley is one of the best you're likely to find at any other cafe, in or around Auckland.
The sun is shimmering on two small, carp-filled lakes strewn with pink waterlilies, surrounded by neat rows of pruned macadamia trees.
"When we arrived here, you couldn't always see the lakes," explains MacNut owner Rob Garden as we sip macadamia milkshakes, "so we had to take the tops off the trees."
And that isn't the only change Rob and his partner, Marquita Gelderman, a part-time vet, have made since buying MacNut Farms 10 years ago.
They subdivided the original 40ha and several thousand trees, down to 6ha and 700 trees - a "much more manageable size" - and leased onsite cafe space.
One of the reasons for down-sizing the number of trees is the labour-intensive nature of macadamia harvesting.
All the nuts must be handpicked as, unlike many other nut varieties, macadamias don't fall to the ground when ready, which would allow mechanical harvesting.
Once picked, the nuts are husked, dried, and cracked before being sorted and packaged for sale - all at MacNut farm.
The MacNut Farm cafe, run by Russell and Jane Taylor, naturally focuses on using MacNut products wherever possible, and doubles as the farm's retail arm.
Originally from Manchester with a background in the rag trade, the Taylors relocated to New Zealand and the hospitality industry five years ago.
The cafe's specialties include tropical crepes, served with fresh fruit and macadamia icecream, and "Macamshire" cream teas.
"Our specialties are mostly home-baked foods that we can add the macadamia meal to," says Jane.
Macadamia meal is a low-carb ground nut product that can be a replacement for flour and is great for gluten or starch allergy sufferers.
It can be used in biscuits and cakes, sauces and pates, and is a great, tasty topping for dishes like lasagne. Most of which you can find in the cafe.
While honey, BBQ, hickory-smoked or salted nuts are MacNut's more typical offerings, aficionados rave about their specialty - wasabi-coated macadamias.
- Detours, HoS
