Loisi Puleiku always tells her kitchen staff: "Make food like you're going to eat it yourself." This strategy works well for the 57-year-old, she says, because she only employspeople who relish eating as much as she does.
Fale Kai is a Tongan takeaway joint run by a mum-and-son team, squeezed between two laundromats in Papatoetoe. Vivacious Loisi is in charge of the food side of things, a job she juggles with social work for Oranga Tamariki. Junior, her 30-year-old son, handles everything else (it's gradually become his full-time job).
I heard about their restaurant on a recent Jetstar flight from Wellington to Auckland. Three women behind me were discussing the state of our destination's Pasifika dining options and I, perhaps creepily, jotted down their recommendations in my trusty notebook. All that eavesdropping made me hungry, so I went straight from the airport to Fale Kai - of which the women spoke with much enthusiasm - and ordered 'ota 'ika for a starter, lu sipi as a main, and 'otai for dessert.
Like Mexican ceviche, 'ota 'ika ($7) is fresh raw fish marinated in lemon juice. Puleiku usually uses kahawai, served with a heady mixture of coconut cream, lemon zest, more juice, chopped tomatoes, and spring onions. Capsicum too, on a good day. And a subtle thrill of chili.
Lu sipi ($12) is a single-serve hāngī, essentially, imbued with tropical flair. Cubes of lamb and diced onion are placed on a bed of taro leaves, doused in salted coconut milk, then wrapped in layers of tin foil. The resulting parcel is oven-baked until meat and leaves melt into each other. In their foil casings, lu sipi and its corned beef counterpart, lu pulu, look like overgrown metallic dumplings. Unwrapped, they look like … compost. But, by golly, they taste divine.
'Otai ($5) is like a very chunky smoothie. Puleiku makes hers with pineapple, grated apple, mango pulp, coconut cream and thick threads of coconut flesh. The paper straw provided was no match for this favourite Tongan beverage - I advise a spoon.
Lu sipi (lamb and coconut baked in taro leaves) and 'otai (Tongan fruit smoothie) from Fale Kai. Photo / Dean Purcell.
Each thing I ate could easily have been shared, which, incidentally, is part of Tonga's food culture. Puleiku says it's how Tongans do togetherness and show respect. Their culture in general is "food-orientated", says Junior.
"When we have celebrations, the thing people talk about afterwards won't necessarily be the reason for the celebration. More often it'll be about how good the food was."
Puleiku grew up in Tonga and married Junior's dad, then a policeman, at age 19. The couple moved to New Zealand in 1986 and raised their two children in Auckland. She says her passion for cooking began when the kids were little.
Her passion shifted from hobby to side hustle when Puleiku started selling traditional Tongan desserts at Polyfest and Pasifika Festival. In 2014, she plucked up the courage to open her own permanent food stall, housed within an Ōtāhuhu gas station. That was Fale Kai the first.
'Ota 'ika at Fale Kai. Photo / Dean Purcell
Fale Kai the second, the current version, opened in late 2020 as a standalone store on Great South Rd. Most customers buy food to take away, but there's a little green alcove for dining in and having your soul soothed by the choral music drifting in from the kitchen.
Doing the latter, I got a few funny looks from customers, all of whom appeared to be of Pasifika origin. One lady, in red lipstick and a ta'ovala, told me she'd never seen a white person in any of the many Pasifika restaurants dotting South Auckland. She laughed: "They're kind of like our secret."
I asked her how Fale Kai's food ranked. She declared it to be "definitely some of the best".
This may be because Puleiku is a perfectionist. There will be no watering down of the coconut cream under her watch. Salt must be added at exactly the right moment; taro leaves laid out just so. "Every Tongan knows how to cook lu," Puleiku says. "But when I eat my lu, then I eat someone else's, well … you can taste the difference."
