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 is our 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.
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.