TV: Food for thought and taste

By FRANCES GRANT

The Indian lime pickle that film-maker Shuchi Kothari is prevented from bringing into New Zealand is more than a condiment made for her by her grandmother. It's also bottled love: the love of the family and flavours and smells that evoke memories of home.

Kothari makes the homemade preserve into a metaphor of loss which runs through her documentary about the immigrant experience in New Zealand.

The hour-long programme centres on food for, as Kothari says, there's more to a meal than its preparation and consumption. "Food is about longing and loss, adaptation and continuity," she says.

A university lecturer in script-writing and media studies, Kothari came to Auckland three years ago but still does not feel at home here. By seeking others who are going through, or have been through, the same outsider experience, she hopes to gain an understanding of her place here.

The documentary visits immigrants or children of immigrants in their homes to watch them prepare a favourite recipe and talk about their experiences in New Zealand.

But first Kothari strolls down Auckland's Ponsonby Rd. What's on the menu? she asks. And why in the midst of all this fashionably exotic food are there no faces from the immigrant communities who have introduced these tastes and flavours to the city?

Not far away she finds one of the last outposts of the wave of Pacific Island immigration which came ashore in the inner-city area a generation ago.

Grey Lynn is home to Niuean Fou Gahuatama and family and they intend to stay there. The family next door are from the same village so the fence between the two properties came down.

Kothari makes sure we see this contrast with the huge concrete wall put in by the urban professional couple on the other side.

Like the banned lime pickle (the script doesn't acknowledge the reasons the rules are so strict) it's a heavy-handed symbol of European New Zealanders' shortcomings.

Next is a visit to a group of New Zealand Chinese women, who cook favourite family recipes handed down to them from immigrant parents or grandparents.

Kothari wonders why the Chinese who came to this country were never called settlers in the way those from Great Britain were.

Although the documentary is weighed down in places by its overly analytical script, such questions certainly stand out from the welter of exotic telly food shows. Food, of course, can also be for thought.

While Angela Zivkovic concocts one of her Dalmatian mother's recipes, a dazzling dish of stuffed squid, she remembers the days when Mediterranean food - now the height of food fashion - was regarded with contempt. She recalls the driver of the school bus humiliating her about eating garlic.

The programme also follows Kothari back to her home city of Ahmedabad, where she seeks relief from shrink-wrapped supermarket culture in the bustle of the bazaar.

The vibrant scene - made poignant by the fact that city has since been devastated by earthquake - could not be further away from the chic and genteel gourmet shops and cafes of Auckland.

Kothari ends the programme with the discovery of the true heartland of Auckland's immigrant communities: the main street of Otahuhu. Here, she says, a new face can feel at home.

Taste of Place - Stories of Food and Longing

TV One, 8.30 pm