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Hawke’s Bay’s Food and Wine Classic features New Zealand’s first meatball festival in Hastings on March 14.
Top chefs, including Carlita Campbell from Cellar 495 and Daniel Pistone from Sazio, will compete to create the best meatball.
The festival showcases diverse meatball styles, from Asian flavours to traditional Italian and Greek recipes, plus many more.
Roll on up - the humble Hawke’s Bay meatball is getting its very own festival.
The programme for this year Hawke’s Bay’s Food and Wine Classic (Fawc) has been released and features a uniquely Hastings dining experience on the opening night.
New Zealand’s first meatball festival is set totake over Hastings CBD on Friday, March 14, and will pit some of the region’s best chefs against each other as to who can create the tastiest ball.
For the uninitiated, Hawke’s Bay has a deep affinity with their crumbed and then fried “meatballs”.
The Hawke’s Bay meatball is said to have started at Hastings Lilac Bakery on Heretaunga St in the 1970s, where they were made from veal, unsalted butter, and chicken stock and sold for eight cents a piece.
Fifty years on, pull into most bakeries in the region and you will see golden balls of meat sitting in the display cabinet alongside the traditional Kiwi meat pies and sausage rolls, still at a very reasonable price.
Some compare the Hawke’s Bay meatball to a European bitterbal, which consists of ground meat encased in a crispy shell.
A piewarmer showcases the typical Hawke's Bay meatball in all its golden glory. Photo / Jack Riddell
A wide array of balls will be up for consumption on the night, including offerings from Cellar 495, Craft and Social, Salzio, Fun Buns, and many more.
Chef Carlita Campbell at Cellar 495 is looking forward to cooking up a cross between a marinated pork rib and a Hawaiian pizza for her offering.
“Because I’m that person, I like pineapple,” she said
“So, a little bit on a play on that. I want to do a chipotle, maple glaze meatball. I want it juicy; I want it glossy, I want pineapple on top, and it’s going to be fun.”
Although Campbell hasn’t had too many meatballs since she moved to Hawke’s Bay, she is “excited to try everyone’s balls”.
Next door at Craft and Social Damon McGinniss is cooking a Greek pork meatball with fennel seed, cumin, lemon, hummus, and romesco.
McGinniss said a good meatball needs flavour, texture, and “needs to be moist”. He thinks the region has fallen in love with meatballs because “it’s simple food that gets done well”.
“I don’t honestly know, but they’re tasty as hell,” he laughed.
Daniel Pistone from Sazio is going with the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach with his entry by entering the same meatball the restaurant’s been making since it opened five years ago.
“It is a crumbed meatball with a salsa verde on parmesan, which we cannot take ... off the menu, so we want to stick with what we know is good,” he said.
Originally from Argentina, Pistone can see the appeal of the meatball to Kiwis, but he knows what makes the best original meatballs.
“Fried meatball, I know it will be appealing. Nevertheless, [our meatball is] a really charred, good Italian meatball – it’s not the bakery one. Nothing wrong with that one, but this is the authentic Italian meatball.”
Fun Buns, which will be renamed Fun Balls for the evening, will bring a range of Asian flavours to its ball offerings, including takoyaki octopus balls, Chinese lion’s head pork meatballs, and a twist on spaghetti and meatballs using Korean wanja meatballs and noodles.
Co-owner Nick Pike calls the meatball a Hawke’s Bay staple that was cemented because of its “bang for buck”.
“At school, I could buy a meatball and a bag of lollies instead of buying a sandwich and I was a fan of that diet,” he said.
“It’s that big old sucker that will burn the top of your mouth and have a good crispy outside.”
The full programme for this year’s Fawc is released today, and features the Grand Long Lunch in conjunction with Cuisine magazine at a secret location, the 10 days of Fawc, and lots more.
Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and spent the last 15 years working in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin, and Napier. He reports on all stories relevant to residents of the region.
