Local Focus: MKR winners open New Zealand's first bone broth bar

There's a new healthy option for takeaways in Cambridge and it's the first of its kind in New Zealand.

The Green Kitchen brings an international trend to the small rural town before Hamilton or even Auckland - New Zealand's first organic bone broth bar, run by Neena Truscott and Belinda MacDonald.

"It's definitely something that's snowballing around the planet at the moment and it's very old school," Belinda says. "We're bringing these kind of old school things back, and making them way more modern and way more current for our diet lifestyles these days. We're having a bit more of a whole food kind of approach."

The 2014 My Kitchen Rules NZ winners have been developing their own broth menu for the last three years, sourcing local, organic ingredients that are stewed for a over a day to extract the minerals into a broth.

Belinda says the "liquid gold" is a labour of love with organic chicken and beef bones concocted in a cauldron with apple cider vinegar, seaweed and other ingredients which are great for gut health.

"There's something beautiful about slow cooking food because you're not rushing the purpose of it," says Neena. "Back in the day we put something on in the morning and you'd eat it that night, or even days later it would just stay bubbling on the stove."

Like other bone broth cafes around the world, Cambridge's broth bar is a fresh take on a century old traditional medicine.

"Every culture has a broth and it's something that's just so easily absorbed by your body, and it helps the biggest range of people. That's probably we choose broths. From babies to elderly to really healthy people to people who are dying," Neena says.

Customers can mix and match their broth of choice with a range of salads, kelp noodles and homemade bread and specialty spreads on offer.

"The broth goes in on top and this one's going to have a hammering of some gorgeous, vibrant, freshly-grated turmeric to really turn the volume up," Belinda says as she swiftly pours the steaming broth onto a freshly-made salad.

Neena and Belinda's broth bar is ready for Cambridge, and it seems Cambridge is ready for their broth bar, with plenty of enthusiastic customers like Kelly Wright. "I only really got into in the last couple of years and just found that my husband stopped getting sick in the winter."

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