Ewan McDonald
“THANK YOU for calling. Your call is important to us. However, the restaurant is closed until January 14 …” Can’t count how many times I’ve heard that message in the past week or so. Sometimes it’s different: sometimes it’s January 18. Or so.
Which is all very well, and no one can blame restaurants for turning off the ovens and shutting the doors at this time of year. Face it, most Kiwis are at the beach, or the tennis, or on the deck, around the barbecue. Salad days, fresh-caught fish nights.
But when your Nearest and Dearest’s birthday falls in the first week of January, how do you mark that special occasion? Especially when Jude shares the Big Day – not that it was a Specially Big Day this year – with her best friend, Janet. Two headaches for the price of … well, none, if we couldn’t find a place that would be open for a meal and a couple of celebratory glasses.
Of course, someone with slightly more memory cells than me would have found a way around this by now. Another Significant Other’s birthday landed at New Year. Same problem, though tougher times mean many fine-dining restaurants have changed the arrangements of earlier years and open in the Christmas-New Year week.
Note “fine-dining”, for that was the problem for the four of us. Plenty of eateries are open in January but – no disrespect – somehow we couldn’t see ourselves truly enjoying intimate conversation and gourmet degustation at Lone Star. We wanted a sophisticated evening, and a platter of Redneck Ribs and four mugs of Bud wouldn’t cut it.
Janet and I went to and fro, then fro and to, but nothing seemed to work. On the night before, I made the call: “You guys be at our place at 6. It’s a surprise.”
Which it was, and there were plenty of compliments for my four-course birthday dinner, for which I am truly thankful and not a little surprised. It was simple: just an hour with my old mate Google to find the recipes; leaving work an hour or two early – hey, not a lot happens in the news business during January – to cut, toss and fix Bellinis and Caprese crackers for the toast; chicken, pomegranate and walnut salad for the starter; baked snapper with ginger and mandarin sauce, Jersey bennes for the main; a dessert of Amaretto-soused blueberries with yoghurt.
This evening was, if you will, the private party. Being women, and therefore more (insert your own adjective here: you won’t catch this middle-aged male falling into that trap), Jude and Janet came up with a unique way of celebrating their shared occasion some years ago.
About a week before, they email friends to invite them on a Gourmet Picnic and Tramp. Or maybe it’s a Gourmet Tramp and Picnic. Whatever, the venue is their much loved Waitakere Ranges. So everyone who’s around Auckland, and feeling slightly active, meets at the Hardware Café – world-famous in Titirangi – at 10am on the given Saturday. Or 11. Or so.
There’s usually around 20 or 30 starters. The oldest has been Jude’s mother, Joan, then 82. There are always one or two babies in backpacks. Well, frontpacks: the backpacks are for food. At least three dogs tag along, or run in front.
We hike through bush, ford streams, wade pools, pull ourselves up banks by the odd vine for an hour or two until we reach a broad, flat, rock platform between two waterfalls tumbling into natural swimming-pools. They’re freezing, even in high summer. This spot does have an official name but we call it “the Goddess Pools”.
By now it’s lunchtime and we’ve built up 20 or 30 healthy appetites. Everyone unstraps their packs for the reveal: out tumble breads, cheeses, pates, pies, salads, cold dishes, fruits and more. Tea or juice for the toast, though someone has been known to heft a bottle of bubbly through the jungle if either of the organisers is marking a Major Number that year.
Then we turn for home. It’s only a couple of hours’ more walking, a couple more swims and – right at the end, just to burn off those recently acquired kilojoules – 350 steps cut into the hillside before we reach the carpark.
Bush and birdsong, friends and food, in a primal scene. We’ve eaten in (apologies to Douglas Adams) The Restaurant at the Beginning of the Universe. And it’s open all year.