Beauty and the Beef
Will the nation’s identity continue to be pastoral, or will its urbanites create a hip young image of environmental awareness?
THE FIRST MEAT PIE I had in New Zealand was a mince-and-cheese from the Coffeepot Café along State Highway 1 in Kaiwaka, a rest stop on the InterCity bus route from beachy Paihia to Auckland, the largest city in the country. On the way to Paihia, I had not partaken of the pies because I was suspicious of their quality. The Coffeepot Café seemed to exist only to cater to bus passengers: German, Chinese, and Canadian flags fluttered along the edge of the parking lot. Food designed to be eaten in places where people have no other options is never good, and the pies in the Coffeepot Café looked particularly forlorn, sitting in the sort of dully heated case that implies its contents have been languishing there for years.
By the time I was on the way back to Auckland, I was tired of my austere rations of apples and bland sandwiches. Also, I had run out of trail mix. I decided the pies were worth the risk, reasoning that if something is hot enough, and you are hungry enough, it will be tasty enough.
That first pie I had at the Coffeepot Café was fatty, salty, meaty, with a flaky crust and gooey inside where the spiced, savory sauce had soaked into the inner layer of the pastry. It turns out that a rest stop place to buy a meat pie in New Zealand because the meat pie is designed to be eaten in transit: you need only one hand (and one mouth) to eat it, and the pastry holds in all the filling. Sandwiches, in comparison, seem egregiously misdesigned.
