On a public holiday Monday, residents of an Auckland city street spotted a large quantity of spaghetti adorning the front window of a local cafe. Madeleine Chapman investigates who threw it and why.
At first glance it looks like a giant vomited after a big night out. Red streaks and the occasional piece of spaghetti coat the glass front of Hideout Espresso Bar on upper Symonds Street, reaching from the ground all the way up to the concrete framing. There’s a lot of it, and it’s splattered, having evidently met the glass with force. On the ground below it is the lid of a takeaway container, evidence that the spaghetti was thrown. By who? The neighbouring building’s frontage gives a hint: Paparazzi, Italian restaurant.
The spaghetti, allegedly thrown by Paparazzi owner-operator Sashe Sterjov on Monday afternoon, makes for a striking image, but is just one detail of a three-minute altercation between Sterjov and Hideout owner Anderson Mar that led to a physical confrontation and a police callout – all, apparently, over a wheelie bin.
Mar is serving customers while speaking to The Spinoff over the phone two days later. Every 30 seconds, a new customer enters, and every single one mentions the spaghetti incident. Some have come in solely because of it. It’s the talk of the neighbourhood, and has led to dozens of residents promising to boycott Paparazzi and its spaghetti-flinging owner.
So what happened?
Hideout was closed on Monday and Mar had the day off but says he was in the cafe doing some prep work when he received a text from Sterjov about an overflowing bin outside. Mar said it wasn’t his bin as his bin was in the carpark. Sterjov sent a photo and Mar realised it was an old bin of the cafe’s that had been stolen and had now reappeared, broken, and filled with rubbish.
Mar says he didn’t give it much energy – “I was busy prepping” – until Sterjov walked over and knocked on his front windows. “He told me to come out. I said ‘no sorry, I’m busy’. He was insisting on me [removing the bin] straight away.” Eventually Sterjov left, but returned soon after with a container of spaghetti “and threw it all over my glass window”, according to Mar. The two began arguing, and Mar says Sterjov told him to “go back to your country” (Mar is Chinese), to which Mar replied, “you go back to your country” (Sterjov is originally from North Macedonia).
The spaghetti had just been thrown when an eyewitness to the altercation – who did not wish to be named but who is familiar with the neighbourhood and its characters – heard yelling from across the street, she tells The Spinoff. “I thought maybe it was someone who was just being a bit disorderly… then I saw the Paparazzi guy yelling and screaming at the Hideout guy, Andy. And Andy looked pretty freaked out.” She yelled out herself from her side of the street, attempting to break it up or get their attention, but it didn’t work. “And then [Sterjov] started, like, throwing all this racial abuse at [Mar],” she remembers. “And then that’s when I was like, oh, no, we’re not doing that.” She says Sterjov was leaning into Mar. “[Sterjov] was just right in his face, you know, shoving him in the chest, poking him, like hyper aggressive.”
After that initial spat, Mar says Sterjov returned to Paparazzi next door while continuing to yell as his spaghetti dripped down the tall glass window. “That was frustrating for me,” says Mar. “I didn’t want to deal with this on my day off.” So Mar picked up the spaghetti that had fallen to the ground and threw it back at the windows of Paparazzi.
“Then he comes running.” CCTV footage shows Sterjov sprinting back to Hideout as Mar backpedals into the doorway. Strikes are thrown from Sterjov and before long, Mar responds in kind. “I had to defend myself… I punched him because he was trying to hit me.” Mar’s punch landed on Sterjov’s face, who swiftly retreated to his own restaurant and called the police.
By the time the eyewitness got across the road (upper Symonds St has four lanes and a cycle lane), the pair had separated. She says Sterjov was calling the police “like he was the one who was assaulted”.
When the police arrived, they interviewed both parties and requested any footage of the incident. Mar says Sterjov told police his finger was broken. “He probably hit me and broke his finger.” He found his own CCTV footage and has supplied it to the police. He says he wants charges pressed against Sterjov.
Once the police left, Mar spent three hours cleaning the spaghetti sauce from his windows, then finished his prep in order to open as usual on Tuesday. Next door, Sterjov’s wife arrived to clean up the spaghetti from their own window.
Sterjov did not answer the phone or respond to an interview request. He has spoken to the media before, when in July last year he was the key source for a Stuff article, complaining about the disorderly behaviour of patrons of Edinburgh Castle, the notoriously unruly corner pub down the road. Having purchased his commercial building in 2021, ahead of the CRL opening, Sterjov said he was shocked by “the problems” in the neighbourhood, specifically drug-taking and aggressive behaviour. “This is not New Zealand. I know New Zealand. This is not New Zealand,” said Sterjov.
His restaurant, too, has had a few run-ins with customers. While sporting a 4.3 star rating on Google, one-star reviews are lengthy, with more than one describing “rude service” and one diner alleging that after they “respectfully” complained about a dish, they were met with aggressive behaviour. The diner says he called the police “but they did nothing”.
Another review from a month ago details “bad service” and suggests it was because the diners were Asian. The restaurant posted a lengthy response, beginning with “F… y… Asian, go back to your country” and telling them to “respect NZ European rules or we will get rid of you”. The comment was edited two weeks ago and is now a YouTube URL linking to a news report on cockroaches in China.
Mar says he’s not sure if Sterjov got so incensed because “it’s just his personality that he does that, or it’s because I’m Asian”, but says after eight years of operating a business in Eden Terrace, he now thinks a bit differently about his work. “I come in the morning to set up by myself. I have moments like, oh, he’s gonna come knocking again, you know?” But despite the apprehension, Mar says he’s thankful to “all the people that sent love and support, and I wish it doesn’t happen to anyone around the neighbourhood any more”.
As for Sterjov, the day of the fracas, he spoke to police in the early afternoon, including, according to the eyewitness, being questioned about the spaghetti he threw, before he returned to his own restaurant to continue his prep work. At 5pm, Paparazzi opened for business as usual.
