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Happiness lies beyond these glass walls (Photo: Getty Images)
Happiness lies beyond these glass walls (Photo: Getty Images)

KaiJanuary 4, 2020

From 7/11s to supermarchés: The true essence of travel is at the corner store

Happiness lies beyond these glass walls (Photo: Getty Images)
Happiness lies beyond these glass walls (Photo: Getty Images)

Summer Journeys: After touring the world with his band The Phoenix Foundation, Samuel Flynn Scott has figured out the real reason we travel – to nosy around where humans buy snacks.

The Spinoff Summer Journey series is entirely funded by The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism, click here.


We travel the world to experience something new, to get a sense that humanity and nature are bigger and more incredible than we have yet been privileged to experience. We pretend that we do this in the marble painting graveyards, and bridges that were once for transport but now exist for photo opportunities. We tell ourselves (and our friends, too, frequently) that the music and art, the architecture and geography of our recent visitations has widened our senses and blown our minds. 

But that is obviously bullshit. The reason we travel is in consumerist pilgrimage to the diaspora of supermarkets and corner stores the world over. It’s the incidental everyday life experiences that you stumble through that leave a lasting impression. It’s the small differences that lie within the familiar that expose how similar and different we all are. 

Photo: Getty Images

Supermarkets are where we reveal our pretentions, our taste and our mundane routines. They make us vulnerable and zombified and then take all our money. Corner stores/drug stores/delis/tabacs whatever you call them are the wonky cousins that keep us alive. They support many of our addictions, legal and occasionally illicit. 

Exploring where humans choose to buy bread and milk is for me the essence of travel. 

Most of my travel has been in bands, staying in the shittiest places, travelling in the cramped smelly squalor of the ubiquitous UK “splitter vans”. Not even the dignity of a tour bus in which to hide weed from the Swiss border patrol, but plenty of opportunity to visit fantastically boring shops. Trying to make sandwiches from a rural German Aldi (very successful) to nearly running out of gas on M7 in the north of England because you just can’t stop at a motorway services that doesn’t have an M&S Simply Food.

The Phoenix Foundation’s Luke Buda searching for Chocomel at any given rest stop (Photo: Supplied)

Paris, the guide books won’t tell you, is a bit shit. After queuing for several hours to stand behind a hundred people taking photos of a Monet you end up spending €20 on a putrid Kronenbourg from a charming and terrible Paris bistro. What the Japanese call pari shōkōgun, the discombobulating feeling that the city of your dreams turns out to be a real asshole, can be solved very quickly by bypassing the tourist spots and hitting up a supermarché. 

Of course Paris isn’t shit: think of it like China Miéville’s novel The City and The City. Two  completely different worlds, residing side by side, using all their willpower to ignore each other. In Paris, the split is between Parisian locals who know where to get the best food and wine on Earth, who know about the best music venues outside the ring road. The other is the world of the 18 million people who visit every year. That city is a picture-perfect bistro on the Rue Saint Germain serving low-grade meat, cooked raw (out of spite for les Anglais) with a rotten salad on the side and a complimentary glass of toxic grape extract for €50. 

The real city is a market selling excellent wine for a couple of bucks, great bread and cheese and servicing locals instead of tourists. Get a bottle of wine to go and drink it on the banks of the Canal St Martin and that pari shōkōgun will float away like magic.

Boursin: the Chesdale of France (Photo: Supplied)

The thing I found the most remarkable about Paris’s supermarkets: Boursin is to France what Chesdale is to New Zealand (or maybe what it was to NZ in the 80s). Boursin, the soft, garlicky mush of cheesiness, so expensive at Moore Wilson’s, such a decadent treat, is in fact made for school lunches, not cheese boards. WE HAVE ALL BEEN LIVING A LIE! 

French service stations are pretty weird. Really expensive, disgusting hot meals or super-cheap fantastic French bread and soft cheeses. And all the chips are paprika flavoured. The Palace of Versailles holds few surprises, it looks just like the pictures, but no one tells you that all French servo crisps are paprika flavoured. Like, all of them. It’s OK but not that great a flavour. France, the centre of world gastronomy? If their chip seasonings are anything to go by then je ne pense pas! 

British service stations are another matter. The famed “services”. Touring bands will exchange hot tips on the best services that pepper the UK roading network. An infinity of chip flavours; from the populist Marmite, prawn cocktail and full English to elitist combos like Stilton and corniche night. 

Berlin: beer mountains and too much Rittersport (Photos: Supplied)

The Phoenix Foundation once stumbled upon the Heston Blumenthal “Little Chef”, the three-Michelin-starred chef’s roadside diner serving his version of egg and chips. Alas, we were late for Glastonbury and no one would let me order any food. Now they have shut forever. Biggest regret of my life? Yes. 

Better than Heston, though, is the sandwich wars raging between Marks & Spencer and Waitrose. Waitrose is the rarer bird, the poshest food you will ever find in a servo, but the more middle class M&S is really just as good. The New Zealand version might be Wishbone, but whereas Wishbone is the worst food in the world, an M&S BLT is fantastic. Even Tesco Express is better than Wishbone. The English are by their nature a pallid, tasteless nation, so how come their sandwiches are so much better than ours? Is this why they won the Cricket World Cup? Was it the sandwiches? 

One of the finest convenience store quirks I happened upon was free beer merch in Taiwanese 7/11s. Buy a six pack of Asahi (for about $8NZD) and get a free singlet. Buy a 24 pack and get a bluetooth speaker. They seemed to be giving away items far more valuable than the beer. I was also slightly fond of the Taiwanese iced green tea that claimed it would make your boobs grow bigger. Amazing what you can get for a couple of bucks.

Samuel with TPF bandmate Tom Callwood in a feeding frenzy after raiding a Brighton corner shop of its supply of Scotland’s finest snack, Tunnock’s Tea Cakes, and Sam’s son Ralph blown away by the variety of KitKats in Japan (Photos: Supplied)

Japan, though, is a paradise unto its own. Lawson, Family Mart, 7/11. Everyone has their favourite but whichever one, they shit all over our weak Four Square rubbish. Lawson’s onigiri might be the best-priced snack on planet earth. Healthy, delicious, cheap. The full triangle of wonder. Then there are the sandos. Bread so soft it’s almost creepy. There is much debate as to whether an egg sando from Lawson is a work of minimalist culinary genius or just a piece of trash, but for me it’s perfection. 

Japanese supermarkets are even more ridiculous. The supermarket in the bustling, hip Tokyo neighbourhood of Shimokitazawa is one floor of regular shopping stuff (albeit Japanese, so completely different and fascinating to this gaijin) and then a floor of ready meals and hot food. But imagine the best sashimi you have had in New Zealand; now imagine it’s slightly better and costs about $5 and comes from the top floor of a supermarket. 

One of my strangest and in many ways most wonderful supermarket experiences was on the streets of Kreuzberg in Berlin. I was there with my family on a break between touring. Our boy Ralph was one at the time. He needed food, he needed nappies, it was 6am. We set off on our short walk to the Rewe with no bags, no stroller, nothing. In a daze I loaded up on mysterious pot-set yoghurts on choco-muesli (weirdly hard to find any cereal that’s not muesli and muesli that isn’t rammed with chocolate), German-made compostable nappies and probably a few bottles of Augustiner-Bräu Helles for later. 

TPF sound guy Bernie and percussionist Will completely unaware of the wall because they are so desperate for a Bionade from the bio mart (Photo: Samuel Flynn Scott)

We are used to the bring-your-bags rule in NZ now, but this was a different time. I was so confused, and I still had to carry this baby several city blocks back to our Airbnb. The only thing I could do was roll all my shopping into the front of my T-shirt, hoist up Ralph and stumble back as the sun rose over Görlitzer park. My exposed belly and smiling baby brought delight to the old drunks arriving at the Rewe to feed the hipsters’ discarded beer and Club-Maté bottles into the recycling machine (which, incidentally, looks rather like the Noo-Noo creature/vacuum thing from the Teletubbies). 

The old dudes knew the local ways; young people drink and smoke weed in Görli park, they don’t put their bottles in the bin but leave them out so that those in need can collect them early, essentially tidying up, in exchange for fairly decent money so as to start their day with a fresh packet of fags, a couple of cans of Becks and maybe even some choco-muesli. 

There was so much to learn in that one brief trip to the shops. Mostly I learnt never to leave your reusable shopping bag at home (we’ve all learnt that now, right?). But seeing life carry on in those little different ways allows you to slot into the rhythm of a new city. It allows you to imagine that you aren’t like all the other tourists, you could live here no problem. After all, you know where to get bread and milk.


The Spinoff Summer Journey series is entirely funded by The Spinoff Members. For more about becoming a member and supporting The Spinoff’s journalism, click here.

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The Kelmarna Gardens cows, and some of the comments on social media
The Kelmarna Gardens cows, and some of the comments on social media

KaiJanuary 3, 2020

Pets or steak? The inside story of a bovine brouhaha in the suburbs

The Kelmarna Gardens cows, and some of the comments on social media
The Kelmarna Gardens cows, and some of the comments on social media

Summer reissue: An urban farm in Auckland has been raising cows for meat for years. This time, they decided to involve the community in the process – but the backlash was so intense, the plan was canned. Alice Neville talks to those involved about what went down, and what we can learn from the saga. 

First published 14 June, 2019

A sprawling, hippy-esque bucolic paradise surrounded by multimillion-dollar white villas, Kelmarna Gardens is a bit of an anomaly at the epicentre of one of Auckland’s most bougie neighbourhoods.

Covering four and a half acres of council land on the Grey Lynn/Ponsonby/Herne Bay border, it’s a city farm and organic community garden headed by a trust and mainly run by volunteers. In recent years, local chefs have got behind the gardens: you’ll see Kelmarna produce name-checked on menus all over town.

Ponsonby Rd eatery Orphans Kitchen has a plot at Kelmarna and chef/co-owner Tom Hishon is heavily involved in promoting the gardens and raising funds through events like the annual harvest festival. It was Hishon who suggested that when the time came, the meat from the three steers that lived on the farm be made available to restaurants in the community.

“I’d been promoting the idea to Adrian [Roche, garden manager at Kelmarna] and Andy [Boor, Kelmarna’s development manager] for a couple of years,” says Hishon. “They’ve always had livestock on the property and it gets processed anyway – the cattle have always been taken off site to be killed – so I said it would be great if chefs and restaurants then had access to it.”

Photo: Supplied

These particular steers had been at the gardens since 2017. They’d had other cows before them and others before them, and each time they got too big to live at the farm, they were sent off to the abattoir to be slaughtered with myriad others and eaten by someone who’d have no idea of their provenance.

Hishon thought that was a shame. “It’s all part of what Kelmarna Gardens are about – locality, organics, community – so I had been expressing an interest for a couple of years and managed to get a few restaurants on board to take a quarter of a beast each,” he says.

“It would’ve been taken off site to an abattoir and killed professionally, and then Westmere Butchery was going to process it and package it up,” Hishon explains. “It got to the point where we were looking at dates to do it and everyone said what cuts they were after. Everyone was super excited about it – it’s so great that we’re able to do that right in the heart of the city.”

Of Kelmarna, he says, “they’ve really got their act together in the last couple of years, and this was going to be another way for them to supplement costs – they would have made thousands to improve their infrastructure, put more tunnel houses in, get more people working there”.

Tom Hishon (right) at Orphans Kitchen with UK chef Doug McMaster of Silo Brighton (Photo: Micheal Hishon)

Hannah Miller Childs, a butcher who makes charcuterie under the name A Lady Butcher, was brought on board to help with the process.

“I donated my time because it’s such a cool project,” she says. “Being a farm, being a community place, they’d cared for the animals so well. They’re not certified organic but they are really close, and definitely ethically and sustainably raised.”

She worked with the Kelmarna team to figure out how the beef would be sold, suggesting a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) model that’s popular in the United States, where she’s from, whereby community members connect directly with farmers.

In addition to the restaurants that had expressed interest in buying the meat, members of the community would be able to purchase boxes of different cuts. “I helped them to come up with a plan – so the restaurants take these cuts, we deal with these cuts, this is how the pricing should work to make sure you’re covering the costs,” says Miller Childs. “The prices the boxes were supposed to be selling for was very reasonable for the quality of beef.”

Hannah Miller Childs of A Lady Butcher (Photo: Facebook)

Miller Childs also planned to take 30kg of hind leg herself to make a special bresaola. “I was going to pick fresh herbs from the garden to make the cure, then people had the option to add on a few packs of the sliced bresaola to their box, and [Grey Lynn cafe] Ozone Coffee was going to take the bulk of the bresaola and highlight the collaboration on their menu.”

But it wasn’t to be. After backlash on social media, a petition to save the cows was launched and received 1500 signatures, leading to Kelmarna’s board of trustees pulling the pin.

“In light of the public response, the Kelmarna board of trustees can confirm that we have returned our cattle to Kelmarna, and are working with a sanctuary who has offered to look after them permanently,” read a statement on the Kelmarna Facebook page posted on Monday 10 June.

“I was disappointed, but of course I understood because it was getting so intense,” says Kelmarna garden manager Adrian Roche. 

“It was a pretty well-orchestrated campaign and I hadn’t expected that. In hindsight you can go, ‘oh yeah’, but I was definitely surprised.”

He feels the opposition can be divided into two groups: firstly an animal activist/vegan network, and secondly a group of local people, many of whom eat meat, who had formed connections with the animals.

“What I find particularly disturbing about this situation is the willingness to publicise the slaughter of your companions,” wrote one Instagram commenter. “Kelmarna, you don’t have to do this. Selling their flesh might make you some money in the short term, but they can never get their lives back.”

Others commented how their children enjoyed patting the cows when they visited the farm, and were concerned about what they’d tell them when they returned to find the cows gone.

The Kelmarna cattle

“They got bombarded,” says Hishon. “Which I just don’t understand. I’m sure there are some vegetarian and vegans that go to Kelmarna but to be anti slaughtering the cattle there for consumption is kind of the antithesis of what Kelmarna stands for. I think it’s a little bit narrow-minded, really.

“People need to understand that meat comes from a farm. If they can see the cow and understand that that gets processed and butchered into what goes onto their plates, then that’s a real positive experience for children,” he adds. “To have a connection with food just in the supermarket, that’s what we need to get away from. I think it’s a little bit ignorant.”

Miller Childs agrees. “I was disappointed in humanity, really. The comments they were getting, the complete lack of understanding of the food process. The people commenting weren’t all vegetarians, there were people commenting who ate meat who were like, ‘you should keep them as pets’.

“People don’t understand the time and money and energy that would go into keeping those animals alive longer, and the fact that those animals cannot stay alive in the gardens any longer because the area is not big enough.

“If people choose not to eat meat that’s totally their choice, but if you do choose to eat meat I think it’s really important to understand where it’s coming from and that it is an animal. If you’re not OK with the fact your meat comes from an animal, you should be vegetarian,” she says. 

“I’m devastated by the fact that it’s not happening, because I feel like it would have been such a cool thing for the New Zealand meat industry for this to be seen as a successful way to farm and to get the community involved in where their food comes from.”

Adrian Roche, Kelmarna’s garden manager (Photo: Supplied)

Roche says in the past, no one appeared to notice when cows came and went from Kelmarna, being sent off to the abattoir on reaching maturity.

“[This time] we were directly selling it to members of the public so it was quite a different scenario to when there were animals wandering around and then, ‘oh no, there’s not animals wandering around’, then a couple of months later, ‘oh, there’s animals wandering around’. We’re really actively engaging with our community, whereas previously we didn’t quite so much.

“Previously the stock would have gone off to the abattoir and turned into a sort of faceless commodity, but we wanted to make that direct link between people and places and food. We could’ve just sent it off to the abattoir and received a cheque and that would be it, but we’re trying to step out of the commodity system.

“We’re very explicit about our values of sustainability and local food and engaging with the community. We had a ton of support from people in the community – lots of people wanted to buy the meat and thought it was an awesome thing, that we were offering them meat that they had a connection to.

“But I guess the people shouting were shouting a lot more loudly and had a lot of vitriol in their campaign and were very focused on getting the result that they wanted, so just pushed and pushed.”

Now the cows aren’t being killed, the question is what to do with them. They can’t stay at Kelmarna as they are too large for the space. “The plan at the moment is they’ll be sent to a sanctuary in Canterbury,” says Roche, referring to the Til the Cows Come Home farm sanctuary in Rangiora, a vegan organisation that rescues bobby calves otherwise destined for death.

“We’d prefer if they didn’t go to Canterbury because that’s a long trip on a truck, but we’re not sure if there are other options available – it’s still being worked out.”

Roche says with the benefit of hindsight, Kelmarna should have been more explicit about why the cows were there from the outset. “We’re a farm, we’re not a vegan organisation. Here at the farm, 98% of our energy goes into plants, but in our understanding of sustainable systems, you have diversity.”

Kelmarna Gardens (Photo: Supplied)

Miller Childs agrees. “One thing I think the gardens could have done a bit better is they could have had a sign that said ‘these are our cows, we’re raising them for food’ – to get people in that mindset in the beginning.

“Face up to it early on – we’re raising them for food, to be able to have ethically, sustainably raised meat as part of our overall focus of this organic garden.

“I want to encourage them not to give up, that this kind of backlash is natural,” she adds. “Whenever you’re doing something new and groundbreaking and changing the way people have thought about things, you’re always going to get backlash.”

Roche doesn’t rule out trying again, “but it’s been pretty bruising, so we won’t be rushing into it. We’d have to go through some sort of planning and consultation process before we did meat again, so that’s a discussion to be had in the near future.”

He says one positive has come out of the saga: it’s got people talking about where their food comes from. “That’s what we’re here for, to have these conversations. Looking for the silver linings, the conversation about meat is happening more and we’re here to play a role in that conversation.”

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