Summer reissue: Pāua, canned spaghetti, povi masima and taro: Pepe’s Cafe understands the nature of food as love and community.
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Food is language. It is a complex tool of communication that we use to share information with one another. It is used to reassure, to teach and to love. Food, at its core, is identity. A way that we create and maintain community. Go to any major city and watch as diasporas converge in restaurants and cafes providing a taste of home and a sense of recognition in a foreign land. It is a means of showing love and reassurance; flavours learned at childhood have a resonance in adulthood that far outstrips anything encountered later on in life. For me, the taste of luncheon meat on white bread will always remind me of home and safety. Half a can of spaghetti on buttered toast is Sunday morning cartoons and my nan coming around to help my dad with ironing our school uniforms ready for Monday.
James Tangitamaiti and Yanah Partsch know all of this. They understand the nature of food as love and community more than anyone I have ever met. Luckily for all of us, they opened a little cafe in February of 2024 in an industrial estate on the edge of Porirua. I don’t share any Pacific heritage, but Pepe’s Cafe is probably about as close to the comfort of home as I have felt since moving to Aotearoa three years ago. It sells the best pies I have ever eaten in my life.
Yanah and James are a couple that have their heritage in Samoa and the Cook Islands, but are Wellington born and bred and have deep family ties to Porirua. Both have lived rich lives that have led them up to this point. Yanah worked a series of corporate jobs and James was a serial entrepreneur; ask him about who invented the massage gun first and he will tell you unequivocally it was him, he even has his prototype in a lock up somewhere on the estate.
What both of them understood from living and working in the community is that everyone was screaming out for “home food”. The kind of food they ate growing up that feels and tastes like home, safety and connection. They are unapologetic in what their mission is: they want to create a place for people to recognise their own identity and feel nourished. When a run-down cafe on the estate became available, they decided to do something about it.
They say that there is an inverse relationship between the view you are afforded and the quality of the food you will eat. Those trattorias cut into the cliffs on Cinque Terre in northern Italy look out over the azure horizon, but serve warm white wine, pre packed sauces and bulk pasta. Meanwhile, those slice shops in New York looking out over the stacks of bins are so good that you’ll return four times in as many days to eat amongst the garbage. If this idea holds water, then I reckon Pepe’s cafe may be serving some of the best food in Aotearoa.
This isn’t to say the Thermo King warehouse opposite isn’t beautiful, it truly is. Although to be completely honest I don’t think I’ve ever looked out of the windows while I’m in the cafe. I’m far too busy watching as everyone bustles around politely trying to get to the pie cabinet, everyone praying there is still pāua available. I’m far too busy listening to the laughter that seems to be constantly rippling through the whole space, the daps and hugs of old friends who just so happened to bump into each other at Pepe’s Cafe.
The whole community is there. Word has spread about what is going on inside this small cafe on the industrial estate in Kenepuru. James tells me they knew they were on to something serious, something good, when aunties would come in saying they had heard about it from their friend at church. High praise indeed and something certainly worth travelling for.
One of the reasons they are so busy, with people turning up at all times, is that kitchen operates through the day. This constant cooking comes not by design but, like all great things, by necessity. The site they have taken over is tiny, they simply don’t have the space or money to install professional bakers ovens and the equipment needed to bake en masse. Efficiency is everywhere in this little cafe. The beautiful counter they serve from was pieced together from all the palettes salvaged from around the estate in order to save money. The kitchen equipment too was salvaged to get them up and running, until the day they are ready for a refurb.
It is the pies people are coming for. The pies that are inspired by home, the meals they were cooked by parents and aunties growing up and want to cook again for others. Designed to be comfort and connection for those in a city dedicated to the food of everywhere else but Aotearoa and the Islands of the Pacific. All of their history and heritage, all of their love condensed down and encased in pastry.
Povi Masima and taro in coconut cream pie is a pie that is at once warming and kind and generous. It is a pie that speaks an international language, salty fatty cuts of brisket stewed until tender just like salt beef, but will unmistakably speak of home to those that know. It’s nestled amongst sweet taro root that has been cooked down until tender and sweet and plays folly to the meat before being coated in a coconut cream sauce. The coconut cream sauce bakes in the pie, taking on the texture of a thickened bechamel and making everything feel just so luxurious and decadent – the garlic bringing heat and sweetness in a way that garlic just can sometimes.
There is a pie that is filled with canned spaghetti, crumbled corned beef and topped off with a layer of mozzarella cheese. It is one of the classic Island family meals cooked out of necessity, what were once the affordable ingredients and cheaper cuts sent out to the Islands now become luxurious and packed with nostalgia. It is almost perfect. Yanah has noticed that it is the pākehā customers that seem to have the biggest affinity with this pie, it turns out the international symbol of comfort and safety is canned spaghetti and cheese.
But of a cabinet full of pies that are all vying for the title of best in the country, the creamed pāua pie sits out in front of all of them. It would not be hyperbolic to describe this pie as an architectural masterpiece, a feat of engineering that will be studied in years to come. The sweet pāua, bound in a rich cream sauce specked with onion and cheese, is holding itself up against the laws of physics. Pāua is a delicacy and James and Yanah care about it deeply – they understand that it can so often be lost in an overbearing sauce that reduces it to a bit part player. Not here – it is a pāua pie. It tells a story of the deep ocean that surrounds us. It is not an uncommon sight to see people sitting outside Pepe’s in their cars, eating a fresh pāua pie before walking right back in to buy another one.
There aren’t many other spots in Wellington right now selling cream pāua pies, boil up pies, or pies filled with spaghetti and corned beef. Yanah and James know their pies are what the community has been crying out for, that they are doing something important. They understand that food is language, and that the quickest way for a language to disappear is for it to stop being used.
While you may have to drive through town and out to the very eastern edge of the Kenepuru industrial estate to get there, Pepe’s Cafe isn’t on the edge of anything. It is right at the very beating heart of the vibrant Pacific community in Porirua. It is run by two people who have community at the very centre of everything they do. Yanah and James have found their voice and they are using it to make sure that everyone feels connected, cared for and loved.
First published August 21, 2024.
