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A headstone in a cemetery with "RIP" written on it an and image of the Cadbury mini eggs carton
Never forget

KaiFebruary 18, 2025

RIP Cadbury mini eggs – you used to be great

A headstone in a cemetery with "RIP" written on it an and image of the Cadbury mini eggs carton
Never forget

The last good thing at the supermarket is gone. Mad Chapman mourns the Cadbury mini egg cartons.

When life is overwhelming and it feels like every story around you is a bad news story, there are a few things that can be relied upon to instil a sense of calm, order and comfort in our lives. For me and, I’m going to assume, tens of thousands of New Zealanders, the little cardboard carton of Cadbury mini eggs only costing a dollar every Easter was one of those things.

Just did an unexciting grocery shop that you thought would cost $40 and instead cost $70? Grab a little carton of mini eggs at the counter for a dollar more and suddenly it’s a successful trip to the supermarket. 

Finding yourself feeling low every afternoon at your office desk when you’ve still got hours left to work? Crack open a little cardboard box filled with crunchy tiny chocolate eggs and experience a moment of ecstasy. 

Children freaking out in the muggy summer air? Your woes will be gone with a dollar coin and a pocket-sized little treat.

The examples are endless but the meaning is the same. Without realising it, New Zealand society of today built its foundations on rows of yellow cardboard boxes containing 41.5g of milk chocolate easter eggs. It was the only thing (barely) keeping us together.

And now, overnight, the foundations of our society and everything we hold dear are crumbling.

  1. Without so much as a warning notice, Cadbury mini eggs returned to supermarket shelves, not in sweet wee cardboard cartons but in gross, bad plastic bags.
  2. Not only are the bags fugly, they are also smaller (shrinkflation), containing a mere 31g. That is a nearly 25% decrease in size. 
  3. Not only are the bags fugly and much smaller, they are also more expensive, at $2.30 for frankly three bites of chocolate, more than twice what it cost just few years ago.

Cadbury took shrinkflation, inflation and a worse product, rolled it into a turd, wrapped it in tinfoil, lit it on fire and threw it on our porch.

This all happened over a fortnight ago and shook the nation (my home of two people and a cat) to its core. I didn’t write anything about it then because I naively believed that Cadbury was simply doing a phased rollout, saving everyone’s favourite Easter egg for last (I was desperate and grasping at cardboard straws).

But no, it’s real, and 125g (AKA a handful) of shell-y chocolate will now set you back $8.50. 

None of this should be a surprise to consumers. The global chocolate crisis has been worsening for over a year, and manufacturers all over the world have pointed to the rise in transport and materials costs as the reason for rising prices on the shelf. And Cadbury is not immune to the global downturn. It saw profits plummet 33% in 2023, so someone somewhere was tasked with getting more for less out of its smallest product. 

A screenshot of Woolworths prices for Cadbury easter products, showing the prices of mini eggs being twice as much as Cadbury dairy milk eggs
Wondering why plain eggs and blocks are so much cheaper. What is in those shells??

I’m no economist – quite the opposite, actually – but isn’t there such a thing as a loss leader? Cadbury is not even close to being the most beloved chocolate brand in New Zealand, but they are (historically) cheaper than Whittaker’s. That Whittaker’s refuses to make mini eggs is perhaps a testament to seasonal goods being hard to square away financially, which has forced Cadbury mini eggs into being a strange sort of luxury item instead of the affordable and favoured option. I say swallow the cost and accept mini eggs as a loss leader. They are surely Cadbury’s equivalent of the Costco $1.50 hot dog.*

Typically, the mini eggs sell out before Easter. I have been burned more than once for being cheap and waiting to buy them on special after Easter only to find them long gone. But this year? This year may just be the year to wait. I bought one bag (for science) and the eggs were as delicious as I remembered, a worthy winner in The Spinoff’s easter egg ranking. But I won’t be returning nearly daily as I used to. Will you?

One day, when we’re sipping our $18 cup of coffee ($3 extra for milk) and reminiscing about the good old days, I’ll be the first to say, “remember when Cadbury mini egg cartons were 90 cents?”

*Mad’s advice is of a general nature, and she is not responsible for any loss that any reader may suffer from following it.

Keep going!
chop-suey.png

KaiFebruary 8, 2025

The Chinese origins of Sāmoa’s most popular dish, chop suey

chop-suey.png

Many of Sāmoa’s beloved dishes are the result of cultural collaboration, writes Madeleine Chapman.

All photos by Jin Fellet

If you ever find yourself at a barbecue in a Sāmoan home, there’s 99% chance that sapasui (chop suey) will be on the table. For the past century, sapasui has been a staple dish from the island, even rising to the status of being considered “traditional” and a national dish. Alongside the sapasui on the table, you could expect to see an assortment of other traditional dishes including oka (raw fish in coconut cream), keke pua’a (pork buns) and keke saiga (savoury biscuits). All dishes have few ingredients, utilise flavours commonly grown and found in Sāmoa, and share one special ingredient.

They’re all Chinese.

The story of how Sāmoa’s national palate came to be shaped by Chinese cuisine stretches back  the early 20th century, when the first wave of indentured labourers arrived in Sāmoa from southern China. Until then, families and villages grew a large portion of the food they ate on their own land. Meat and vegetables were cooked and served whole, alongside each other, and seasonings were few and far between. Fish was caught and cooked. 

Yellow bananas, raw taro and green bananas for sale on a table. Behind the table is a shop window with partial shop signage that reads "avondale, auckland"
Ripe bananas, taro and green bananas are staple ingredients in Sāmoan cuisine

Indentured labourers were sought to work the growing plantations across Sāmoa, and Chinese workers were considered the best option. In the Fukien and Guangdong provinces, men facing famine and unemployment saw posters promising luxury and women – both Sāmoan and Chinese – on this faraway island. 

When the first shipment of labourers arrived in 1903, they were greeted instead with 11-hour workdays, legal flogging and cut wages. Living in Sāmoa was not at all what they had hoped for, and to make it worse, the food was bland. Enter: a marriage of cuisines.

The men arriving from China brought with them their labour, yes, but also their knowledge of cooking and flavours and some of their own ingredients.  

Brown chop suey fills a buffet tray in a warmer, with cooked taro in front and a curry to the right
Chop suey for sale at Taste of Samoa

While ginger and garlic might be staple ingredients in New Zealand households today, and have been part of Asian cuisines for thousands of years, in Sāmoa in the early 20th century, they were a novelty. As well as ginger and garlic, Chinese staples like rice and noodles were introduced by the labourers, resulting in simple dishes like chow mein becoming hugely popular.

But unlike the many instances throughout history where countries have simply adopted immigrant cuisines alongside their own, sapasui and Sāmoan cuisine is a genuine collaboration of Sāmoan and Chinese flavours to create something distinct. Due to the limited resources and ingredients available, Chinese couldn’t simply recreate their home dishes in another country. 

Chop suey is a true bicultural dish, taking the textures and (some) flavours of Chinese cuisine and fitting them into the existing cooking methods and simple ingredients of Sāmoa. With just six ingredients and a preparation time of 20 minutes (at most) in a single pot, chop suey found the common ground between Sāmoa and China and is a culinary evolution that has stood the test of time.

As Sharon Lam has previously written, such a collaborative approach is hard to find in New Zealand. While Chinese food is often prepared and sold alongside local dishes at takeaway shops, there is no singular dish that illustrates the Chinese-New Zealand relationship like chop suey. 

And it’s not alone in its bicultural distinction. Oka – raw fish and vegetables in coconut milk – is an evolution of cooked fish in coconut milk after the Chinese introduced Sāmoans to raw fish. Keke pua’a are a variation on the traditional char siu bao, with a denser dough and adjusted meat filling. And given the savoury palate in Sāmoa, the “sweet” dessert of kekesaiga is in fact a garlic and soy sauce biscuit closer in taste to a dense cracker. 

Clear bags of biscuits shaped as flowers on a bench, the bags are tied with rubber bands
Kekesaiga, seen in every aunty’s bag at Auckland international terminal

In total, 6,900 Chinese labourers worked in Sāmoa between 1903 and 1934. They married Sāmoan women and fully assimilated (out of necessity) into Sāmoan society. They brought their own knowledge and skills which were integrated into Sāmoan culture, and being all men, they brought their names to a small population, resulting in large Sāmoan family lines with Chinese surnames now. 

In 1930, after three decades of questionable treatment of indentured labourers in Sāmoa, the New Zealand administration ordered all indentured labourers to be repatriated back to China. Two decades later, only 174 men remained, who were either too old or sick to travel, and who had strong roots in Sāmoa after living there for decades. There is much still unknown about those 6,900 men, with language barriers resulting in many transliterating their names upon arrival in Sāmoa and sparse records of their Chinese homes and families.

Esera Teleiai, Cecilia Sapati and Master Chef John Mataafa from Ulutoa & Sons

Despite the dwindling numbers by 1950, the Chinese presence and influence in Sāmoa has only grown in recent decades, both culturally and politically. And as Sāmoan migration continues to New Zealand, so does the Sāmoan-Chinese connection. A number of specialty Sāmoan food stores in New Zealand are owned and operated by Chinese families, being familiar with the techniques and ingredients used in all the dishes. There’ll be keke pua’a, kekesaiga and of course, chop suey – the humble noodle dish sapasui, that is a little bit Chinese and a whole lot Sāmoan.

Sapasui recipe

Serves 4

  • 400g diced meat (pork or beef is best, diced)
  • 1x packet vermicelli noodles (soaked in cold water to soften)
  • 1x onion (chopped)
  • 3 cloves garlic (finely chopped)
  • One teaspoon grated ginger (or more if preferred)
  • Dark soy sauce

Once vermicelli noodles are softened, trim with scissors and drain. Heat one tablespoon cooking oil in large pot, add onion and garlic and cook until fragrant. Add meat, stirring consistently until browned. Add ginger and enough soy sauce to cover the meat. Bring to simmer, then add vermicelli by the handful, stirring until all noodles are brown. Add 1/2 cup of water, cover and leave to simmer for five minutes or until thick.