Politics of Palatablity

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Carolyn Morris
Massey University
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The Politics of
Palatability
ON THE ABSENCE OF MA-ORI RESTAURANTS •
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01 Morris 13.1:04FCS10.3/Karaou 7/12/09 13:47 Page 6
ABSTRACT
::
This paper seeks to explain the absence of Ma-ori food in the public culinascape.
Drawing on the work of Heldke and Hage, I develop an analysis in terms of a politics of
palatability.There are few Ma-ori restaurants because there is not a clientele.There is a Food,
Culture
limited Ma-ori clientele because Ma-ori as a group lack the economic resources to &
support restaurants and, unlike migrant ethnic groups, have many other sites of Society
community.There is a limited Pa-keha- clientele because Pa-keha- do not enjoy Ma-ori food.
This dislike of Ma-ori food is, I argue, a social taste, that can be understood in a context
where Ma-ori demands for rights on the basis of their indigenous status have disturbed
the ways in which Pa-keha- belong to the nation. Following Harbottle, I argue that Ma-ori
have a “spoiled identity” for Pa-keha-, and that this can be read both as a sign of Ma-ori
subordination and as a sign of Ma-ori power.What this analysis suggests is that the public
culinascape can be read as a map of the field of race relations in Aotearoa New
Zealand.
Keywords: restaurants, Ma-ori, ethnicity
Introduction
::
On Friday nights, after a hard week of academic toil, we adjourn to our staff
club for a few collegial drinks. Some evenings, if the conversation and wine
are flowing, we then decide to go out to dinner. Usually, because it’s cheap
and there’s no need to book, we choose an “ethnic” restaurant. We can
choose Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Italian,
Greek, Spanish, Middle Eastern, Mexican, Moroccan and Burmese. We
cannot, however, choose Ma-ori: there are no restaurants serving the food of
the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand. This generally unremarked
state of affairs is what this paper seeks to explain: the absence of Ma-ori food
in the public culinascape.1 There are a number of Ma-ori cultural experience
ventures which combine storytelling, dance and food whose market is
international tourists, but few restaurants whose imagined clientele is the
New Zealand public.
“Tell me what you eat: I will tell you what you are” (Brillat-Savarin 1994
[1825]: 13) has become a cliché because it succinctly expresses the central
tenet of the social science of food—that the food we eat and the way we eat
it are diagnostic of wider social and cultural processes. I suggest that what
we do not eat may be equally revealing of who we are. I explore a number of
explanations for the absence of Ma-ori restaurants: the lack of a Ma-ori
cusine, the lack of a Ma-ori clientele on account of economic status and the
6 :: Carolyn Morris DOI: 10.2752/175174410X12549021367983

availability of culturally marked food in other venues, and the lack of a

Pa-keha- clientele because of the perceived unpalatability of Ma-ori food. I
argue that this unpalatability reflects the spoiling (Harbottle 2000) of Ma-ori
identity for Pa-keha-, the result of recent decades of political action designed
vol. 13 :: no. 1 to challenge Pa-keha- cultural and political dominance. Hage (1998) and
march 10
Heldke (2001) argue that majorities’ appreciation of the food of ethnic
minorities constitutes a relation of domination in which the Other is
positioned as consumable, as assimilable. I draw on their insights to consider
the situation of an indigenous people. I argue that the position of Ma-ori as
tangata whenua,2 as the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, makes
them ultimately unassimilable, and it is this cultural and political
unconsumability that makes their food unpalatable.
Restaurants and Identity

::
The premise of the social science literature on public eating is that
restaurants are about more than simply consuming food, they are “total social
phenomena” (Beriss and Sutton 2007: 1)—sites for the reproduction and
transformation of individual and group identities along dominant axes of
social division: class, gender and ethnicity. A recent survey of the
ethnographic literature on restaurants (Beriss and Sutton 2007) shows that
while earlier analyses concentrated on the social relations and dynamics
internal to restaurants, more recent studies “push the analysis beyond the
doors of the restaurant to look at the wider sociocultural landscape in which
restaurants are set” (Beriss and Sutton 2007: 7). The focus of much of this
work has been on ethnicity, on how different ethnic groups are positioned and
operate in the restaurant industry (e.g. Lovell-Troy 1990; Harbottle 2000)
and on how place identities are produced through these restaurants (e.g.
Girardelli 2004; Zukin 1995). There is a smaller body of literature on
restaurants and “public ethnicity” (Lu and Fine 1995: 536), how ethnic
identities are constituted through interactions in the public spaces of
restaurants (e.g. Davis 2002; Ferrero 2002). Lu and Fine argue that ethnic
identity is the product of “interactions with other groups” (Lu and Fine 1995:
535), and that “the survival and modification of ethnic culture in public life
is made possible largely through the continuity of ethnic food in restaurants
and fast-food establishments” (Lu and Fine 1995: 539; see also Abarca 2004;
Davis 2002). This paper considers the relationship between restaurants and
ethnic identities, but focuses on a group whose food does not appear in the
public culinascape. The situation I explore differs from other analyses of
ethnic restaurants in that Ma-ori are not a migrant group, but are indigenous,
and I will argue that it is this status that accounts for the absence of their food
in the public culinascape, and what makes this absence significant.
The Politics of Palatability :: 7

Ma-ori Food in the Public Culinascape

::
When people ask me what I am working on, and I tell them “the absence of
Ma-ori restaurants,” responses are of a kind. People say, “yeah, now that you
mention it…,” then advance their own theory of why this might be. The Food,
Culture
common argument is that Ma-ori have little distinctive food, and what they &
do have is not “nice”; therefore there is no basis for a restaurant. A Pa-keha- Society
man articulated this position: “There are no Ma-ori restaurants because

Ma-ori don’t have any food. They’d eaten the moas3 and most of the
morioris,4 and if the Brits hadn’t arrived when they did, they would have
starved to death.” He admitted that ha-ngı-5 was Ma-ori food, but, he said,
“most of the food that goes into ha-ngı- isn’t Ma-ori.” New Zealand has (and
had) no native land mammals bar a few small bats, and so the common
ha-ngı- meats of beef and pork, and introduced vegetables such as pumpkin
and potatoes were not considered by him to be Ma-ori. A middle class friend,
who considers herself liberal, said in somewhat hesitant tones, “well, Ma-ori
food, ha-ngı- and that, its just not very nice food, is it? Its not healthy, it’s fatty,
and it’s boring. You wouldn’t go to a restaurant to eat that.”
From an anthropological perspective, the explanation that there are no
Ma-ori restaurants because Ma-ori food is not nice does not stack up. We know
from all of the writings on food that what tastes good to a particular person or
group has little to do with either individual preference or the food itself, and
that what we like to eat is instead a fundamentally social and cultural matter,
deeply intertwined with other aspects of the social order. The perceived not-
niceness of Ma-ori food is a social, not a physiological, taste.
The explanation of the lack of restaurants in terms of the absence of the
basis for a Ma-ori cuisine is also inadequate. Ma-ori cuisine could be based on
a number of things. First, indigenous food, foods that are native to New
Zealand, that were eaten by Ma-ori before colonization, and, possibly, are not
available anywhere else in the world. This includes a wide range of plants
and vegetables, berries, seafood, fish and marine mammals, and birds. Fuller
(1978) and Riley (1988) list many foods eaten by Ma-ori in the past that are
not widely eaten today. Their list includes plants such as fernroot, tı- or
cabbage tree, nikau palm, raupo (bulrush) a wide range of fungi, types of
orchid, gourd, and a range of nuts and berries. Lizards, rats and insects such
as huhu grubs6 are not widely eaten nor are many of the birds such as kereru-
(wood pigeon) that would have been eaten in pre-colonial times. Some
indigenous foods that are still eaten are generally regarded as Ma-ori food and
are eaten mainly by Ma-ori. These include shellfish such as pupu and pipi,
kina (sea eggs), tuna (eel), tı-tı- (muttonbirds), and vegetables such as pu-ha-
(sowthistle), pikopiko (fern shoots) and karengo (seaweed). Other foods
such as pa-ua (abalone), kuku (green lipped mussels), toheroa (a shellfish),
whitebait, ko-ura (crayfish) and kumara (sweet potato) have been
8 :: Carolyn Morris
incorporated into the Pa-keha- diet and have come to be understood as New
Zealand rather than Ma-ori food. This is also the case for New Zealand fish.
However, these foods could be classified as Ma-ori food. There are also foods
that have been introduced by Europeans and incorporated by Ma-ori into
vol. 13 :: no. 1 their diet. These include wheat, pork, beef, mutton, chicken, potatoes, corn
march 10
and pumpkin. What makes such food Ma-ori is the way in which it is
combined with other foods, or the way in which it is cooked, so that methods
such as ha-ngı-, boil-up, or processes of fermentation like that used to make
kanga wai (fermented corn) can also transform non-indigenous food into
Ma-ori food. Beaton, describing accounts of Ma-ori food from the writings of
early European settlers through to contemporary cookbooks, has demon-
strated the “existence of a distinct Ma-ori culinary tradition in contemporary
New Zealand” (Beaton 2007: 131), “a continuous and evolving tradition
[dating] back to first contact with Europeans” (Beaton 2007: 75). Thus,
there is the basis for a Ma-ori cuisine. Despite this, Ma-ori food as Ma-ori food
has not entered the New Zealand public culinascape to any great extent.7
The Presence of Ma-ori Restaurants

::
What would make a restaurant a Ma-ori restaurant? The answer to this is a
restaurant that serves Ma-ori food, does things in the restaurant in a “Ma-ori”
way (whatever that might mean), and explicitly advertises itself as a Ma-ori
restaurant. There are, and have been, as far as I can ascertain, few
restaurants that meet these criteria. Those that have existed range from
takeaways (generally serving ha-ngı-) to fine-dining restaurants. In this section
I consider three Ma-ori restaurants, none of which still operates: Kai in the
City, Te Ao Kohatu and Te Waka a Maui. An examination of these
restaurants illustrates the ways in which Ma-ori food is currently
incorporated into public cuisine and provides the basis for a consideration of
why there are so few of them.
KAI IN THE CITY
::
Kai in the City8 was established in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city, in
2003. Its website outlines the restaurant’s aim—to make Ma-ori food, and
through food Ma-ori culture, available to the public:
KAI in the City is a whare kai (café/wine bar) that provides a real
New Zealand dining experience based on traditional Ma-ori values.
Our food, wine, and décor all have enlightening stories about the
tangata whenua, their lands and their seas.

The food at KAI in the City aims to promote the best qualities of
modern cuisine with the traditional foods and flavours of Ma-ori. Our
food is best described as being “Fine New Zealand Cuisine.” From
time to time KAI in the City will host events to promote food,
occasions or people important to Ma-ori, events that will give Food,
Culture
members of the public access to specific Ma-ori foods or people. One &
Society
such event held monthly, is the Tepu Rangatira where the public can
share a meal and conversation with a well known Rangatira or leader.
The concept is based on a famous whakatauaki [proverb], “Ko te kai
a te rangatira he korero” meaning “The food of leaders is discussion.”
(www.kaicity.co.nz)
According to a review of Kai in the Bay in Cuisine magazine (Burton 2003),

the restaurant attracted “middle-class Pa-keha- liberals” and “the capital’s
Ma-ori Elite.” Customer reviews of the restaurant on the Dineout website
(www.dineout.co.nz) note its “warm and welcoming” atmosphere where the
staff “make everyone feel like family.” The website of Kai in the City
emphasizes that this service reflects Ma-ori cultural values:
Our service is based on Manaakitanga [hospitality]: the best of

service provided on our marae—friendly, efficient and comfortable.
We were taught to enjoy look after manuhiri [guests], especially the
older ones, and going the extra mile to make them feel special.
(www.kaicity.co.nz)
This Ma-ori atmosphere is created by the host who “cheerfully takes a

moment to greet all” and by the music. On the night I dined there, the owner
sang in Ma-ori while we ate, and when some friends went they were asked to
join in with the singing of “Pokarekare Ana.”9 The group singing was
mentioned in several Dineout reviews. Some comments were positive: “Our
favourite part is when the owner (we think) came out and sang songs on his
guitar!!! We are not sing along types but this was great. The whole restaurant
was singing… He was genuinely interested in us.” Others were more
ambivalent, the critique softened by humor and the use of an emoticon:
“The singing and story telling was good, but I think it would be more suited
for tourists as when I recieved [sic] my food all I wanted to do was eat it, not
sing to it :).” Dineout reviewers understood that the restaurant offered more
than just food—Ma-ori culture was on the menu as well: “It was really cool
to learn so much about Maori culture” and “definitely a place to impress your
overseas visitors but also good to take your kiwi friends to celebrate just a
little bit of Maori culture.” One reviewer, however, also noted that it was
possible not to experience the restaurant in this way: “A great evening out
where you are made really welcome, can join in or not as you wish, and if
you want to can go away well fed and still as monocultural as you like.”
10 :: Carolyn Morris
The menu at Kai in the City exemplifies one of the ways in which Ma-ori
food appears in the public culinascape. When I ate there we were
encouraged to order our food in Ma-ori, and there were cards on the tables
which contained the phrases necessary for this. The meal is structured by
vol. 13 :: no. 1 Euro-American culinary codes: entrée, main, dessert, cheese and coffee,
march 10
served with wine; yet it is Ma-ori food because it is made of indigenous
ingredients, contains Ma-ori herbs, or is cooked in a traditional Ma-ori way, as
illustrated by examples from the menu:
• Kuku Mamoa: gently steamed mussels in a creamy kawakawa (Ma-ori

pepper, or bush basil) broth
• Tuna: Hangi and oven-baked eel fillet on a hangi vegetable crush with a
basil, lemon and caper dressing
• Titi: Roasted mutton bird with kowhitiwhiti (watercress) stuffing served

on herb roasted taewa (Ma-ori potato) with a red wine jus
• Hangi: Manuka infused reme (lamb) cutlets and heihei (chicken) on

hangi veges with a thyme and red wine jus
• Kaanga Reka: Fermented corn with manuka honey and cream.
Dineout reviewers commented favorably on the food: “My ‘hangi’ (lamb

cutlets with hangi vegetables/chicken) with a tasty sauce would have
impressed in any restaurant. Nga Tihi (cheeses) came properly aged,
garnished, and in generous proportions.” Kai in the City’s food was
contrasted favorably with other Ma-ori food they had eaten: “The food is
excellent—I had the hangi and this bore absolutely no resemblance to my
last hangi from the earth in Ohariu Valley some decades ago—smoked
cabbage and chicken and rather burnt spuds is my recollection. The hangi
at Kai in City is far removed from this memory.” However, because of the
food’s quality its authenticity was questioned—note the quote marks in the
following statement: “Nice tasty food with pacific rim influence as well as
‘authentic’ Maori food. Puddings not authentic but adapted ones such as
tiramisu (converted into a Maori name) but delicious. Wine10 made by
Maori group also good value.”
Te Ao Kohatu
::
For a short period in 1999, a Ma-ori restaurant called Te Ao Kohatu11
operated in central Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest city. The
restaurant was billed as “the only Pakeha-style Maori restaurant in the
country” (www.travelocity.com), indicating that like Kai in the City it was a
fine-dining restaurant. Te Ao Kohatu was partly owned by Tame Iti, a well-

known Ma-ori activist.12 A review in The Dominion newspaper described the

restaurant:
Te Ao Kotahu, in inner-city Auckland’s Karangahape Rd, serves

dishes such as muttonbird on a bed of steamed watercress, paua Food,
sausage in a cream sauce, kanga pirau (a dessert of fermented corn), Culture
&
roroi (caramelized kumara) and wai kouka (a drink made from the Society
heart of the cabbage tree) … Its style is fine white crockery and
waitresses in starched white shirts and long black aprons. Tables are
made of rough-sawn tawa13 slabs rescued from the Waimana River
near Mr Iti’s Tuhoe home of Taneatua. Prices range from $15 for
entrees to $26 for main courses. Mr Iti, who is one partner in the
venture, explains that the restaurant incurs high costs paying those
who gather the berries and wild plants in its recipes … The café,
which incorporates an art gallery, including several of Mr Iti’s own
works, is alcohol-free and smoke-free. Those two “filthy colonial
habits” have done no good for Ma-oris, he says. (The Dominion 1999)
I have not been able to discover exactly how long Te Ao Kohatu lasted, but
it was not for long. I lived in central Auckland during this period and recall
talking about the restaurant. My friends and I ate at a lot of different kinds
of restaurants, and though we talked about Te Ao Kohatu, we did not go. I
remember comments that the food was not “proper Ma-ori food” as it
contained what we considered to be non-Ma-ori ingredients such as cream—
it wasn’t authentic. Besides, the no-alcohol status wasn’t attractive.
However, I now think the reason behind our avoidance of the restaurant was
an anxious sense that we would not feel comfortable there. Tame Iti is not a
comfortable figure for many Pa-keha- because of his political activism, and
this association did not promise the kind of “friendly atmosphere” Dineout
customers encountered at Kai in the City.
TE WAKA A MAUI
::
In 2005, The Christchurch Star published an article in about this research,
generating a number of phone calls from both Ma-ori and Pa-keha-, who told
me about a Ma-ori restaurant that had operated in Christchurch in the mid-
1980s called Te Waka a Maui.
A Pa-keha- woman, Janet, told me that she went to Te Waka a Maui with a
group because one of the women “was married to a Ma-ori guy.”14 When they
arrived they were served an entrée—“Ma-ori bread, and pa-ua or kina in
cream, yuk.” The ha-ngı-, she said, “was lovely, really really nice.” As it was
cooked in a gas ha-ngı-, she said, the food was “nicer” as “it didn’t have that
smoked taste,” i.e. it tasted like a roast, not a ha-ngı-. There was another
element that made the restaurant Ma-ori—each table had to do “an item”‘—
her table sang the inevitable Pokarekare Ana. It was this, she said, which
made the evening so much fun, it was “like you were at a party.” Margaret,
whose family went to the restaurant because it was “somewhere different,”
vol. 13 :: no. 1 also talked about having to sing. She said that she thought that what the
march 10
restaurant was trying to do was to create a Ma-ori atmosphere. Among Ma-ori,
she said, meals were “a communal thing, a shared thing,” and the owners
were trying to make the restaurant like a “Ma-ori home” rather than a
business.
I asked a Ma-ori woman, Mary, why she thought Pa-keha- went to the
restaurant. She told me that the owners were aiming at the tourist market
and were “surprised by a lot of local interest.” Lots of Pa-keha- went, she said,
and they “loved it.” They loved it “for more than the food,” although the food
was “very good,” they liked the “sense of fun.” She said that in Christchurch
there “aren’t opportunities to mix with Ma-ori” and so the restaurant provided
“a window into a Ma-ori world, it melded between two worlds.” The
restaurant provided safe and accessible access to this world: “steam ha-ngı- is
good for beginners to ha-ngı-, it’s not too strong.” Moreover, the restaurant
served steaks and seafood as well, so it was “manageable to all comers.” She
said that people in Christchurch were “hungry for such experience,” because
in Christchurch there are not many Ma-ori people and opportunities for
Ma-ori experience are limited. People went to Te Waka a Maui, she said,
because of an “underlying desire to have a cross-cultural experience.” It was
an “upper middle class client group who enjoyed Ma-ori culture.”
WHY DID THE RESTAURANTS NOT SURVIVE?
::
Elements common to the three restaurants give some indication as to why
they have not survived. First, is the difficulty Ma-ori restaurants face in
successfully presenting a distinctive and authentic cuisine because of the
ways in which local food is classified as Ma-ori or not Ma-ori. For Pa-keha-,
Ma-ori food is not sophisticated food, and the culinary sophistication of the
three restaurants challenged this understanding. As discussed above, much
food that could be classified as Ma-ori food is not classified in this way.
Modified versions of the kind of food served at Kai in the City have found
their way onto the menus of many restaurants serving contemporary cuisine.
In these restaurants, however, foods tend not to be labeled Ma-ori but are
called “Kiwi” or “New Zealand” food. In the last two decades there has been
a concerted effort to create a New Zealand cuisine, a cuisine that is
distinctive because it is local, but also universal in that it is constructed
within international codes for producing fusion food. In this code, the fuser
is located in and works from the dominant Anglo-American culinary

tradition (and is often a member of the dominant culture), while the cuisine
that is fused is subordinate (and subordinated by the very process of fusion).
“Kiwi” cuisine is structured by Franco-Euro-American culinary codes, and
local foods simply function as points of culinary difference. For example,
consider this review of CinCin (www.cincin.co.nz), a well-established Food,
Culture
Auckland restaurant that serves “modern European cuisine combined with &
Society
New Zealand’s finest products”:
It could be any international restaurant with its ritzy décor, set on

the harbour’s edge with ferries constantly pulling in and out
alongside, but the menu with choices of “hot and sour seafood broth
with scallops, Greenshell mussels, hapuku15 and karengo16 linguini”
or “warm tartlet of forest mushrooms, horopito,17 feta crumble and
asparagus essence” unashamedly suggests to the visitor this is New
Zealand. Chef Keith McPhee’s menu at Cin Cin in Auckland is
driven by the fashionable influences and techniques of Pacific,
Eastern and Mediterranean cooking, but takes advantage of local
produce like Greenshell mussels, hapuku and “hot new” ingredients
such as karengo and horopito to present a cuisine that’s unique to
New Zealand. (Jacobs 2004: 1)
Here, in contrast to Kai in the City, indigenous ingredients make Kiwi or

New Zealand food, not Ma-ori food. In this context it is difficult for Ma-ori
restaurateurs to create a distinct cuisine, as its basis has been appropriated.
A second explanation for the lack of Ma-ori restaurants is to do with the
kind of “Ma-ori experience” on offer. Kai in the City and Te Waka a Maui,
both of which survived for several years, provided an experience of Ma-ori
culture that was comfortable for Pa-keha-, emphasizing cultural practices
such as collective singing and hospitality rather than the potentially
disturbing confrontation with an uneasy colonial history suggested by
Tame Iti’s Te Ao Kohatu. However, that something of this anxiety may have
been present in the minds of customers at Kai in the City is illustrated by
the number of reviewers who emphasize how they were made welcome
and the friendliness of the staff, and my friends and I made similar
(relieved?) comments about how nice they were to us after our visit. I do
not think that we would make comments like this after visits to other
ethnic restaurants—indeed, we continue to patronize a Chinese restaurant
where the owner can only be described as rude. However, her unfriend-
liness does not disturb our comfort in the way that the imagined
unfriendliness of Tame Iti did.
A third explanation is to do with clientele. People who phoned about Te
Waka a Maui explained the restaurant’s failure in terms of the lack of a
clientele, both Ma-ori and Pa-keha-. Alice, a Ma-ori woman, suggested that
Ma-ori should have supported the restaurant, but the problem was that
the Ma-ori community in Christchurch was small. Furthermore, Mary said,

the restaurant was “not cheap,” it was “a posh night out.” The ha-ngı- cost
around $25 per person—an expensive meal in the mid-1980s. As a result,
Ma-ori did not go. Ma-ori, she said, were used to paying $5 for a ha-ngı- at a
vol. 13 :: no. 1 fundraiser, and if they wanted “a posh night out,” they wouldn’t eat ha-ngı-. As
march 10
Lucille said: “the domestic market can do it at home,” meaning that
Ma-ori do not need restaurants to access Ma-ori food (whatever they consider
that to be). Furthermore, she said, “lots of Ma-ori don’t have disposable
income” and the restaurant “wasn’t cheap,” so the Ma-ori market was
limited.18
The explanation offered for the lack of a Pa-keha- clientele was the low
status of Ma-ori among Pa-keha-. Keith, who went to Te Waka a Maui
because he had “Ma-ori friends at the time,” said that he has always “been
interested in Ma-ori food.” In fact, he told me he was having an eel for
lunch on the day he rang: “Ma-ori food appeals to me a hell of a lot … Most
kiwis turn their noses up at Ma-ori meals, if you know what I mean.” Ken
was blunter: “The most compelling reason for the lack of Ma-ori restaurants
is there is no demand. Ma-ori amongst the local population [i.e. Pa-keha-] is
synonymous with shoddy, and people don’t want poor service or bad food
when dining.”
The clientele of Kai in the City and Te Waka a Maui were from the middle
classes, where people who Heldke (2003) calls “food adventurers” are to be
found. Food adventurers seek out “the new, the obscure and the exotic,”
desiring “authentic experiences of authentic cultures” (Heldke 2003: 2).
Abarca suggests that when cultural insiders deploy authenticity it can be
read as “an act of cultural resistance against mainstream hegemonization”
(Abarca 2004: 5), and that even “pseudo-ethnic” food, food modified to meet
the tastes of cultural outsiders, can be interpreted “as a subversive act to
prevent cultural appropriation” (Abarca 2004: 9) through the retention of
“authentic” food for the community itself. However, when outsiders deploy
authenticity, the situation is different. Food adventurers regard with disdain
and reject food that they consider has been modified to meet the tastes of
cultural outsiders,19 defining such food as inauthentic. However, while food
adventurers seek the exotic and the authentic, there are limits to this desire.
Lu and Fine (1995; see also Davis 2002) note that in order to be successful,
Chinese restaurants must present food and dining experiences that are
“simultaneously exotic and familiar” (Lu and Fine 1995: 536) and provide a
comfortable experience of the Other. This is a fine line to tread for ethnic
restaurateurs, because the category of the desirable exotic constantly shifts
as food adventurers, pursuing novelty as a strategy for the accrual of cultural
capital, define cuisines as fashionable or not.
Food adventurers certainly exist in New Zealand, and I confess I am one
myself. However, eating Ma-ori food does not appear to provide a cultural

capital boost among New Zealand food adventurers.20 Why not? First, in
Aotearoa New Zealand Ma-ori are not exotic, they are indigenous. I suspect
that one of the reasons that Te Waka a Maui worked in Christchurch is the
lack of actual Ma-ori in Christchurch—Ma-ori are more exotic in
Food,
Christchurch than places like Auckland as they are not so actually present. Culture
Second, is the issue of authenticity. Friends who went to Kai in the City &
Society
e-mailed me about their experience:
The food was very, very good. John’s mutton bird was cooked
extremely well, according to our friend who had eaten it before when
it was prepared more “traditionally.” I can’t say that there was
anything especially Ma-ori about my snapper—except that it was
served on a bed of kumara and other vegetables. It was sophisticated
food that anyone familiar with Euro-American cuisine would have
enjoyed.
This illustrates the dilemma Ma-ori restaurants face. In the Pa-keha-

imagination, there is little authentic Ma-ori food, and, what does exist, is
regarded as unpalatable. If the food is cooked “traditionally,” if it is
authentic, it will not be so nice and so it is likely to be rejected. However,
“sophisticated” food is not “especially Ma-ori,” not authentic, and so there is
no particular reason to eat at that restaurant. Discourses of authenticity
imply “the existence of a ‘pure’ cultural essence, from which any departure
is a debasement” (Jackson 1999: 101), and serve to keep groups “within well-
defined cultural, social and economic boundaries” (Abarca 2003: 19). The
demand that foods (and cultures) meet the criteria of exoticness/authenticity
is one of the practices through which the ethnic other is kept firmly in their
culinary and cultural place.
What these appearances tell us is that Ma-ori restaurants do not prosper
because of the difficulty of carving out a distinctive cuisine, and because
there is a limited clientele. Ma-ori clientele are limited because they lack the
economic resources to support restaurants, and because, unlike migrant
groups, they do not need such places as cultural resources. Pa-keha- clientele
are limited because many do not find Ma-ori food desirable.
Eating Ethnic Food

::
The literature on what it means for people constructed as unmarked by
ethnic difference, i.e. those constructed as white, to consume food marked
as ethnic shines further light on the issue of the undesirability of Ma-ori food.
Two threads unite the literature: first, that in consuming ethnic food the
eater absorbs that culture in a symbolic sense; second, eating the food of the
Other is connected with the identity project of the eater. What consumers
are doing in this eating is expressing a particular self, as “dining out is

identity work” (Lu and Fine 1995: 547). In settler societies, those sections
of the dominant culture who value cultural diversity “demonstrate to
[them]selves and others that [they] are cosmopolitan and tolerant “ (Lu and
vol. 13 :: no. 1 Fine 1995: 539) by enjoying ethnic food. This “celebration of variety,” Warde
march 10
et al. argue, is a central element in the expression of social distinction by the
middle classes, where enjoying a wide variety of foods is a sign of
cosmopolitan sophistication (Warde et al. 1999: 111). Through this practice
such eaters distinguish themselves from those other members of society
who, only being willing to consume their own food, they consider to be less
tolerant.
One implication of this is that the consumption of an ethnic foodway by
the dominant group indicates their acceptance of that ethnic group. Writing
about Chinese in America in the 1950s and 1960s, Inness (2006) noted that
they were socially marginalized and subject to racism. However, she argues,
it was through food, in this case cookbooks, that Chinese people become
more accepted by American society:
For mainstream America, accepting a culture is closely connected

with eating its foods, so much was at stake when Chinese-American
women wrote cookbooks. These books served as conduits to bring
two cultures together, leading to a greater tolerance and acceptance
of Chinese people… (Inness 2006: 41)
In support of this position she notes the correlation between liking a

foodway, and liking those people, so that Italian food is well regarded and
Italian people are accepted, while Korean and Chinese food, and Korean and
Chinese people, are not to the same extent (Inness 2006: 60): “how different
foods are accepted in the United States is intimately intertwined with how
people have or have not been accepted” (Inness 2006: 60).
What this suggests that it is possible to map a particular field of ethnicity
and the location of different groups within that field (from the position of
the dominant group) by considering how the foods of different groups are
regarded. From this perspective, the absence of Ma-ori restaurants indicates
that Ma-ori are not accepted by Pa-keha-.
The Unpalatable and the Inedible: Who Is Not Eaten?

::
This leads to the question of culinary absence more generally. Ma-ori cuisine
is not the only cuisine largely absent from the New Zealand public
culinascape—so is the food of the Pacific Islands. Despite the presence of a
significant Pacific Islands population (Auckland has the largest Polynesian
population of any city in the world), there is a notable absence of overtly

Pacific restaurants. Levenstein, referring to the spread of Chinese food in

America, argues that “the adoption of new food tastes is probably facilitated
by an absence of low-status people from whose homelands they originate”
(Levenstein 1993: 216), and I suggest that it is possible to account for the
absence of Pacific restaurants in the same way. Like Ma-ori, Pacific Islanders Food,
Culture
have low economic status and low social status among Pa-keha-, and so does &
Society
their food. A consideration of cultures that do not appear as food, and why
this might be, provides further insight into the absence of Ma-ori restaurants.
Harbottle’s (2000) work on Iranians in Britain considers a cuisine that is
not eaten. Though Iranians were deeply involved in the food trade, they did
not participate as Iranians, by selling food in either restaurants or take-out
bars that they called Iranian food. For example, kebabs were considered to
be Iranian food by Iranians, but they were sold to the British public as
Turkish or Middle Eastern, as they perceived that the British public would
not eat Iranian food (Harbottle 2000: 87). Iranian identity, Harbottle argued,
had been spoiled by political events outside of their control, namely the
Islamic revolution of 1979. Tarnished with the brush of Islamic
fundamentalism Iran and Iranian people were no longer considered nice in
Britain, and in turn their food became unpalatable. A similar process
occurred in the United States after 9/11 and the subsequent war in Iraq:
sales of all kinds of Middle Eastern food declined and restaurants were
attacked (Heldke 2003: 58). Similarly, when France refused to be nice and
join the coalition of nations invading Iraq, “French fries” became “freedom
fries” in the food outlets of the House of Representatives, among other
places (see, for example, www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries). It seems
that when a society is not nice, neither is their food.
The second category of the non-eaten is the Western superpowers,
particularly the United States and, until recently, Britain. Harbottle suggests
that British cuisine has “fail[ed] to impact significantly at an international
level” (Harbottle 2000: 142), but I disagree. Food based on the Franco-
British tradition, what has come to be called Euro-American food,
dominates the global culinascape, from structuring the proper meal at the
countless restaurants that serve “contemporary cuisine” to fast food such as
McDonald’s. Moreover, and despite its pervasiveness, much of this food is
disparaged, denigrated as bland and boring or reviled as chemical-laden
junk, considered not very palatable (particularly by food adventurers who
distinguish themselves from their lower class compatriots by rejecting the
food associated with them). However, though widely consumed, this food is
not eaten as American or as British food— we in New Zealand do not say
“let’s have American tonight.” Just as British and American whites are
unmarked ethnically, so is their food. Euro-American food is “culinarily
neutral” (Heldke 2003: 2), not hyphenated, not qualified, just food from
which all other food differs to a greater or lesser extent. This culinary code,
Hage argues, “operate[s] as a form of symbolic violence, setting the

parameters of what constitutes food” (Hage 1997: 123-124). The powerful
are the eaters, not the eaten, and as such dominant groups are not
represented through, or as, food.21
vol. 13 :: no. 1 Globally, there is a considerable degree of ambivalence about and
march 10
antipathy towards America, an antagonism regularly expressed in attacks on
McDonald’s outlets. The food of the dominant is not nice because, from the
position of the subordinate, the dominant are not nice. Denigration of the
food of the dominant is connected with resentment at and resistance to their
power—American identity is spoiled because America is powerful.
Unpalatability, then, can signify both powerlessness and powerfulness.
The third category whose food is rarely eaten is indigenous people. From
discussions with American and Australian colleagues, I understand that the
situation with Native Americans and Australian Aborigines is similar to that
of Ma-ori, in that few if any restaurants sell their cuisine. Instead, some
elements are appropriated for building a national cuisine and the rest is
regarded as barely edible.
To understand the unpalatability of the indigenous it is useful to return to
the question of what being eaten as a culture might signify. While Inness’s
(2006) analysis implies that culinary palatability equates with cultural
palatability, other analysts provide a different reading, suggesting instead
that culinary palatability signifies cultural subordination. Such writers
contest the notion that the consumption of a culture’s food signals the
acceptance of the people of that culture, noting that the enjoyment of a
foodway can go in hand with “treating that minority as second-class citizens,
and preventing them from obtaining equal access to social, educational, or
political life” (Abarca 2005: 7). As Uma Narayan notes, while Indian food
has been adopted to the extent that curry has almost become British, actual
Indian people have not been made so welcome (cited in Abarca 2005: 7).
Moreover, writers such as Heldke (2003) and Hage (1998) are critical of
the assumption that underlies the work of writers such as Inness, that the
consumption of ethnic food by the majority is essentially benign. Their
general argument is that in “‘eating the Other’ … consumers assert their
power and privilege over those whose cultures are consumed” (Jackson
1999: 100). Heldke coined the term “food adventurer” (Heldke 2003: 2) to
describe her enjoyment of “the foods of economically dominated or ‘third
world’ cultures” (Heldke 2003: xv), coming to understand her quest for the
exotic and authentic as “cultural food colonialism,” as appropriation (Heldke
2003: xv). Food adventurers treat other cultures “not as genuine cultures,
but as resources for raw materials that serve their own interests” (Heldke
2003: 2). It is this, Heldke argues, that marks the continuity between eating
the food of dominated cultures and other modes of colonial, and neo-
colonial economic and political domination (Heldke 2003: xviii).

Heldke distinguishes between cultural imperialism, which refers to “the

imposition of cultural practices by an economic or political power,” and
cultural colonialism, “the appropriation of such practices by a power”
(Heldke 2003: xviii; author’s emphasis). Cultural colonialism implies that
the dominant power may value some aspects of the dominated culture, but, Food,
Culture
Heldke argues, such valuing is not benign because it constitutes the Other, &
Society
and their cuisine, as an object whose sole purpose is to enhance the lives of
the dominant (Heldke 2003: 21).
Australian anthropologist Ghassan Hage makes a similar argument around
what he calls “culinary cosmo-multiculturalism” (Hage 1997: 119), a cultural
imaginary in which “ethnic cultures are not only not perceived negatively, but
actively valued. Embracing such cultures … [is] seen as ‘enriching’ (Hage 1997:
136). Paralleling Heldke, he argues that “enjoying cultural diversity” and
“appreciating” ethnic food is a form of cultural capital, through which the white
middle classes distinguish themselves from lower class whites (Hage 1997:
125). This imaginary is produced through what Hage calls a “multiculturalism
of availability” (Hage 1997: 132), where multiculturalism has less to do with the
existence of “different cultural subjects” than “with what multicultural
commodities are available on its markets and who has the capacity to appreciate
them” (Hage 1997: 132). Like Heldke, Hage argues that in the cosmo-
multiculturalist discourse of cultural enrichment the ethnic other appears as
“an object of experience rather than an experiential subject” with “ no raison
d’etre other than to enrich the Anglo subject” (Hage 1997: 136).
These discourses of valuing, enrichment and tolerance, which lie at the
heart of multiculturalism and which seem at first glance to be positive, are
revealed as masking a practice through which cultural domination is
perpetuated, “a form of symbolic violence in which a mode of domination is
presented as a form of egalitarianism” (Hage 1998: 87). What unites these
discourses is a divide between the subject and object, between tolerator and
tolerated, valuer and valued, enriched and enricher:
Valuing requires someone to do the valuing and something to be
evaluated. The discourse of enrichment operates by establishing a
break between valuing negatively and valuing positively similar to
the break which the discourse of tolerance establishes between
tolerance and intolerance. In much the same way, however, as the
tolerance/intolerance divide mystifies the more important divide
between holding the power to tolerate and not holding it, the
distinction between valuing negatively/valuing positively mystifies the
deeper division between holding the power to value (negatively or
positively) and not holding it. (Hage 1998: 121; emphasis added)
In multicultural settler societies, to position oneself as the enjoyer or the

valuer of the Other, the subject who is the enriched by multiculturalism, is
to enact “governmental belonging” (Hage 1998: 45). Hage distinguishes

between “passive belonging” to the nation, in which a person considers they
belong “in the sense of being part of it … to have the right to benefit from
the Nation’s resources, to ‘fit into it’ or ‘feel at home’ within it,” and
vol. 13 :: no. 1 “governmental belonging” which “involves the belief in one’s possession of
march 10
the right to contribute … to its management such that it remains ‘one’s
home’” (Hage 1998: 45–6). Governmental belonging is the property of those
who have
the power to have a legitimate view concerning the positioning of

others in the nation … the power to have a legitimate view regarding
who should “feel at home” in the nation and how, and who should
be in and who should be out, as well as what constitutes “too many.”
(Hage 1998: 46)
Migrants, Hage argues, have passive belonging. Positions of governmental

belonging are taken up by whites, who in this fantasy imagine themselves as
having the ability to manage and position ethnic others according to their
will, to eat the other, or not. It is governmental belonging which is expressed
through the discourses of enrichment, valuing and tolerance which
constitute multiculturalism. In this imaginary, Anglo subjects are the
appreciators, the ethnic other is firmly positioned as the object of
appreciation (or rejection). Hage notes that this governmental fantasy is
being disturbed as migrants increasingly assert governmental subjectivity,
“wanting to be enriched themselves” (Hage 1998: 118). Indigenous people
disrupt this managerial fantasy at an even more fundamental level.
The Politics of Indigeneity in Aotearoa New Zealand

::
In recent decades, Ma-ori have challenged their previously subordinate place
in the nation, demanding that the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi,22 under
which British colonization of Aotearoa New Zealand took place, be
honoured.23 This is not only a claim for redress of particular violations, such
as illegal land confiscations, but a claim for Tino Rangatiratanga, a claim for
sovereignty. The multiple strategies employed, including public protest,
parliamentary politics and the resort to law, are animated by a politics of
indigeneity, a “society-bending” politics (Maaka and Fleras 2005: 11) which
seeks a way for the peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand to live together
“differently” (Maaka and Fleras 2005: 12). This is a radical demand that
looks to “remake the rules that govern conduct, define status and
recognition, and share power” (Maaka and Fleras 2005: 10).
The Ma-ori assertion of their right to make this demand is based on their
indigenous status, on “the grounds of historical continuity, cultural

autonomy, original occupancy, and territorial grounding” (Maaka and Fleras

2005: 11). As tangata whenua, Ma-ori have a “constitutional status that is
distinctive (as original occupants) and distinguishing (as the only minorities
with territorial claims)” (Maaka and Fleras 2005: 18).
Since the mid-1980s, there has been a fundamental reordering of the Food,
Culture
relationship between the state and Ma-ori, a transformation from a kinship &
Society
mode to a contract mode, from paternalism to a partnership between
putative equals. Ma-ori are no longer positioned as under the care and control
of a Pa-keha- dominated state, as “a historically disadvantaged minority with
needs or problems requiring government solutions” (Maaka and Fleras 2005:
17), but as an equal partner in a bicultural nation with rights.24 Pa-keha- have
been dislodged from their position as sole possessors of governmental
belonging in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Ma-ori politics can be read as a claim to governmental belonging. This is
not an “us too” claim that seeks a place for Ma-ori in the multicultural
smorgasbord as one among many, but a claim for governmental partnership
with Pa-keha-. Božić-Vrbanćić (2008) analyses the ways in which belonging to
the nation is represented at The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa
Tongarewa,25 showing how contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand is
simultaneously imagined as bicultural and multicultural, as “One Nation,
Two Peoples, Many Cultures” (Božić-Vrbanćić 2008: 210). The peoples are
Ma-ori and Pa-keha-, united through their positioning as those who will be
enriched by the many (Božić-Vrbanćić 2008: 214). However, though Ma-ori
and Pa-keha- are united in governmental belonging, the basis of that
belonging is not the same. Tangata whenua “belong to the land by right of
first discovery”; tangata tiriti “belong to the land by right of the Treaty”
(Museum of New Zealand 1989: 4–5, cited in Božić-Vrbanćić 2008: 211):
Ma-ori belong as tangata whenua, all others as tangata tiriti (and treaties can
be broken, as Ma-ori know well). In this imaginary, Ma-ori belonging
potentially supersedes that of Pa-keha-—Pa-keha- are reduced to one of the
Many, just one more (however dominant and powerful) migrant group. A
placard displayed during a 2004 Ma-ori protest march read “Go Back to
England.” In the Ma-ori governmental imagination it is possible to think of
sending Pa-keha- home. Pa-keha- cannot imagine the reverse: Ma-ori, as the
indigenous people, are home, and home in a way that Pa-keha- can never be.
Ma-ori claims for rights based on their status as tangata whenua have been
read as having a greater claim to New Zealand than Pa-keha-. This has
profoundly disturbed the Pa-keha- sense of the nation as the place where they
are comfortably at home as paterfamilias, resulting in both rethinkings of the
basis of Pa-keha- identity, as in historian Michael King’s Being Pa-keha- series
(King 1988, 1991, 1999) and reassertions of Pa-keha- dominance, as in Scott’s
Travesty books (Scott 1995, 1996). These reactions can be understood as a
reaction to a reality that many Pa-keha- find unpalatable—the loss of the
power to be appreciative or non-appreciative of Ma-ori. Ma-ori exist in New

Zealand as subjects in their own right, not as objects of Pa-keha- experience—
they are no longer available as a resource for Pa-keha- cultural enrichment;
they are not available for valuing. Whether or not Pa-keha- enjoy Ma-ori is
vol. 13 :: no. 1 largely irrelevant.
march 10
I have argued above that to consume the Other through their food is an
act of domination. This mode of domination works through the assimilation
of the Other, at both individual and cultural levels. This act of assimilation
demonstrates that the incorporated Other presents no threat, either to self
or culture. The ability to enact such cultural consumption requires the
Other to be consumable, to be an object, and a safe object at that. As Hage
writes, “it is fundamentally this sense of safety, the sense that the ‘natives
won’t (and can’t) spear you’, that underlies the cosmo-multiculturalist
capacity for ‘daring’ and ‘appreciation’” (Hage 1997: 141). Cosmo-
multiculturalists and food adventurers do not want to experience the cultural
equivalent of food poisoning, and so they avoid the unpalatable food of those
with spoiled identities. Further, in the governmental fantasy that underpins
multiculturalism, if the Other becomes too unpalatable, one can imagine
sending them back, just as a restaurant dish that does not meet expectations
may be returned to the kitchen to be remedied, or exchanged for something
more pleasing.
But the indigenous are not just unpalatable—they have proven to be
inedible. Strategies of culinary assimilation continue to be pursued through
practices of fusion cooking, a code in which Pa-keha- assert culinary
governance and Ma-ori are reduced to an interesting, but not critical,
ingredient. However, we see signs that this discourse is being challenged,
with restaurants like Kai in the City and cookbook writers like Peter Peeti
adopting the fuser subject position, asserting the centrality of Ma-ori food,
and assimilating aspects of Anglo-American cooking into their cuisine.
Pa-keha- have not been able to incorporate Ma-ori, who remain irresolutely
inassimilable. Ma-ori are the fishbone in the Pa-keha- national throat, and have
improved impossible to dislodge, despite multiple cultural and political
Heimlich maneuvers. They may no longer please, but they cannot be sent
back. Not only are Ma-ori no longer under Pa-keha- control, the fear is that the
situation may be reversed and Ma-ori will consume Pa-keha-: alarmingly,
protest signs read “trespassers will be eaten.” And of course, in the past, they
have (Moon 2008).
Conclusion: Accounting for the Absence of Ma-ori Restaurants

::
In this paper I have argued that the public culinascape of Aotearoa New
Zealand can be used to map the field of multiculturalism, and in turn, a

reading of that field provides a series of answers to the question of the

absence of Ma-ori restaurants. There is the basis for a Ma-ori cuisine, and this
food is served in the few Ma-ori restaurants that have appeared. However,
more commonly indigenous foods are classified as New Zealand or Kiwi food
and are used as a point of distinction in the creation of a national cuisine. Food,
Culture
There is a limited Ma-ori clientele for several reasons. The low economic &
status of Ma-ori as a group means they do not have the money to eat at fine- Society
dining restaurants regularly, and, if they are to eat out, they may not choose
Ma-ori food, as this is everyday food rather than treat food. Furthermore,
Ma-ori do not share with migrant groups the need to have restaurants as
cultural centers—there are many other sites for Ma-ori community life and
cultural reproduction.
There is also a limited Pa-keha- clientele. Ma-ori food is marked as ethnic
food in the Pa-keha- culinascape, and as such, in theory, should appeal to the
food adventurers whose identities as liberal multiculturalists are formed and
expressed through the eating and enjoyment of the food and culture of
ethnic others. However, what food adventurers seek is the exotic and the
authentic. Ma-ori are not exotic and therefore there is limited social cachet
in knowing their culture or enjoying their food. Furthermore, “authentic”
Ma-ori food is indigenous food that Pa-keha- find unpalatable. To be classified
as Ma-ori, a restaurant must serve authentic food, but what is authentic is not
marketable to Pa-keha-. Pa-keha- call the things they like New Zealand food,
and the things they don’t like Ma-ori food—and then do not eat it.
Pa-keha- comfort in migrant restaurants and discomfort around Ma-ori
restaurants is revealing of the state of the projects of biculturalism and
multiculturalism in Aotearoa New Zealand. If we only eat the others we
enjoy, then this lack of taste for Ma-ori food signals a lack of Pa-keha- taste for
Ma-ori themselves, indicating that Ma-ori have a spoilt identity. Ma-ori identity
is spoilt in two ways. The low status of Ma-ori among Pa-keha- means that they
are not considered good enough to eat. However, unlike Iranians in Britain,
Ma-ori identity has not been spoiled by external forces. Instead Ma-ori have
spoiled their identity for Pa-keha- by not being nice, by refusing to be
assimilated, refusing to be consumed. If the desire to eat an Other, and the
ability to be at ease in that eating, is a sign of domination, then the lack of
desire to eat an Other, and the inability to be comfortable in that eating, is,
perhaps, a sign of the eater’s waning dominance. The second food cliché is
that attributed to Claude Lèvi-Strauss: food is good to think before it is good
to eat. Ma-ori are not good to think for Pa-keha-, and therefore, cannot be good
to eat.
Notes
::
1 The term culinascape derives from Appadurai’s notion of “scapes” (ethnoscapes,
finanscapes, mediascapes, ideoscapes, technoscapes): “I use the terms with the common
suffix scape to indicate first of all that these are not objectively given relations which look
vol. 13 :: no. 1 the same from every angle of vision, but rather that they are deeply perspectival constructs,
march 10 inflected very much by the historical, linguistic and political situatedness of different sorts
of actors” (Appadurai 2002: 50).
2 Tangata whenua literally means “people of the land,” and refers to Ma-ori as the indigenous
people of Aotearoa New Zealand.
3 Moa are a very large, flightless bird, now extinct.
3 Moriori are the Ma-ori of the Chatham Islands, a group of islands off the coast of Aotearoa
New Zealand. In some Pa-keha- discourse, Moriori are considered to have been the original
inhabitants of Aotearoa New Zealand, who were exterminated by Ma-ori. This discourse is
deployed to justify and naturalise Pa-keha- colonization. See King (1989).
5 Ha-ngı- is a traditional Ma-ori method of cooking, in which meat and vegetables are cooked
over heated stones in an earth oven.
6 Huhu grubs (prionoplus reticularis) are found in decaying wood.
7 That what counts as Ma-ori food is a matter of classification is illustrated by two recent
cookbooks, Kai Time: Tasty Modern Ma-ori Food (Peeti 2008) and Go Wild: Monteith’s Wild
Foods Cookbook (Monteiths Brewing Co. 2007). The two books contain recipes with similar
ingredients and similar kinds of dishes, but in Kai Time these are classified as Ma-ori dishes,
whereas in Go Wild they are classified as wild New Zealand food.
8 The restaurant was initially located in the suburb of Island Bay and was called Kai in the
Bay. It moved to central Wellington in 2005 and changed its name to Kai in the City. The
restaurant was tiny, with just half a dozen tables. Kai in the City closed in August 2008.
According to the owner, Bill Hamilton, “he’s proved it’s possible to make a Maori-themed
restaurant a success, but his day job and his tribal work mean he does not have the time to
devote to the business” (Radio New Zealand 2008).
9 “Pokarekare Ana” is a Ma-ori song that is known by many Pa-keha-.
10 Kai in the City serves Tohu wine because the vineyard is owned by Ma-ori.
11 There is very little information about this restaurant. The Dominion review calls it Te Ao
Kotahu, but in other places it is named Te Ao Kohatu. Kohatu means stone or rock, whereas
the word kotahu does not appear in Ma-ori dictionaries. Therefore it is likely that the
restaurant’s name is Te Ao Kohatu.
12 Iti’s public profile is demonstrated by the fact that he has a Wikipedia entry: “the public
arguably know Iti best for his moko [full facial tattoo] and for his habit of performing
whakapohane (baring his buttocks) at protests” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tame_Iti).
13 Tawa (Beilchmiedia tawa) is a native New Zealand tree.
14 In this section of the paper words in quotation marks are comments from callers.
15 Ha-puku is a fish, also known as groper or grouper.
16 Karengo (Porphyra columbina) is an edible seaweed.
17 Horopito (Pseudowintera axillaries and Pseudowintera colorata) is a pepper tree. Its leaves
are used as a herb.
18 Though there is considerable diversity among Ma-ori, their low economic status as a group
can be illustrated by the usual statistics. In 2007 the Ma-ori unemployment rate was 7.6
percent compared to the economy-wide rate of 3.7 percent (Department of Labour 2007:
1), and as the recession takes hold in early 2009, while the general rate of unemployment
is 4.6 percent, the Ma-ori rate is 9.2 percent (Department of Labour 2009: 3). Moreover,
“Ma-ori remain over-represented in the lower skilled occupations and under-represented in
the higher skilled occupations” (Department of Labour 2007: 5), meaning that Ma-ori
income is lower than average. In the five years to June 2007, the average Ma-ori wage rose

from NZ$14.33 to NZ$17.88 per hour in contrast to the economy-wide rise of NZ$16.71
to NZ$21.41 per hour (Department of Labour 2007: 6). This means that Ma-ori are less
likely to have money to spend dining out.
19 By contrast, when Anglo cooks incorporate new methods and new ingredients into their
cuisine, this fusion food is hailed as innovative and signifies inventiveness. Only the
dominant can fuse food: similar practices in dominated foodways are regarded as Food,
degradation. As such, the ability to fuse, rather than to be fused, can be read as a sign of Culture
culinary and cultural power. &
Society
20 In Wellington, the seat of government, facility with Ma-ori language and culture has more
capital than in other places in New Zealand, which helps explain Kai in the City’s success.
21 Following this argument, the recent revival of English/British food signals a decline in
English/British power.
22 The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between some, but not all, Ma-ori chiefs and the
British Crown, paved the way for the colonization of Aotearoa New Zealand and eventuated
in a settler society. English and Ma-ori versions of the treaty differ. In the English version,
the first article of the treaty cedes sovereignty to the Queen. In the Ma-ori version,
kawanatanga, translated as governorship, is ceded in the first article. This was a new word
in Ma-ori at the time. In the second article, however, Ma-ori retain rangatiratanga, literally
chieftainship, but seemingly understood by Ma-ori to mean sovereignty. There is debate as
to whether Ma-ori would have signed the treaty had they been asked to cede rangatiratanga.
In contemporary use, the demand for Tino Rangatiratanga is a demand for sovereignty.
Though the treaty was never ratified, it has substance in New Zealand law, most notably
through The State Owned Enterprises Act 1987, which introduced the notion of the
necessity of adherence to the “principles of the Treaty of Waitangi” into law (see Orange
1992; The Waitangi Tribunal, www.waitangi-tribunal.govt.nz).
23 These challenges have been on a variety of fronts and have employed a variety of strategies
(for a history of Aotearoa from a Ma-ori perspective see Walker 2004). On protest politics
more specifically, see Harris (2004) and Poata-Smith (1996). On indigenous politics and
the state, see Sharp (1990) and Maaka and Fleras (2005). On cultural politics more
generally, see Fleras and Spoonley (1999).
24 The bicultural state was confirmed by the State Services Act 1988, which enshrined in state
structures and government policy the “Treaty principles of partnership, participation,
responsiveness and protection” (Maaka and Fleras 2005: 141).
25 Te Papa Tongarewa, known as Te Papa, opened in 1998 as Aotearoa New Zealand’s national
museum.
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01 Morris 13.1:04FCS10.

3/Karaou 7/12/09 13:47 Page 5

Keywords: restaurants, Ma-ori, ethnicity

6 :: Carolyn Morris DOI: 10.2752/175174410X12549021367983

availability of culturally marked food in other venues, and the lack of a

Restaurants and Identity

The Politics of Palatability :: 7

Ma-ori Food in the Public Culinascape

man articulated this position: “There are no Ma-ori restaurants because

The Presence of Ma-ori Restaurants

KAI IN THE CITY

The Politics of Palatability :: 9

According to a review of Kai in the Bay in Cuisine magazine (Burton 2003),

Our service is based on Manaakitanga [hospitality]: the best of

This Ma-ori atmosphere is created by the host who “cheerfully takes a

• Kuku Mamoa: gently steamed mussels in a creamy kawakawa (Ma-ori

• Titi: Roasted mutton bird with kowhitiwhiti (watercress) stuffing served

• Hangi: Manuka infused reme (lamb) cutlets and heihei (chicken) on

• Kaanga Reka: Fermented corn with manuka honey and cream.

Dineout reviewers commented favorably on the food: “My ‘hangi’ (lamb

The Politics of Palatability :: 11

known Ma-ori activist.12 A review in The Dominion newspaper described the

Te Ao Kotahu, in inner-city Auckland’s Karangahape Rd, serves

WHY DID THE RESTAURANTS NOT SURVIVE?

The Politics of Palatability :: 13

It could be any international restaurant with its ritzy décor, set on

Here, in contrast to Kai in the City, indigenous ingredients make Kiwi or

the Ma-ori community in Christchurch was small. Furthermore, Mary said,

The Politics of Palatability :: 15

This illustrates the dilemma Ma-ori restaurants face. In the Pa-keha-

Eating Ethnic Food

are doing in this eating is expressing a particular self, as “dining out is

For mainstream America, accepting a culture is closely connected

In support of this position she notes the correlation between liking a

The Unpalatable and the Inedible: Who Is Not Eaten?

The Politics of Palatability :: 17

Pacific restaurants. Levenstein, referring to the spread of Chinese food in

Hage argues, “operate[s] as a form of symbolic violence, setting the

The Politics of Palatability :: 19

Heldke distinguishes between cultural imperialism, which refers to “the

In multicultural settler societies, to position oneself as the enjoyer or the

to enact “governmental belonging” (Hage 1998: 45). Hage distinguishes

the power to have a legitimate view concerning the positioning of

Migrants, Hage argues, have passive belonging. Positions of governmental

The Politics of Indigeneity in Aotearoa New Zealand

The Politics of Palatability :: 21

autonomy, original occupancy, and territorial grounding” (Maaka and Fleras

power to be appreciative or non-appreciative of Ma-ori. Ma-ori exist in New

Conclusion: Accounting for the Absence of Ma-ori Restaurants

The Politics of Palatability :: 23

reading of that field provides a series of answers to the question of the

The Politics of Palatability :: 25

Department of Labour Te Tari Mahi.

The Politics of Palatability :: 27

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