Neil Hodgson
Once you discover a love for producing outstanding food, you will be trapped forever. That’s certainly the case for Miles Drewery, who started The Sausage Press Deli Co about three years ago. It follows on from his previous cafe´ businesses in Richmond, and is starting to make its mark as an authentic smallgoods producer.
You may remember Miles and wife Steph from the two Miles of Food cafe´ s in Richmond – one behind the Richmond library, and the cafe´ on Queen St that the couple set up and ran for about five years.
They established the first cafe´ on Queen St in 2009, and sold it in 2014. The cafe´ behind the library appeared in 2011, and the couple essentially ran a business each until they sold the second business in 2015 and headed to Europe for a couple of years.
You won’t be surprised to know that when I caught up with Miles last week, it was over a coffee, and we talked about his food journey, from working in kitchens as a teenager to owning cafes and finally on to making sausages.
Miles’s love of food started when he was still at school in Blenheim. He worked at Timara Lodge when he was 16, but says his first real kitchen job was at the renowned Rocco’s restaurant just off Grove Rd.
‘‘Mum is Italian, and every Italian knows every other Italian in Blenheim, so (Piero) Rocco took me under his wing and taught me a huge amount.
‘‘But my love of food and sausages probably goes back to my childhood in Auckland, where Mum and Dad used to make salamis in a shed on our farm and sold them to most of the delicatessens in Auckland – that is, until the council found out where they were being made, and they quietly just closed up the home business.
‘‘In fact, I use the sausage press they used to use on the farm to make salamis. It is ancient, and is branded as the Sausage Press, so that’s obviously the inspiration behind the name of our new business.’’
Miles says that rather than creating something new and different, all he has really done is return to his traditional roots producing products like salami, chorizo, cabanosi, some traditional English-style sausages, pastrami, and even a duck pastrami.
When he was in Blenheim, Miles worked at the original Daniel Le Brun winery with Daniel for three years before moving to Christchurch, intending to study winemaking at Lincoln University. But he couldn’t get into the postgraduate course.
‘‘Even though I had worked in kitchens, and with Daniel I learned on the job, I didn’t qualify for the course.’’
Originally from England, Steph is a horticulturist by qualification but is also a cordon bleu-trained cook.
‘‘She’s a real foodie, and has worked as a chef, too. We met in Christchurch, when she was cooking at the original Loaded Hog in Dundas St and I was working at Espresso 124 when it was owned by Richard Till.’’
After Christchurch, Steph returned to Britain to complete her horticulture degree – and Miles went with her.
‘‘I basically just packed up and followed the love of my life to the other side of the world, where I cooked at an Italian restaurant in Chelmsford for just under two years, before we went to Whistler in Canada to work for six months.’’
Returning to New Zealand, Miles helped his father build what was Drewery’s Wine Shed in Tai Tapu, near Christchurch. ‘‘It’s now pretty much a wedding venue. In fact, my daughter had her wedding there recently, without knowing I had helped build it.’’
Miles went back to England to get married, but he also fell in love with the street markets in Europe and their sausages.
‘‘It was the first time I had been to Terracina, the place my Mum comes from, just south of Rome, and when we came back to Christchurch and bought the Herb Centre Cafe on Kilmore St, I started making my own cured meats and sausages to sell in the cafe.’’
The couple moved to Nelson in 2009 and set up the first Miles of Food Cafe´ , turning a retail premises into a commercial kitchen and eatery.
‘‘I said to Steph it was going to be difficult to set up a new business from scratch in a new town where no-one knows us, but she did a huge marketing job on me. If there was a cooking competition, cooking demo or charity event, I was there.
‘‘I did cooking demonstrations at the Sarau Festival and A&P show, and she even sold my cooking services at charity auctions. She just pimped me out, but it built my reputation as a chef and helped make the business successful.’’
When it comes to the couple’s latest venture, The Sausage Press Deli Co, Miles says he is impressed by how many local chefs want to use local product, not just fruit and vegetables but manufactured products like theirs.
‘‘We have been making salamis for three years. We purposely started small, as were learning about salami and sausage making while slowly building the business.
‘‘The children have eaten a lot of average salami, but now our products are at a standard we are really happy with.’’
At The Sausage Press Deli Co, Miles has turned to his Italian heritage to producing high-quality, tasty and natural salami and sausage products, using traditional methods.
‘‘The meat speaks for itself. There’s no additives and definitely no numbers in my ingredients list – just New Zealandraised free-farmed pork, salt, sugar, herbs and spices that are treated with care and handled in traditional ways. There are no preservatives, and all of our products are gluten-free.
‘‘Everything is done the old-fashioned way. Nothing is forced through a process, and our salamis are smoked at 62 degrees Celsius, so they are effectively pasteurised. The product is as natural and traditional as we can make it.’’
You can buy these beautiful salami and sausage products from The Junction at the Grape Escape complex in Appleby, at The Old Post Office in Upper Moutere, and at the Nelson Farmers Market every week from the first Wednesday in October – or order direct from the company’s Facebook page.
‘‘We purposely started small . . . The children have eaten a lot of average salami, but now our products are at a standard we are really happy with.’’