Nins Bin reopens on Kaikõura coast
The caravan has a new kitchen, stainless steel benchtops, a fresh lick of paint – and a new generation in charge.
Nins Bin reopens on State Highway 1 on Friday, more than a year after the November 2016 earthquake devastated the Kaiko¯ ura region and cut off access to the seafood institution.
Johnny Clark, 23, will be the third generation manning the crayfish caravan in the tiny coastal settlement of Rakautara, about 20 minutes north of Kaiko¯ ura. His grandfather opened the shop in 1977.
‘‘Oh it’s unreal mate, we just can’t wait to get open and up and running again,’’ Clark said.
Generations of road-tripping Kiwis have stopped at the Clark’s shop, set to celebrate its 40th anniversary tomorrow, a day before the grand reopening.
‘‘We’ve had to change our ways with fishing and that, built a new slipway off the shop because our old one was high and dry,’’ he said.
Rakautara was cut off for weeks by massive slips blocking State Highway 1. Residents walked through railway tunnels to get to and from town.
Land near the shop rose three and a half metres as a result of the earthquake, dramatically changing the landscape. In years past, large swells occasionally hit the shop, but those concerns were gone.
‘‘We didn’t hear from anyone for about five days, so we didn’t really know what was going on,’’ Clark said.
‘‘We went down and started chucking the crays and pa¯ ua back in the sea and taking whatever looked dead back and eating it.’’
Clark left Rakautara to live in Kaiko¯ ura after the earthquake wrecked his house.
‘‘It’s definitely more social in town. Back up [in Rakautara] you’d just go to work, go home to sleep and go back to work,’’ he said.
Nin, a woman who worked in the shop ‘‘in the early days’’, was behind the name of the shop.
‘‘They used to take bins of crays over to Nin, and then it was like, oh, can you take the bin over to Nin, and then it just became Nins Bin,’’ Clark said.
‘‘This was before my time though, I was only getting thought about when Nin was about.’’
The menu would offer up fresh crayfish pulled from the sea the day before by Clark and his deckhand ‘‘Big Fletch’’.
Mussels from the Hairy Mussel Co in Marlborough and whitebait would be added to the menu.
‘‘We’re still going to have garlic butter crays and all the mussels are cooked in white wine and stuff.
‘‘We’re going to do some fresh fish too – fish and chips.’’
SH1 reopens on Friday afternoon. Nins Bin’s opening hours would mimic those of SH1, which the NZ Transport Agency is yet to announce.
'' ... we just can't wait to get open and up and running again ...'' Johnny Clark