The taste test
At Dante’s, products are chosen because they’re delicious. Denise Irvine joins the new owner to sample some condiments that will soon be on sale.
Kelly Mita-Skeet dips a tasting stick into a pottle of sweet-tart kawakawa jelly; she tries a little bit, suggests it would be good with lamb. She has a kamokamo pickle and horopito and lemon sauce to taste as well.
We dip and eat and decide that the punchy horopito and lemon would be perfect with fish, and the kamokamo pickle has a chow chow quality to it. Maybe a match for a cheese and corned beef sandwich?
The condiments are from the Manaaki range made at Omaka Marae, near Blenheim, and MitaSkeet will shortly be selling these at her Cambridge store, Dante’s Fine Foods, so she’s figuring out their finer points.
Dante’s, on Duke St, is like a giant pantry of comestibles from home and abroad, including Dutch gouda cheeses, a full suite of Dutch biscuits, Italian dried pasta, splendid chocolates from Belgium, Kiwi-made horseradish sauce, various gluten-free and organic products, and Kendal Mint Cake for English customers remembering the taste of their childhood. And that’s just a handful of its wares.
Mita-Skeet has more than 100 suppliers and untold items on the shelves. Her favourite question to her customers is: “What do you like to eat?” And then she takes them on a little tour of things they might enjoy. That’s how I end up buying a wedge of delicious, crumbly textured mature Dutch goat’s cheese.
I also like to eat pasta, so as well as the cheese, I depart with a packet of pierogy (half-moon dumplings filled with potato, cheese and jalapeno) made by The Pasta Shack in Waihi, and dried penne pasta from Abruzzo province in Italy. An American couple stocks up on chocolates, and a local customer pops in for a wedge of his favourite parmiganoreggiano cheese.
Everyone is happily served by Mita-Skeet and her sister Ko-Deane Skeet, who grew up enjoying good food in Hawke’s Bay.
Mita-Skeet bought Dante’s last June and it comes with warm-hearted history. It was opened in 2005 by a Dutch family, the Grootscholtens, who missed the European foods of their past and decided to fill a gap they saw in the Waikato market. Mita-Skeet took over from Vicki Grootscholten, who continues to offer behind-the-scenes advice.
It is early days in Mita-Skeet’s ownership, but she plans to bring more New Zealand-made products (such as the Manaaki preserves) to the table, and would like to expand the delicatessen side of the business.
She previously worked for dairy giant Fonterra, and this is her first retail venture. She was widowed six years ago when husband Deon Mita died suddenly from a heart condition. They had two young children and three weeks after Deon’s death, Mita-Skeet found she was pregnant with their third child.
She’s raising Quentin, 9, Tyson, 7, and Vivika, nearly 5, on a small lifestyle block near Cambridge, and she was looking for a new direction when Dante’s came on the market. “I love people, food and cooking,” she says. “It seemed a good fit.”