Love fish ‘n’ chips?
Remember space invaders? Salt, vinegar, lemon pepper, lemon wedge?
Join social historian Te Awhina Arahanga, who is currently completing the first New Zealand book on Fish and Chips, for answers to these questions and more at this fascinating Friends of the Library event. All over the world cultures, communities, and families celebrate their favourite meal.
It is a meal, which celebrates who you are. Where food transforms from being simple nourishment to the body, to feeding the heart and the soul. No matter how exotic or plain, healthy or calorie ridden it may be, it identifies you, your family, your home, your land and your way of life.
For New Zealand it’s Fish and Chips.
Her work is more than a walk through Kiwiana, it is an in depth study, educational, entertaining and poignant celebration of our cultural history.
‘‘Not only do I wish to study, research and write, but feel it is valuable to record/photograph as many of the original fish and chip shops across New Zealand that have managed to survive in their original form. Meaning their main focus remains the selling of Fish and Chips, that they still wrap them in newsprint and preferably the shops date back before the arrival of McDonalds in 1976,’’ she said.
Her research attempts to expose the history of where, when, how and why Fish and Chips has a valued importance within New Zealand history and culture.