Coffee, whitebait and bacon sammies with a view
A former army chef says his passion for West Coast ingredients inspired him to open a food cart overlooking Cobden Beach.
Paul Darry has just opened The Patio at the area locals call the Cobden Tiphead.
After leaving the army, Darry trained chefs in New Guinea at Walindi Dive Resort.
He returned to New Zealand and worked at a meatworks in Blenheim for 15 years, then decided to buy a 2.8-hectare property in Runanga, near Greymouth, four years ago. “I was looking for something I could do that had my passion of food, surfing and diving. This was the ideal location,” he said.
He sells whitebait, and bacon and egg sandwiches containing Westgold butter.
“The Patio’s mission statement is West Coast Most. We came up with that statement because what we were trying to do was to use products from here and really cut our miles down.”
He uses Kawatiri coffee, which is flame-roasted in Westport, and bacon that’s been dry-cured for five days from Thomsons Butchery in Harihari. “I have to order in advance, but I know the product that I get is excellent. I know what I get is something that’s created with passion rather than thinking about the money.”
Darry said he caught all his own whitebait in the Grey River. “It’s just a unique flavour, but there’s nothing else like it.”
He was selling whitebait fresh off the river during the last whitebait season, but “really wanted to legitimise what I was doing”. “So I thought, ‘well, look, I’ll find a cart somewhere’. And this cart turned up of all places at Mt Cheeseman. We stripped it out and decided we would cook the whitebait, work with the tourists.”
Darry said he picked Cobden because freedom campers stayed at the campervan and car park beside the beach and because of the Cobden Aromahana Lagoon. “It gave us the ability for that extra market rather than just the locals. It’s such a great location. We’ve got a beautiful coastline right here. I’m looking at about 3km to 4km of empty beach, perfect for walking the dog, brilliant for swimming. And just off to my left, we’ve got the river mouth where you can watch the boats coming in and out.”
He hoped to spend the next whitebaiting season in South Westland and hire someone to run the cart for him. .