Hanging for a hangi? Good news. You no longer need to dig up your backyard to make a pit oven. The folks at Hangi Jax are slinging hangi every week out of Sydney’s Northern Beaches sp you can get a meal box ($15) of pork, lamb and chicken served with roasted veggies and a heap of stuffing. It’s all steamed and lightly smoked with hickory for two-and-a-half hours in a specially designed oven. Upgrade to the value pack ($20) and you’ll score fry bread plus a wedge of golden syrup pudding with butterscotch sauce for dessert. What’s fry bread? It’s exactly what it sounds like. Deep fried bread that is more like a savoury donut in texture - light and fluffy - with a slight crunch to the edges.
What initially started as a backyard catering business has flourished into a thriving eat-in and takeaway of Pacofoc Island favourites. Tongans stop by for lu ($15), a traditional combo of beef and coconut cooked in taro leaves. It’s a rich and comforting dish, served with cassava and kumara sweet potato. Fijians and Samoans know it as palusami, a mainstay of any island feast.
Maori regulars, we’re told, stock up on all things seafood, flown over from New Zealand once a fortnight. That includes tubs of kina (sea urchin roe), mussels and palm-sized Pacific oysters. In the fridge you’ll find takeaway containers of cream paua (New Zealand abalone strips with onion and cream), seafood chowder (mussels, prawns and salmon in cream) and ’ota ’ika, the Polynesian take on ceviche, with raw fish cooked in lemon juice and mixed with coconut cream. They even have chop suey, vermicelli noodles with chicken and vegetables in a sweet soy sauce.
Homesick Kiwis are all about the fish and chips. At Hangi Jax they fry everything in beef fat. It makes for brilliantly crunchy chips, just like the good ol’ days. They do a range of burgers too, including New Zealand Angus beef patties.
Wash it all down with Kiwi soft drinks like L&P and Fresh Up, and before you leave, load up on all the Rashuns chips and K Bars you can carry. Chur, bro.