OUR CATERERS ON SURFARI
Behind the scenes
During our Surfari Trips, when the next delicious loaf of bread or lunch appears out of nowhere, we often get ask: How in earth did you find those caterers? And who are they? This blogpost will go behind the scenes and tell you a bit more about the story behind some of our caterers and how we found them.
When it comes to finding a caterer for our Surfaris, we have a fairly high standard:
First of all, the food must be healthy, nutritius and – of course – delicious. Our caterer must be able to cater for a variety of dietary requirements with good vegetarian options, as an increasing number of our guest prefer a vegetarian diet. Just leaving the meat out won’t cut it. We are looking for wholesome food, that gives you the energy to keep going and enjoy what you are doing. This is at the center of our consideration when choosing a caterer for our Surfari Trips.
We also want to support small local businesses like ourselves and build a lasting relationship with them. Knowing your caterer – and them knowing you, your business and your preferences – makes it a lot easier the next time we run the same trip. They know exactly what we need, and after a few Surfari Trips, working with our caterers is like a well oiled machine.
Finding a good caterer is often the hardest part about organising a new Surfari Trip.
Water Nomads Surfaris are usually off the beaten track with a limited selection of restaurants and businesses in the vicinity. A good start point of finding a good caterer is getting to know the local community. So we go to markets or events, sit in cafes, talk to people,…. more often than not, we will get an idea of who might be a good fit for our business. The next step for us is to meet with potential caterers to see if our ideas align with what they can provide. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. If they don’t, we are back to square one, scouting in the community….
So, who are those super heroes supporting us with food? We would like to introduce a few of them and tell you how we found them.
Katrin – Mint Lunches – Taranaki
Katrin has been catering and supporting us since our first Surfari Trip. We already knew her from the beach as a fellow windsurfer, but she is also a personal trainer and nutritional coach. The fact that she started a lunch business a few months earlier made her the obvious choice for Water Nomads. As the Taranaki Trips were our first Surfari Trips, we hadn’t yet a clear idea what we wanted to achieve in regards of the catering. Over a cup of tea on Katrin’s deck we came up with a concept that has served us well.
Katrin is an amazing cook, and without taking credit off us, I must admit that we had (and still have) some guests who claimed to only come on our Surfari Trips to get to eat her food!
Joe – Taranaki
We knew Joe – another follow windsurfer – from various windsurf spots in Auckland. We did get on well, but didn’t know too much about each other, except that he is working some sort of office job. Until we left Auckland in 2021 and he packed in his job at a similar time and started working remotely in Asia and all over the world. Every now in a while we saw a post of him being somewhere nice and warm. Philippines, Mauritius,… One random winters day, we came back to our van from a walk, when Joe suddently appeared out of nowhere! He had returned back to NZ 10 days earlier, saw the van and thought he say hello. We ended up having dinner with him a few days later and discovered that he is a really good cook. Actually, he used to work as a chef in a windsurf club in Europe…. At this stage, we were looking for someone who could cater for our dinners in Taranaki, as Katrin was only doing lunches. Joe was keen to go sailing in Taranaki, and a deal was struck. That’s how we ended up with our own private in-house chef for our Taranaki Surfari Trips!
Shanny – Doubtless Bay Catering – Northland
Shanny, another star that keeps our guests and us well fed! We found her by talking to some locals, asking around if anyone would know a good caterer. Shanny was at that stage (and still is) cooking at the Mill Bay Yacht Club on Friday nights. Those dinners were highly recommended. So we met up with her, discussed what we wanted, and here we are, 4 years later and still a match made in heaven! Shanny is an absolute star, cooking delicious food, and even after all those years always coming up with new dishes. We usually just let her choose what she is going to cook (and we get surprised), unless that is, we have a hankering for one of our favourites, which she is more than happy to comply with.
Shanny is making lunches and dinners for us in Northland.
Peter – Flourpower – Northland
Although we have delicicous bread on all our Surfaris, Peters bread and service in Northland is worth an extra mention. He makes the most amazing German sourdough loafs, and even personally delivers it on a Saturday, so we have fresh bread on Sunday morning. How did we find him? It was a strike of good luck and talking to the right people:
When we started the mission of finding good bread in Northland, we only knew that the Packhouse Market in Kerikeri sells nice bread. But it wasn’t practical for us to get our bread from Kerikeri, as that’s an hour drive away. After asking around, someone mentioned a guy called Peter, who bakes somewhere up in Northland. It was all very vague, but I managed to track his phone number down and give him a call. And that’s how it started. He is based in the middle of nowhere (literally) and bakes twice a week: on Thursday, we pick a few loafs up at the Bushfairy Dairy that he supplies (another classic local business in the middle of nowhere, well worth a visit!), on Saturday Peter delivers bread to our accommodation in the afternoon, so we have fresh bread on Sunday morning.
Kushla – Mint Folk – Canterbury Lakes Discovery Trip
After a little bit of research and asking around for caterers in Twizel, we very soon knew who we want for our Canterbury Lakes Trip: the crowd from Mint Folk. Their name kept popping up as the best restaurant in Twizel. However, they weren’t easy to get ahold of. A busy cafe / restaurant, understaffed like most places in that year, with tourism just picking up again after Covid. There was no reply to my emails or messages on social media, and no success on the phone neither. So we chanced it, turned up at the restaurant and requested an audience with the person in charge of catering. A day later we met with Kushla, the chef and owner of Mint Folk, discussing our requirements. Three hours later we had a suggested menu in our hands and our caterer confirmed!
Kushla is an absolute gem: Not only does she cook the most delicious food, but she also is super flexible with our dinner times. We just give her a call when we are leaving whichever lake we have been sailing on that day, and by the time we are back at our accommodation and ready to eat, dinner is there! This is invaluable for us, as sometimes the wind comes in late and nobody would be keen to leave a stunning spot to go home for dinner, or would you?
With all of our caterers we managed to develop a really nice relationship. We are always looking forward seeing them again, and that’s not just because of the yummy food. It’s fantastic to see their business grow (some of them we picked up in the early stages of their venture) and seeing how they get more popular and increase their variety of dishes. If you now feel like you are missing out, don’t despair, just book one of our Surfari Trips and you too will get looked after by those amazing caterers! And if you want to find out more about food during our Surfaris, read our blogpost It’s All About the Food.
