Words —
Jess Waddell
Pacific cuisine is rich with ingredients, but also in the traditions and stories that stretch back generations. The real question is, how can we celebrate more of it here in Aotearoa?
There is something about cooking together that cuts through almost everything else. Put people in a kitchen, hand them ingredients, start chopping, tasting, talking. And stories have a way of emerging all on their own.
That idea sat at the heart of Ocean of Flavours, a two-day gathering at AUT’s School of Hospitality and Tourism. Eight visiting chefs from across the Pacific joined New Zealand chefs, culinary students, writers, industry figures and guests, to cook, share knowledge and, more importantly, introduce us all to the ingredients and traditions that deserve a much bigger place in our food conversation.
Curated by chef Peter Gordon ONZM, the event brought chefs from Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia into one kitchen. Together they explored Pacific-sourced ingredients, honouring traditional techniques and sharing the knowledge and stories that have shaped Pacific cuisine for generations.
And while there was certainly plenty to eat, it wasn’t simply about discovering new flavours. Here, food became a way into bigger conversations about identity, community, trade and what it means to pass knowledge from one generation to another.
I experienced a little of this myself during the hands-on session, where I teamed up with visiting chef Denzel Sumsum, who is from Vanuatu and now lives in Honiara, Solomon Islands, where he owns Valin Kaba. Growing up in Vanuatu, Denzel saw food as central to bringing people together and nurturing relationships. His grandmother ‘Bubu Lydia’ was an avid baker and home cook who helped inspire his culinary journey, including the idea that cooking can be an expression of care for those around you.
Cooking a dish together offered something you don’t necessarily get from simply sitting down at a restaurant. And around us, the kitchen buzzed with other chefs sharing techniques, ingredients and stories from their own homes too.
Pacific cuisine cannot be reduced into one neat category. The Blue Pacific encompasses many countries, communities, climates and culinary traditions each with its own ingredients and ways of cooking. What connects them is not a particular flavour, but the relationships between food, place, family and community.
The ingredients tell stories too
Some of those stories can be found in the ingredients themselves.
Niue Honey is one fascinating example. Niue’s isolation has helped protect the world’s last significant clean bee colony, avoiding the serious diseases, parasites and pesticides affecting bee populations elsewhere. The raw, certified organic honey is produced from the island’s pristine environment.
Alongside honey were products from across the region, like Fijian hot sauces and chutney, breadfruit flour from Samoa and Bora Bora Sea Salt from French Polynesia all of which Denzel and I used in our coconut curry dish. And they’re not simply interesting additions to a pantry, or your meal, they are products connected to growers, makers, landscapes and economies.
That commercial element matters too. Pacific Trade Invest New Zealand’s role is to help Pacific businesses reach international markets and build connections between the economies of the Blue Pacific and Aotearoa. Getting more Pacific-made products into New Zealand kitchens, restaurants and shops creates another way for our food culture to reflect the region we are actually part of.
Keeping the conversation going
Peter Gordon has long championed this way of thinking about food. His former Auckland culinary hub and food embassy Homeland regularly brought producers, chefs and diners together, including the 2022 Kai Pasifika programme initiated by Pacific Trade Invest New Zealand and supported by MFAT that helped inspire Ocean of Flavours. That event introduced ingredients from Pacific producers to New Zealand chefs, importers, distributors, media and food lovers.
With Homeland’s physical chapter now finished, events like Ocean of Flavours feel particularly meaningful. Because the question is not simply how we occasionally celebrate Pacific food, but how we make room for it more consistently.
Maybe that means more Pacific ingredients placed on restaurant menus and supermarket shelves… or perhaps it is giving chefs and producers more platforms to tell their own stories. Creating more opportunities for young culinary students to learn directly from people carrying generations of knowledge.
Ocean of Flavours offered a glimpse of what that can look like. Not just one interpretation of ‘Pacific food’, but many voices around the same table, exchanging ideas while allowing their differences to remain.
Food, in its own way, is a universal language. And it is also at its most interesting when we understand not only how something tastes, but where it has come from, who made it, and what it means to them.
Ocean of Flavours was presented by Pacific Trade Invest New Zealand (PTINZ), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) and Pacific Cooperation Broadcasting Limited (PCBL), supported by chef Peter Gordon ONZM and hosted at AUT School of Hospitality and Tourism.
