No garlic, pizza as tall as a cake: How an Italian changed food in a small NZ town
No garlic, pizza as tall as a cake: How an Italian changed food in a small NZ town
Category: Article
| Title | No garlic, pizza as tall as a cake: How an Italian changed food in a small NZ town |
|---|---|
| Author | Emily Brookes |
| Year | 2021 |
| Publication | Stuff NZ |
| Publisher | Stuff NZ |
| Language | English |
| Geographic reference | Tokoroa |
| Time reference | 1969 to present |
| Online resource | YES |
| Topic | Italian restaurants, Italian chefs, Italian immigrants, Moawhango Tongariro Tunnel, Codelfa-Cogefar, Immigrant workers, Tongariro Power Development, Italian tunnellers in New Zealand, veneti in Nuova Zelanda, Food, |
Italian immigrant Alberico D’Andrea opened the first Italian restaurant in Tokoroa on April 16, 1984. Before then Italian food wasn't known in the area. In the article D'Andrea talks about his experience as an Italian restaurateur in this small town in the centre North Island: “For the first six months we were giving away pasta for free to teach people how to eat pasta properly..." he says, recalling how New Zealand women started to appreciate his food first, and then slowly won their husband over. D'Andrea came to New Zealand in 1969 to work as a cook at the Tongariro Hydroelectric Power Scheme, met a Kiwi lady and settled here, they run the restaurant for almost 4 decades and are now ready to pass it on.
More about Alberico D'Andrea: Greatest NZ stories: Hydro projects generated fine Italian cuisine (New Zealand Herald, 2013).
