Long before food halls and fine dining, Aucklanders ate out in department store tearooms, ordered the daily ordinary at corner cafés and queued at milk bars for a malted shake.
This lively talk traces the surprising history of eating out in Tāmaki Makaurau - from the genteel tearoom to the arrival of vegetarian restaurants, the rise of the milk bar and the very Kiwi invention of BYO dining.
Drawing on advertisements, reviews and notices preserved in historical community newspapers, historian Felicity Barnes and Andy Fenton, Chair of The Preserving Local History and Educational Trust, serve up a warm and entertaining picture of how, where and what Auckland chose to eat across the decades.
A perfect fit for this year’s festival theme, Tastes of Tāmaki: A Heritage Feast, the talk celebrates the everyday stories captured in the newspapers the Trust is working to digitise and preserve through its Your Stories project.