Pāua, canned spaghetti, povi masima and taro: Pepe’s Café understands the nature of food as love and community.

Food is language. It is a complex tool for communication that we use to share information with one another. It is used to soothe, teach and love. Food is, at its core, identity. A way of creating and sustaining community. Walk into any big city and watch diasporas meet in restaurants and cafes, providing a taste of home and a sense of recognition in a foreign land. It is a means of showing love and confidence; flavours learned in childhood have a resonance in adulthood that surpasses anything experienced later in life. The taste of cold cuts on white bread will always remind me of home and safety. Half a can of spaghetti on buttered toast means Sunday morning cartoons and my grandma coming over to help my dad iron our school uniforms for Monday.

James Tangitamaiti and Yanah Partsch know all this. They understand the nature of food as love and community better than anyone I’ve ever met. Luckily for all of us, they opened a small cafe in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Porirua in February 2024. I’m not of Pacific descent, but Pepe’s Cafe is probably as close to the comfort of home as I’ve ever felt since moving to Aotearoa three years ago. It sells the best cakes I’ve ever eaten in my life. Yanah and James are a couple who have their roots in Samoa and the Cook Islands, but were born and raised in Wellington and have deep family ties to Porirua. Both have lived full lives that have taken them to this point. Yanah has had a number of corporate jobs and James has been a serial entrepreneur; ask him who first invented the massage gun and he’ll tell you unequivocally it was him; he even has his prototype in a storage room somewhere on the estate. What they both understood through living and working in the community is that everyone is crying out for “home cooking.” The kind of food they ate as children that feels and tastes like home, safety, and connection. They aren’t aware of their mission: to create a place where people can find their own identity and feel empowered. When a run-down cafe in the settlement became available, they decided to do something about it.

It is said that there is an inverse relationship between the view you have and the quality of the food you eat. The trattorias carved into the cliffs of the Cinque Terre in northern Italy look out over the azure horizon but serve warm white wine, packaged sauces and loose pasta. The slice shops in New York, on the other hand, that look over the piles of garbage are so good that you’ll return four times in as many days to eat among the garbage. If this theory is correct, then I believe Pepe’s Café might serve some of the best food in Aotearoa.

That’s not to say the Thermo King warehouse opposite isn’t beautiful, it really is. Although, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think I’ve ever looked out of the window while I’m in the cafe. I’m far too busy watching everyone politely bustle around trying to get to the cake cabinet, everyone praying there’s still pāua available. I’m far too busy listening to the laughter that seems to constantly echo through the room, the greetings and hugs of old friends who have bumped into each other in Pepe’s cafe. The whole community is there. Word has spread about what’s going on in this little cafe in the industrial estate in Kenepuru. James tells me they knew they’d discovered something serious, something good, when aunties came in and said they’d heard about it from their friend at church. High praise indeed, and something definitely worth travelling for.

One of the reasons they are so busy and have people coming in all the time is because the kitchen is running all day. This constant cooking is not intentional but, like all great things, a necessity. The property they have taken over is tiny, they just don’t have the space or money to install professional ovens and the equipment needed to bake in bulk. Efficiency is everywhere in this small cafe. The beautiful counter they serve at was pieced together from all the pallets salvaged from the property to save money. The kitchen equipment was also salvaged to keep in use until it is ready for a renovation one day.

They’re the pies that people come here for. The pies inspired by home, the dishes their parents and aunts cooked for them when they were children and that they want to cook again for others. They’re meant to provide comfort and connection for the people of a city dedicated to food from everywhere but Aotearoa and the Pacific Islands. All their history and heritage, all their love, compressed and wrapped in dough.

Povi Masima and Taro in Coconut Cream Pie is a pie that is warming, lovely and generous at the same time. It’s a pie that speaks an international language, salty, fatty pieces of beef brisket braised tenderly like salt beef, but unmistakably home to those who know it. It’s nestled in sweet taro roots that have been cooked until tender and sweet, cosseting the meat before being covered in a coconut cream sauce. The coconut cream sauce is baked inside the pie, taking on the consistency of a thickened béchamel sauce and giving everything such a luxurious and decadently pleasant feel – the garlic brings heat and sweetness in a way that garlic sometimes can.

There’s a pie filled with tinned spaghetti, crumbled corned beef and a layer of mozzarella cheese. It’s one of the classic meals of an island family cooked out of necessity. What was once the affordable ingredients and cheaper cuts delivered to the islands is now luxurious and full of nostalgia. It’s almost perfect. Yanah has noticed that it’s the Pākehā customers who seem to have the greatest affinity for this pie. It turns out that tinned spaghetti with cheese is the international symbol of comfort and security.

But in a display case full of cakes all vying for the title of best in the country, the pāua cake with cream sauce stands out above the rest. It would not be an exaggeration to call this cake an architectural masterpiece, an engineering feat that will be studied for years to come. This sweet pāua, wrapped in a rich cream sauce, studded with onions and cheese, defies the laws of physics. Pāua is such a delicacy and people care deeply about it – they know it so often gets lost in an overpowering sauce and relegated to a supporting role. Not here – it’s a pāua cake. It tells a story about the depths of the ocean that surrounds us. It’s not an uncommon sight to see people sitting in their cars outside Pepe’s, eating fresh pāua cakes and then going straight back inside to buy another.

There aren’t many other places in Wellington at the moment that sell cream pāua pies, boil up pies or spaghetti and corned beef pies. Yanah and James know it’s what the community is crying out for; they know they’re needed and that they’re doing something important. They understand that food is language and that the quickest way to disappear is when a language stops being used. Even though it requires driving across the city and to the easternmost edge of the Kenepuru industrial area, Pepe’s Café isn’t on the edge of anything. It’s right in the beating heart of Porirua’s vibrant Pacific community. It’s run by two people who put community at the heart of everything they do. Yanah and James have found their voice and are using it to make sure everyone feels connected, cared for and loved.