Carter’s Kitchen No. 15

Yasuji Hisai, Auckland, New Zealand

Yas and his partner, Fumi, own a small cafe called Coffee Pen in the top end of Auckland city. It’s a shared building serving the best coffee and home-cooked food, under some big trees. Yas brews the coffee while Fumi cooks in the kitchen. When I was quite pregnant with Patience, I did a pop up in their cafe to serve toast like I used to in my shop with Sophie, Harry and my brother Ferg. We sold out in a few hours but it was a fun morning. I remember staying up all night baking bread and cookies in Harry’s small oven in batches. I love it at Coffee Pen.

Where is your kitchen, and what does it look out onto?

We live in a small apartment, so when you open the entrance door, you are already in the kitchen. It looks out over Basque Park, and we can see the Waitākere Ranges in the distance. The kitchen faces west, so on good days we get really beautiful sunsets.

What’s the first thing you do when you walk into it?

Usually the first thing I reach for is a drink. Either alcohol or sparkling water.

What’s usually left out on the bench or within reach?

Pretty normal things. Salt, black pepper, shichimi (Japanese chill pepper)

What do you have when you don’t feel like cooking at all?

Probably Tenshinhan, which I loved when I was living in Japan. It’s a very simple Chinese-influenced Japanese dish — soft crab omelette over rice with sweet and sour sauce. Very comforting and easy to make. Or Cacio e Pepe.

What do you eat or drink almost every day?

Coffee. Alcohol maybe three days a week.

What’s the last thing you made, even if it was simple?

Yakitori. If the weather is nice before a day off, Fumi and I often put a small charcoal grill on the balcony table and barbecue while watching the sunset.

Is there something you make on repeat without thinking?

Steak. We both really love New Zealand beef. We have a few favourite butchers and cook steak at least once a week. Usually sous vide for a few hours, then finished over charcoal and with a burner. Recently I’ve also been obsessed with making potato pavé prepared from the day before.

What do you have late at night or early in the morning?

Not really either of those. But maybe once a month I lock myself in my office and listen to music until 3 or 4 in the morning. Those nights usually involve beer, wine, whisky, gin… a lot of alcohol.

Is there a drink you make all the time?

Nothing besides coffee. We live close to Pen, so even on days off I usually walk down to the shop and have coffee there.

Is there something you always order when you’re out?

Beer and chips.

Is there a place you go back to for the same meal?

At Ralph’s, burgers, chips and fried chicken.
And Apero — a bit like Pen, they always have changing specials, so we’ve probably been going there for almost ten years

What’s something you’ve eaten recently that stayed with you?

Probably the T-bone steak and pork chop from Mapari Meats in Mt Wellington. It wasn’t rich like wagyu, but the flavour in the lean meat really stayed with me.

How do you take your coffee or tea?

I don’t really drink tea. Coffee is usually black or piccolo.

Where do you eat your meals most of the time?

Mostly at the small table in our kitchen.

What do you like listening to in your kitchen?

There’s never really one thing. We don’t have a TV, and unless we’re watching films, there’s almost always music playing at home. We both tend to like darker sounds — ambient, electronica, noise. But also techno, jazz and post-rock. Recently we’ve been listening a lot to “The Way Out of Easy “ - Jeff Parker. It’s probably one of the albums I’ve enjoyed most over the last few years.

What’s something slightly imperfect in your kitchen that you still use?

Honestly, almost everything. Most things are old, broken, chipped or things we couldn’t use at Pen anymore. We’ve never really spent money making the kitchen look nice.

A meal or food moment that stays with you:

Since moving to New Zealand, we’ve really started enjoying food in a different way. In Japan, a lot of cooking is built around soy sauce, mirin and sake — simple and balanced flavours. But here we discovered completely different ways of building flavour through herbs, spices, nuts, cheese, olive oil and all kinds of fresh chillies.

For the first five years, we often didn’t even understand what people were talking about when describing food. We didn’t know the names of many ingredients or dishes, and we didn’t have those flavour memories yet.

There are honestly too many memorable meals to name. A lot of them came from people around us — food-loving friends like James, who helped us build Pen in the early days; Michael and Sarah, who used to import small Japanese BBQs; another James, who took photos for our Pen book; and many chefs from restaurants and cafes who have shared food, ideas and moments with us over the years. Carter, you’re definitely one of the people who gave us those moments too:))

Follow Coffee Pen here and if you are ever in Auckland, make a stop here.

Yas and Fumi love New Zealand beef, and I’ve been enjoying meat from our local market or the organic butcher in town. I had some leftover rib eye in the fridge and decided to make a simple Japanese dish called Gyudon. It’s fried beef with onion and rice. This easy meal was delicious and my kids would love it too. Here’s how I made it.