Blue Rose's Palusami Pie wins an ICONIC Award

The Blue Rose continues to gain praise and "fan-favourite" status!

This cafe famous for their distinctive wallpaper, warm service, island tunes and flavourful dishes is a favourite of many Aucklanders. Owned by Robbie & Lenny, Blue Rose is a home away from home nestled in suburban Sandringham. With Cook Island & Maori backgrounds, they take pride in home-made food infused with Pacific and Maori flavours.

We spoke with Robbie about their famous cafe and their recent ICONIC Award.

You've recieved a big award recently we hear, what was it?

Recently we received An ICONIC Award for our famous palusami pie! The Blue Rose Palusami pie is our first pie we introduced on our menu - The marriage of the flavours of the pisupo and the creamy palusami are just the best combination! I wanted something uniquely Pacific, I did not want a variation of what others were doing, it had to scream PACIFIC and nothing screams Pacific more than corned Beef and palusami - when you put that in a pie … there you have it... all wrapped up in our signature pastry. 

We believe we are the first people to put this combination into a pie (others have done similar) People constantly post Tik Tok Vids of our pies especially this Palusami Pie - its become world famous - we are constantly getting people telling us that they just arrived from overseas and have seen the palusami pie on Tik Tok etc and this was there must go too while in Auckland.

Is the Palusami Pie a special item on your menu?

This would be by far our biggest selling item - some days we struggle to keep up the demand - but having a team of permanent pie makers 7 days a week dedicated to just making pies - we do our best to always have stock of it. Pacific Island food has always been a popular  to us PI people and our friends but getting it out there in cafes and restaurants has evolved over the last decade or so with places like our cafe (that also does catering) and others. 

Social media has played a huge part in getting us into the homes or screens of many people that want something different and delicious. I also think a lot of non pacific people have bypassed or foods because its foreign to them and they were not game enough to try it - palusami is so delicious its vegan friendly, it adds depth to whatever your eating it with. When non Pacific people give it ago most absolutely love it - so wrapping it in a pie may take away the vegan side of it but definitely not the YUMM factor.

     

What was the motivation to start a cafe with Island style delicacies?

Our motivation was to do something with food that we love and doing it our style and our way. Pretty soon after opening we saw there was a gap in the market for our Pacific and Maori kai. We knew we were not high end kind of cooks nor people so we worked on our strengths of providing great food that people love with the Poly flavours infused.      

What Pacific foods do you feature?

We are a proud Maori and Pacific owned cafe so we have loads of different things that we sell that are associated to our Cultural foods - some adapted to Cafe style but definitely identifiable to Pacific people. Our Oka/Ika Mata - we use Yellow Fin Tuna - we believe its a stunning fish to use for the raw fish. We sell Luau and Taro (we make this ourselves from scratch). The Island Plate is another super popular combo we sell by the 100’s for catering buy also permanently on our Cafe menu - Pork belly/Oka-Ika Mata/Taro/Palusami and Potato Salad. And lets not forget Our First Iconic eats winner our FAMOUS KOKO SAMOA CUP CAKES - they are moist they are rich in flavour they are adored by all they are delicious

              

Tell us about your journey as a small cafe - how much have you grown and what have some of the challenges been?

We started off in 2015 there were 4 of us we never really struggled but it was tight at times we knew we had a great product just needed to let everyone else know that. I love our journey as it has taught us both so many lessons. We have learnt to appreciate our customers, our hard working staff, ourselves and our ability to lead a great lot of people. I use to be and still am into big brands like Apple and Adidas Nike etc realising through our journey how important our brand Blue Rose is on the map for Pacific/Maori Cuisine in this country. When we cater we get comments like “Yayyyy ur doing the catering” or “I knew it was BR (Blue Rose)”. I am so proud of our name, what it means to our customers and the happy faces we see in our cafe who are truly there to treat themselves.

What are you most proud of achieving as a small Island business?

When we started this business we were nervous to see how it would go and how the public would take our style of food etc. We work really hard and I know we put our all into it as we this is what we love and we are lucky to do what we love as a job. I am super proud of the team - we all work together we are completely multicultural some of the staff could not even say Palusami let alone know what it was. We are a little village of different personalities that melted together you get a Blue Rose.