There’s nothing that brings together a community than the promise of a good feed. Local cafe Crave had a paella street party yesterday with a 1.2 metre paella pan to feed 200.
Crave is right by the Morningside train station and a cool industrial-looking cafe with exhibiting artworks. The decor may look cool, but this is a place you can find a slice of humble pie. Under a Christmas tree there, they currently have a gift drive for the Auckland City Mission. In their words: “We are a cafe with charitable status, all our profits go back into the local community and to global poverty issues.”
When we arrived, the paella pan had chicken was cooking in a vivid broth so we relaxed and had a coffee and looked the paintings on display while others enjoyed their BYO. We met some lovely people and there was a great sense of community.
Rice! One of many bags of rice added to the paella.
It was fun to watch the paella ingredients being added one by one and excitement grew as it looked more and more festive with each addition.
Calamari time.
Peeled prawns.
Mussels and cooked whole prawns added in a circular formation.
Crave’s community paella. Fun for the whole family.
As we lined up, we were asked if we had any preferences as some didn’t want meat, others didn’t want prawns, but a little girl before us requested, “no rice”. Adorable!
A thing of beauty.
Yum.
A huge thanks Crave for putting this on. What a wonderful idea.
Event sponsored by Sabato, Atomic Cafe and paella supplied by paella.co.nz.
Crave Cafe
25 McDonald Street
Morningside/Kingsland
Auckland 1025
New Zealand
Phone 09 845 4714
Open 7 days for breakfast and lunch
www.cafecrave.co.nz
After everyone had eaten a plate or two, there was still quite a bit left.
Bunny Eats Design 
What a neat event!
Glad I got to be a part of it.
It’s amazing that with the build up of suburbia and cities, community eating (like they do in villages) seems to fall by the wayside.
Wow! This looks like such a lot of fun. Great photos!
Thanks Mel. It was fun.
Fantastic photos! You have really captured the spirit of the night. A community cooking together, talking together, getting to know each other and of course eating together! I can’t wait for the next community meal.
Thanks Cathie, there should be more community get togethers. I wonder how doable a community potluck would be?
That is such a cool community event! And the paella looks amazing – love your photo of all the prawns and mussels cooking 🙂
Thanks! I thought it was quite beautiful too 🙂
That is so amazing 🙂 They have a huge paella pot at my local hospitality outlet but I have never seen one used. Incredible!
It would be pretty awesome to do this with your friends and family as long as there were plenty of people to volunteer. You couldn’t do it alone!
Wow, did it really feed 200 people? What a great idea!
Hi NomNom! Didn’t do a headcount but my guestimate would be 150ish. Most of us got second helpings and there were lots of leftovers. So yeah, had there been 200, there would have been enough.