Chef Rich Johns from Rotorua’s Okere Falls Store and Craft Beer Garden has won the 2022 Great New Zealand Toastie Takeover.
“It’s still sinking in, but it’s a huge honour,” he says. “It reinforces the love and care we put into the creations at Okere Falls – we get lots of compliments from our diners on the food. We don’t have a traditional menu and try to be a little different, so to win this shows it’s paying off and it’s so amazing to be rewarded. We’ve had so many rave reviews about the toastie and to win, it means a lot.”
The winning brisket toastie consists of house-smoked, beer-brined brisket, McClure’s Pickles, hop-salted mozzarella, smoked cheddar, watercress, and horseradish on Bread Asylum X Lumberjack Brewing spent grain sourdough with pickle brine sour cream and a beer gravy dipping bowl – all served up for a very reasonable $15.50.
The Great New Zealand Toastie Takeover competition criteria required sandwiches to be toasted between two slices of bread and able to be eaten by hand. The toasties also needed to contain cheese and McClure’s pickles, with all the other ingredients entirely up to the entrant’s imagination.
Chef Rich was so determined to use brisket in his toasted sandwich entry, he convinced the café’s owner to purchase a smoker! The brisket was brined in a house lager from local brewer Lumberjack Brewing, then spritzed with McClure’s pickle brine and smoked for 24 hours on site using a special rub.
He has worked at the Okere Falls Store café for the past six years and entered the Great New Zealand Toastie Takeover last year but just missed out on making the finalist round. This year, he wasn’t going to allow the big W slip from his hands again.
The competition’s head judge, Kerry Tyack, says this year’s winner was highly innovative in using both the familiar and readily available.
“The Okere Falls Store is a craft beer café, and it was great to see they maxed out the influence of craft brewing – for example, using hop-salted mozzarella, beer-soaked brisket, and artisan sourdough bread made from spent brewing grains,” he says. “We also enjoyed the nod to wild food via the use of watercress, while using the pickles as a palate-cleansing element was inspired. Their juice lifted the sour cream to a pickle and dill inspired high. The entry also delivered epic mouthfeel and both complementary and contrasting flavours. No ingredient was superfluous, we gave it a perfect score for taste. We should also mention the inclusion of a brief note explaining the brewing philosophy behind the main ingredients. It tied everything together perfectly.”
This fifth year of the popular competition saw more than 140,000 toasties served up to customers across the more than 180 eateries vying for the title. Thirteen finalists were selected from the 180 entrants and were all judged on the same criteria, including presentation, effectiveness of preparation technique, eatability, taste, innovation, and originality.