Warm up in the Fridge

It was a blustery Autumn day in Auckland so I took myself off to The Fridge to warm up. It's the biggest walk-in fridge I've ever been in - Gordon Ramsay wouldn't know what to do with himself in it - but its not flash and fancy, it's homely and Smeg-like. This Fridge is a cafe in Kingsland, a western suburb of Auckland.

To save time, I took the train. Well, I say to save time, but really it was a sociological urban experiment in train travel - my virgin voyage by train to circum-navigate the volcano that is Auckland and its suburbs. Cheaper than the bus at $1.40 a go, there's no traffic lights every 10 metres and you can pay at your seat. What's not to like?

Another question - have you ever done a three-point turn in a train? I did one today - I wasn't driving, of course, I'd left that to the driver, but this is what happened: first stop (of supposedly three) was Newmarket, where we paused to collect a teenage goth then, quite unexpectedly, reversed out of the station and back the way we'd come.

Oh, so the joke's on me, I grimly realised, I see - I'm on Auckland's outdoor equivalent of the Waterloo & City line in London, no wonder it's so cheap. But, not more than 50 metres of back-crawling down the track, we screech up for no apparent reason, in a weedy plot where the tracks criss-crossed like no one's business (certainly not mine).

Then someone, somewhere, maybe in India, flicked a switch and we slowly started moving, this time forwards. What, back into Newmarket to pick up the goth's mate? But no! Ah-haha, we fork off in a westerly direction with the wind, bypassing Newmarket and off to Kingsland. Thereby an elegant three-point turn was completed and we were on our way.

I'd heard about The Fridge's famous pies and by the time I finally arrived I was in need of more than a Traditional Mince ($5). However, it was a good warm-up act, quite literally. Its pastry was golden and flakey and the mince within moist and sticky - and, curiously, not greasy - mixed perhaps with onions, I was told. Though no one was sure on this detail - only that quality mince is used, all pies are baked in the Fridge and are really pretty good.

And good it was, though one finds with pies that every bite is generally the same. Unless you separate the pastry from the filling, that is, and eat each alternately, then you would be correct in saying that every mouthful is different to the previous. But who'd even think of doing that?

Something not many people know about pies and calories is that they're best rounded up to the nearest 500, so after my pie, I ordered a homemade Afghan - you know the ones - and it arrived extra-specially topped with chocolate frosting and half a walnut. Crunchy through and through thanks to its invisible ingredient - cornflakes.

Lovely, though the flat white was a bit heavy handed in the milk frothing department, lots of air and bubbles, though probably good to wind a baby. Not that I had one to hand, mind you. Give me a pie any day though.