Small Fry Place

Small Fry was an artist-run cafe led by Miss Changy (Ruby White) that operated inside Te Tuhi, a contemporary art gallery and community centre based in Pakuranga. Featuring White’s handmade nerikomi ‘dreamstone’ ceramics — inspired by dreamstones or ‘shih-hua’ from Dali, China, naturally occurring ‘paintings’ of mountain landscapes from cut marble — the cafe offered a contemporary Malaysian-inspired menu that featured dishes like laksa, miso and brown rice congee, kaya toast and soft-boiled eggs, alongside sandwiches that used “a 100-year-old starter gifted by a secret friend and ex-bagel maker”.

Metro observed at the time how rare it was to find “sour, fishy, tamarind-rich Sarawak laksa” in the city, while Eat it Auckland wrote that, “Miss Changy’s sandwiches are a study in layers and complexity.” The cafe was later named in Metro’s Top 50 Best Cafes 2018.

In addition to artists like Ashleigh Payne (Tūhoe, Pākehā) and Qianye Lin working at the cafe, Small Fry collaborated with a range of artists, including offering bread-making workshops with Jerome Ozich, laksa pins designed by Where is Jasper and vases adorned with designs by tattoo artist, Alma Proença.

White decided to close the cafe after a year, explaining that it was due to:

burnout, and honestly, money… We were breaking even and I think we might have started doing better in the following years (though covid would have killed us). I believe if you can't pay your staff fairly you shouldn't be in business. I was paying myself $12 an hour, working about 60-80 hours a week.. and I didn't feel good about some of the wages we were paying (some minimum wage). I felt like in order for the business to succeed, I had to begin compromising on the food I wanted to make — that went against my own vision. I didn't want to run a cafe cooking food I didn't want to be making.

After it closed on Saturday 4th August 2018, Small Fry popped up twice more: at the now-closed cafe Baby (on Sunday 28 April, 2019) and for the last time at CHAIRS (on Sunday 1 March, 2020) as a fundraiser for the Australian bushfires.