The Provenance Table

Dinner Zero

The Pacific Migration Trail, eaten in one night
Taiwan → Aotearoa
Sixteen seats · one table · seven stops
Arriving by waka across Indian Arm
The crossing

Seven stops between Taiwan and Aotearoa, sailed in the order the ocean was first crossed — the longest deliberate migration in human history, served as a single meal across one night on the water.

Every plate traces to an entry in the Provenance canon. The menu is not invented for the evening — it is drawn from the record. The dinner is the canon, plated.

The fire, at the dock

One flame runs the whole night.

Struck on the dock at Port Moody, carried in the bow of the waka, set at the centre of the table, and let go out at the end. Nothing is relit.

The crossing

Guests arrive the way the voyagers came — by water.

No engine within earshot. The far shore arrives slowly, the fire travelling in the bow, the far end of the journey waiting in the dark ahead.

The welcome

The night begins not with a dish, but with permission.

At the landing, the Tsleil-Waututh welcome the guests onto their water — the people of the inlet, receiving travellers as they have for generations. And the journey’s far end is already present: a Māori wero and haka pōwhiri, the challenge laid down and the welcome given, performed by those whose ceremony it is. Only then does the table open.

Set at each place · not a course

The cargo, made dinner.

Two small parcels wait at every seat — cultured buffalo-milk butter from Academy Farms in Langley, hand-stamped with the night’s mark, wrapped in banana leaf and beeswax paper, tied like a gift. Beside them, warm breadfruit torn from the coals — the Pacific’s own bread, a canoe plant the voyagers carried — and a sharp green-papaya atchara.

Calamansi
The acid of the islands. It returns as the cure at the Philippines.
Kombu
The sea itself, in a spoon. It returns as the limu further on.
The seven stops

Down the trail, one flame between them.

Stop One
Taiwan
Origin · where the trail begins
Smoke, Ferment & Finesse
Two pigs, the wild and the refined. Wild boar, cold-smoked and cured the old highland way — the ferment, the larder a people built before they trusted the sea. Beside it, Berkshire pork from Academy Farms cooked to silk — the finesse, the elegant answer to the wild. Toasted foxtail millet puffed for crunch; maqaw pepper, citrus and pine at once.
The carried pourWarm millet rice wine — the oldest ferment on the trail
The counterpartKimoto junmai, warmed — the same wild-ferment lineage, a thousand years on
Poured to each guest in turn, eldest first.
Lives or dies: the smoke stays cold. Render the fat and the silk is gone.
Stop Two
The Philippines
The first branching · the islands fill
Kinilaw, Cured at the Table
The day’s firmest fish, cured before the guest in cane vinegar and calamansi, held back from chalk by tabon-tabon, the traditional kinilaw fruit; first-press coconut, siling labuyo, green mango. The raw-fish thread of the Pacific begins here.
The carried pourTuba — fresh coconut palm wine, from bamboo
The counterpartSkin-contact white, saline and sharp — lifting the cure
No cutlery. Eaten kamayan, bare-handed off the leaf.
Lives or dies: served the instant it turns opaque at the edge, still glass at the centre.
Stop Three
Indonesia
The crossroads · the fermentation heart
Rendang & the Bloom
Water buffalo short rib from Academy Farms, cooked down through a full bumbu past kalio to rendang, until the oil splits and the meat takes the colour of the spice; a sliver of grilled tempeh, the living ferment shown whole. The buffalo is the Minangkabau’s own emblem — the animal on the plate is the animal in their name.
The carried pourBrem — Balinese fermented rice wine
The counterpartOld-vine Grenache — weight and spice to meet it
A censer of Maluku clove and nutmeg, lit from the fire and carried over each guest.
Lives or dies: the reduction. Stop at kalio and it’s a curry; take it to rendang and it’s the food that travels.
Stop Four
Melanesia
The deep water · Fiji · the open ocean
Kokoda, then the Lovo
Fish in hand-squeezed first-press coconut cream, lime and chilli; then a parcel drawn steaming from the lovo, the earth oven shown for the first time. At the centre of the night, the kava rite — the tanoa bowl, the single clap, the single breath. The room goes quiet and formal.
The ceremonyKava — the yaqona rite, observed in earnest
The counterpartBlanc de blancs, brut nature — clean against the coconut fat
The still point of the night. Everything before it climbs; everything after descends.
Lives or dies: the lolo — first press only, hand-squeezed.
Stop Five
Polynesia
The hub · Tonga & Samoa · the still point
Lu, Taro Leaf & Coconut, from the Umu
Taro leaf cooked long and slow in coconut cream until it turns to velvet, wrapped and steamed in the earth oven — a pause on the plate, set where the migration itself paused a thousand years.
The carried pourʻOtai — chilled pounded fruit and coconut
The counterpartOff-dry aged Riesling — the length to carry leaf and cream
The lights fall to dark; only the fire burns. The wayfinder speaks the star path.
Lives or dies: the taro leaf cooked fully through — raw it bites the throat, cooked it goes to velvet.
Stop Six
Hawaiʻi
The fulcrum · ancient larder & melting pot
Two Plates, Two Eras
First the ancient — poke with limu, inamona pounded to order, Hawaiian salt. Then, seconds behind it, the plantation century — one exact bite where five migrations meet on a single spoon.
The carried pourʻAwa — the northern dialect of the root
The counterpartJunmai ginjo for the ancient; an ice-cold lager for the camps
Ancient and modern land seconds apart — the plate makes the argument.
Lives or dies: the inamona pounded fresh; both plates within seconds of each other.
Stop Seven
Aotearoa
Journey’s end · the earth is opened
From the Hāngī
The earth oven, buried before the guests arrived, is unearthed at the table — kaimoana and the food of the cold country drawn smoking from the ground, kūmara at its centre, native botanicals over the top. The fire struck on the dock opens the earth at the end of the world.
The carried pourNative infusion — kawakawa, horopito, mānuka, hot from the steam
The counterpartCentral Otago Pinot Noir — the southernmost great red on earth
Silence as the earth is lifted. A waiata closes the course.
Lives or dies: the hāngī — the stones hot enough, the time held, the steam sealed.
The Turn

The Kūmara, and the New World

Everything tonight came down the trail — west, then south, out of Taiwan. This did not. The kūmara is a New World plant, carried home across the Pacific by these same voyagers, who reached the Americas and returned, centuries before any European crossed this ocean. The trail ran both ways.

And one bite to seal it — bison, smoked, from Academy Farms: the New World made flesh. The plant that came home across the ocean, and the animal of the continent that journey reached. The map was never a line. It was a web, and these were the people who wove it.

Bison belongs to the Plains, not to the Coast Salish whose water we cross — here it stands for the Americas the trail reaches, and is named as such.

To close · the dessert

The voyage, in a spoon.

Buffalo-milk gelato from Academy Farms, churned with toasted foxtail millet and finished with Purely Artisan mānuka honey flakes — freeze-dried to a crisp, scattered over at the pass. The grain that opened the night at Taiwan and the honey of its final shore, the first stop and the last in one cold spoon.

The fire, lit at the dock and carried all night, is let go out. A last pour of the millet wine, so the end rhymes with the beginning.

What the guest carries home

The bound canon book
The seven stops, each the full canon entry it was drawn from. Cloth-bound, foil-stamped, numbered to the seat. The dinner was the canon plated; the book is the canon to keep.
The departure jar
A single ingredient from the night, sealed in wax at the table, carried home.
The morning over the water
For those who stay: a renovated cabin above the inlet, breakfast at first light. The night ends looking out over the water they crossed in the dark.

We gather on the land and water of the Tsleil-Waututh — the people of the inlet, whose name is the name of this water, səlilwət, and who have voyaged and fed themselves from it since long before the first of tonight’s stops was sailed. We eat here with their welcome and our thanks.