Whilst seeking sanity after a bad hair year of relationship and business meltdowns, a mentally knackered, financially buggered, and a tad over stressed chap, (aka Don Keebles), was enjoying many a whisky induced joke and yarn with some true-blue mates during the whitebaiting season of 2008, at his mates pub on the West Coast near Karamea.
One of which was Dave White who owned the pub. It was Dave and his partner Kirsty (aka Kuze) who invited ‘Don’ over from Christchurch to stay, to take a breather from the city and to forget the crap that was going down in Don’s wee world.
This area of the West Coast is an amazing part of our ‘god’s own’ as Don soon discovered. It is a place where wrist watches make good fishing sinkers, cell phones are useful as clay bird replacements, the ‘boardroom’ is on the beach with a bonfire and beers and a ‘conference call’ means having a yarn over a pool table with more than two people.
Embraced with scenery that is pretty much the way it was when Maui was learning to fish, it soon hits one as a mere mortal, that we humans can make life unnecessarily complicated, and we should be savouring the simple things in life.
Family, friends, footy, fresh meat and fishing seem to be high on the list over here! It was when Dave, best mate of many, top bloke and owner of the pub, served up some of his fresh, deerly departed venison, wild pork, and his famous freshly filleted, battered and fried Rig, that it dawned on this sanity seeking fella that a sauce, to complement these famous meats with the West Coast Wild Food Attitude, was not to be seen at the bar leaner to go with their meat.
What options were there to “tidy up the tucker” Don asked? And bugger me, there were bugger all! So, fuelled with the West Coast atmosphere, the attitude of the people, the quality of the tucker and the heritage of our newly enlightened patron of the pub, Don set out to create a sauce that captured these elements, to be a best mate of meat and to complement the unique flavours that these premium meats offer! For the next 6 months, in his small kitchen at home, he produced over 40 different recipes and brews, supported with many a tasting session and a wee tipple with his mates, to eventually hone, refine and settle on the recipe that is now known as Glasseye Creek Wild Meat Sauce.
Our excited, no longer despondent sauce man Don Keebles now had a recipe that his mates on the West Coast approved of! It had a name, a label, a bottle and cork. He was brewing a few bottles here and there for mates who tried it and wanted more. Dave and Kuze’s pub then began serving it with most of their meals (not whitebait of course), and big Dave was using it in his marinades, roast meat gravies, casseroles, stews and pretty much every- thing he served from his legendary kitchen, which was the home of the famous ‘Fat Bastards Special’.
But it was a passion only at this stage for Don, not a business…
