Cooking show puts Riverton in Spotlight

The Southland Times covered the then-up-coming Al Brown programme, making mention of the other Rivertonians involved in getting fresh.

Homegrown potatoes, free-range eggs, heritage apples, fresh blue cod and a kitchen in a 120-year-old Riverton cafe will feature on TV One's Get Fresh with Al Brown tomorrow night.
Al Brown, the former chef of Wellington restaurant Logan Brown and host of TV One's The Coasters, spent five days in Riverton in February preparing a Southland segment for the cooking programme, which features the best of fresh ingredients in coastal settlements around New Zealand.
Riverton Promotions chairwoman Cazna Gilder said the cooking show crew ate about four dozen of her cheese rolls – a Southland "delicacy" that was new to Brown – during the five-hour filming of cooking in the kitchen at Mrs Clark's Cafe in Palmerston St, which she runs with her husband, Pat.
"The place has a lot of character. I think that he liked [the fact] that Riverton was a bit rough around the edges."
Riverton Organic Market co-ordinator Robyn Guyton said she was looking forward to seeing the heritage apples that she and Brown picked out of her backyard, along with some of the potatoes they dug up as a side dish for the blue cod, kina and crayfish that fishermen Blair Stewart and Paul Tobias caught for the chef's cookup.
Produce was also sourced from Otautau and Nightcaps for the meal, though nothing was used that didn't fall within a 75km radius of Riverton, Ms Guyton said.
The town's first barn dance at Flecks Hall next door would be keeping many people from their television sets, but she was trying to organise a later screening of the show at the hall for later that night.
"It's a good promotion of small-town life – I'm quite proud that he was pleased with what he found."
- The Southland Times