The Plating Game: Tom Sainsbury

We asked Tom Sainsbury to share his food loves so we could create a dish especially for him.

Is there anything Tom Sainsbury can’t do? The all-rounder is an accomplished and prolific playwright, penned award-winning TV series Super City with Madeleine Sami and worked on web series Stake Out, Bachelor Pad and The Video Store. He’s also an established actor and comedian. But he’s probably best known as the creator of a series of comedy videos featuring characters made using Snapchat filters (check out his Facebook at @tomsainsbury6 or Instagram at @thomassainsbury – you’re in for a treat). His favourite characters he’s invented? “It’d have to be Tayn, who’s a boy racer with missing teeth; he’s a ratbag, always getting into trouble,” admits Tom. “Or there’s a character with a huge mouth called Maz who’s quite sweet – I love playing those two.”

Food-wise? After growing up on a dairy farm, Tom now eats vegan. Here, he talks his go-to vegan lollies, what would be on Boomer Dad’s dinner wish list and death row meals.

Talk us through the standard diet of Tom Sainsbury.
Tom: I’m a vegan and most of the time we try to eat dinner at home. It’s usually just vegetables in a stirfry or pre-packaged vegan meat alternatives and a sauce, something like that, with rice or udon noodles, or lots of pita breads and hummus with various veg. Those are my only kind of ‘standard’ meals, otherwise I generally just have a look at what’s in the fridge and put something together. I wouldn’t say I’m a keen cook but I do quite like it... I think I’m a good sous chef. I like doing the prep and the cutting, that kind of thing. And I’m definitely more of a cook than a baker.

Do you like to entertain? What would be on the menu?
Tom: We had some friends round the other day and I tried to make a kind of degustation menu, partly as a joke but also to use up all the bits and bobs in the fridge, the last of the relish, that kind of thing! So yes, I do quite like making food for people. If I was having people for a dinner party I’d probably make a Thai green curry or a red curry or something like that, or something with sweet and sour sauce on rice or noodles.

What are some of your favourite cuisines or flavours?
Tom: Even though I’ve mentioned lots of stirfries and curries, my favourite is actually Lebanese or Middle Eastern food. I go through so much hummus, so much pita bread, and I love gherkins and olives, things like that. And I love those big Ethiopian pancakes – injera.

The dish team have been loving your 80s references on Instagram recently – do you have any favourite dishes from that era?
Tom: This is the food I grew up with! I remember a lot of pizza with actual tinned spaghetti on it, that’s a huge classic in my family, and then apricot chicken was a big thing as well. That was a very classy dish back in the 80s, the kind of thing my mum would serve at a dinner party.

We love your character Boomer Dad, who has featured so much on your social media recently. What would be on his dinner wish list?
Tom: Honestly, Boomer Dad is quite happy with just, like, Colby cheese and an apple. But for dinner he’d definitely be a meat and three veg kind of guy. So you know, corned beef or some kind of roast with potatoes and peas, something like that.

What did you grow up eating – can you share a fond food memory from childhood?
Tom: My mum was a good cook – and though I grew up eating meat, she’s great at catering to me being vegan now. I remember her Afghan biscuits very fondly, I used to be obsessed with Afghan biscuits! And she used to make yoyos, those shortbread biscuits with the cream in the middle. I’d go through so many of those. And her Anzac biscuits! Her baking was pretty great.

What’s always in your supermarket trolley?
Tom: I always get a pickle of some description, and always a huge tub of hummus.

What’s your go-to drink?
Tom: Unfortunately, I’m addicted to soda of all kinds so anything like Coke... otherwise my go-to non-alcoholic drink would probably be coffee and alcoholic would be a white wine.

Do you have a favourite restaurant?
Tom: I live very close to one called Lokanta which is in Grey Lynn, Auckland, and it’s all Mediterranean. It’s actually all food from a specific region, I think it’s the Aegean Sea. But it’s just great – there’s lots of seafood, if you like seafood, but for me it’s like amazing aubergine dishes and roast carrots and lots of chickpeas and things like that.

Is there anything you don’t eat, aside from animal products?
Tom: Coriander – I’m one of those people who just don’t like it. Anything else, I’ll at least try.

Do you have any guilty pleasure foods?
Tom: I have a really bad sweet tooth, so as soon as the Natural Confectionary Company started making vegan lollies, that became a bad habit. Oreo cookies are great too of course, and they’re vegan, and then apart from that I’m just a big fan of all types of jam.

What would be your last meal?
Tom: Honestly? Bread and butter. Just a really nice bread, and there are lots of great vegan butters, but if I was dying I’d probably give up all that and just eat the dairy butter. Just those two together... I know it’s so weird and plain, but I absolutely love bread and butter.

Click here to find the Hummus and Roast Vege recipe Sarah made for Tom.