JAN MAREE: Eat Me!

06/05/2010 - 08/05/2010

NZ International Comedy Festival 2010

Production Details

TALES FROM MY GRANDMOTHER’S KITCHEN

New Zealand’s best female comedian (NZCG Awards 2009) presents delicious food in her award winning show concept. Discover the secrets of Gran’s kitchen while Jan dishes the dirt on box wine and divulges her one secret trauma involving gluey macaroni cheese and the snap election of 1984. The tastiest laugh of 2010, New Zealand’s only Cook-Up Comedian Jan Maree returns to Sandwiches with an all new evening of culinary comedy.

Originally from the Hutt Valley’s foreshore paradise Petone, Billy T Award winning comedian Jan Maree has gone on to carve an unusual niche. With her stand-up/cooking hybrid she has become known as the drinking man’s Nigella Lawson.

At the festival last year Jan Maree’s Eat Me Too, Wellington won The Dominion Post’s Best Show award. In September ’09 she returned the show to Wellington and regaled capacity crowds as part of the Wellington on a Plate culinary festival. This show is the side-splitting ‘prequel’ that started it all. Indeed, in 2007 Eat Me, Tales from My Grandmother’s Kitchen premiered to sell out crowds in Auckland, earning a nomination for Best Show Auckland.

Entertaining Wellington’s avid foodies and laughers alike, Jan combines food, stories and learning into giggles and a great three-course meal included in the ticket price. Your dining pleasure is achieved by Sandwiches’ Head Chef Terry Condon who presents the three courses inspired by Jan’s beloved family: promising lots of garlic and Gran’s orgasmic Peach Marshmallow!

New Zealand has been waiting for a new culinary hero, that hero has come. Her name is Jan Maree and she wants you to EAT ME!

“…Jan Maree’s Eat Me is a show with content you can really sink your teeth into, and I don’t just mean literally although that’s a sweet bonus…” Nik Smythe, www.theatreview.org.nz

WARNING: R 18. Not a show for P freaks (they have no appetite)

Dates: Thurs 6 – Sat 8 May, 7pm
Venue: Sandwiches, cnr Majoribanks St and Kent Terrace, City
Tickets: $55 / Groups 8+ $50
Bookings: Sandwiches, 04 385 7698 or book online at www.sandwiches.co.nz
Show Duration: 2 hours + (incl. dining time)

Review by Priyanka Bhonsule (Hutt News) 07th May 2010

It is no easy task to cook, talk and be funny but Jan Maree manages to do all three for two very entertaining hours.*

Eat Me is the second part of the series Maree started in 2007 where she uses her life experiences, family recipes and stories to create a relatively “out there” concept of cookery and comedy.

Sandwiches is the perfect setting for this show – classy, warm and intimate – you feel right at home, walking in as I did from a blustery, cold Wellington evening.

Maree’s entire ethos is to be friends with us by the end of the show, almost like family, because we have shared a meal together. She gauges her audience well and the jokes are just the right amount of dirty without being crass. Her off-the-cuff jokes are often the funniest.

We watch as Maree cooks two dishes from her grandmother’s recipe book and laugh along as she regales us with funny anecdotes encompassing her Italian /Croatian ancestry. With the smell of garlic, peppers and herbs wafting around the room, we’re all drooling already.

After Maree cooks up the dish, Sandwiches head chef Bevan Marks and his team bring out the adaptations of her recipe for all of us to dine on. It was nice to see vegetarians were looked after with alternative options as Maree’s main dish was meat-based.

All three courses were delicious and Maree left us to taste, share and discuss the food before coming back out with the stories again.

I wasn’t expecting the show to be emotional but when it comes to family, food and love, a few tears have to be shed and there are a few touching moments in the show.

The last part of the show is stand-up only, covering Maree’s experiences on TV2 show Island Wars last year, learning to be a gracious loser and her step-daughter. This is the belly-laughs part – you didn’t want to guffaw with a mouth full of food so this is a nice way to chill out after a big meal and laugh away.

Maree is the consummate host – entertaining, mingling, gossiping a wee bit and making sure you leave happy and full – which I did and so will you.
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*The show duration is meant to be 2 hours (incl. dining time) as it says on the programme but last night we were there for three hours and I imagine timings will change with every night.
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JAN MAREE: Eat Me!

Family, food and love: both funny and moving

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