There was a young boy aged five who fled Cambodia with his family only to live the next fourteen years of his life inside a refugee camp in Vietnam. When he was 15 he watched his older sister die after she was given the wrong injection to cure a cold. “We don’t have doctors, we don’t have good medical conditions. Yeah, it was just so sad for us.” In 1989, his family-of-six fled to Sydney. Eight years later, they moved to Auckland. This young man was now twenty-five. To survive he opened a lunch bar in Avondale. The name of this young man was Patrick Lam.
Over the next twenty-one years Patrick Lam of Gold Star Pat’s Pies in Tauranga has won a staggering total of 52 pie awards since first entering the Bakels NZ Supreme Pie Awards in 2003. Amongst those 52 awards there have been seven supreme gold medal winning pies. Mince and cheese three times, Bacon and eggs twice and roast pork, mushroom and cheese once. Patrick has three retail premises on the go.
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This Cambodian refugee has enhanced our diverse culture in so many ways. Pat is extremely modest, loves his adopted country and has taken on a Kiwi icon treat, the humble pie, and smashed it. What an ambassador for his native culture and his courage and motivation to succeed against all odds. He is a real Kiwi hero.
Unlike Golriz Ghahraman he didn’t fake it till he made it, he did it. There are no comparisons. His positivity vs her negativity, his modesty vs her self-promotion, his gratitude vs her ingratitude. But above all else, Pat didn’t get the opportunity to go to Oxford University to obtain a law degree and then return to New Zealand only to rubbish the country who had welcomed him. There is more integrity in one of Pat’s pies than Ghahraman could possibly ever muster in a lifetime of politics.