Category: Food & Drink

Claire left her phone at home, so I went on a mercy mission to drop it off at her workplace (she has a desk with no phone, the company opting instead to use the mobile network wherever possible).  Following that, George took me for a walk around the domain, and then the trouble started.  On the way home from the park, he told me I should stop and get some fruit, so I did.

So far this afternoon I’ve eaten seven (7) oranges, three (3) mandarins, and two (2) kiwifruit.  It would have been even worse, but the pears have a slight firmness that I’ll give them a day or two to recover from, and the bananas have a very slight tinge of green at the ends.  So who knows what would have happened if everything had been ready for immediate gobbling?  I don’t know.  But it sure would have been delicious to find out.

Other food I’ve been enjoying recently, starting right up the very top, was One Tree Grill last Saturday night, when we celebrated our pretty (but dim) friend Sandra’s mumblingth birthday, I opted for the grilled venison (in a wonderful thyme’y crust) with frites and bearnaise sauce, and a rocket, parmesan & pear salad.  It was really, really good.  Super tender and delightful.  Louise had the pork belly, which was great as well.  Claire chose the tuna steak, which was ok, but disappointingly less great that those we make at home.  I tried a little of Sandra’s calamari, and just between you and me, it was pretty awful.  Very rubbery and a bit fishy.  For dessert I chose the sticky prune & walnut pudding, with vanilla ice cream and a butterscotch sauce, it was very good.  All in all, One Tree Grill was less stellar than other times we’ve visited.

On Sunday we visited my mother, then headed over to Shoreville to visit Dylan, Melanie, & little Harrison to eat pizza (it was very bad, their Domino’s makes very dry pizza compared to two orbiting around our suburb) and play a new board game Claire grabbed off TradeMe: Apples to Apples.  A very simple to learn card based game, which I’m not going to go into detail to describe (if you’re interested you’ll google it), which was really good fun.  And I’m not just saying that ‘cos I won both games.  (I sacrificed my second win so we could play a couple more hands, giving Dylan a chance to catch up, preventing him from crying like a friggin’ baby, but he still didn’t manage it.  Melanie took it out, just before Claire could.)

We’ve done many other things since I last wrote, but you know.  Pfft.

Being Monday, it was time to go out for dinner with Pat to celebrate his birthday (I don’t know which one, and with that beard of his it’s pretty hard to judge) so Claire walked around the corner from her offices, and I drove up Gillies Ave, to a place on the corner of Khyber Pass & Kingdon St called Sunnytown Chinese Restaurant.

Let me cut a long story short, the food was kind of okay, but the selection wasn’t very good, the rice was rubbish, and it’s just bloody lucky I was there as early as I was, so I could stick an oar in an get at least a couple of dishes that people wanted.  (One person decided to take control of ordering, and placed the orders before everyone had actually arrived.)  They also only had a B hygiene rating.  The roast duck was pretty nice.  And the lemon chicken was okay.  But there was something about the place I didn’t especially like – I think it could have been that it was huge, with heaps of empty tables, which just isn’t a good sign.

We headed somewhere else for coffee & dessert, and I guided everyone to Safran, which is just off that park on the corner of Khyber Pass & Broadway.  Let me just say, it was a relief to go somewhere good to finish the evening off.  I had the bread & butter pudding with apricot liquer and it was really, really great.  I had a limonata as well that just tasted like Roses cordial, but never mind.  And Claire has a glass of a really tasty Chianti (I didn’t get the name of it unfortunately).

To sum things up:
Sunnytown Chinese Restaurant = Not so good, but with the caveat that most of the food was okay.
Saffran = Really good, but we didn’t have mains there.

By now everyone in Auckland surely must know how good Satya is, and you’e probably visited at least one of their locations – first the tiny little place with a couple of tables squeezed in on Hobson St – where were introduced to them by David & Laura – then later when the first rumours of their Hobson St building being demolished were hinted at, they established a second location, very conveniently located to our Balmoral house, on Sandringham Rd, but this location also being almost comically small – especially as they very infrequently let people use the private dining room upstairs.

Finally the Hobson St building was demolished (years after the first rumours), and now they have a new location – this time with plenty of room, the dining area is a similar size and shape to Simla in Mt Eden Village – this time on K Rd, just along from the Pitt St intersection.

Let me just get an important point out of the way: The Dahi Puri is to die for, if you have nothing else, have a serving of these little fellows, they’re SO good.

We also had a masala dosa, which was as good as you’ll find anywhere.  Satya special chicken, which is a very savoury dish, with the chicken pieces (and secret potato pieces, waiting to trick you into thinking that they’re chicken) liberally coated in a wonderful spicy sauce, served cocktail style with toothpicks.  It’s quite a dry one – it doesn’t have a thick soupy gravy as you might be used to with most curry dishes, in this case they’re just served on a bed of shredded cabbage.  The old staple butter chicken, which was very good.  And a very hot lamb vindaloo.  Some garlic parantha (perfect, some places make them almost like roti, at Satya they’re buttery, crusty on the outside, many layered, and wonderful), and a selection of sauces (raita, mango chutney, etc.) rounding the table off.

Simply put, it was all wonderfully good.

(If you don’t like spicy food start somewhere a little more Europeanised, with milder sauces, even the medium at Satya is fairly hot.  And the hot is wonderfully sweat inducing.)

Friday night I was invited along to the ‘Quicksilver has been sold let’s have a dinner to say buh-bye’ dinner, which happened to be at Mithai on the corner of Hobson & Victoria Streets.

It’s an interesting Thai place, the interest comes in the form of the apparently organic expansion they  appear to have done over a period of years (though it’s possible that it was a publishing company that did the expansion, or some other restaurant, who knows) where they now take the top floor of a row of maybe 5 shops, with steps making the difference between the level splits.

We took the entirety of the floor closest to the kitchen, with a group of nearly 40, we needed the space – which, while it was set up for large groups, it wasn’t set up for this large a group, so we were distributed around a bunch of large tables.

Starters came out and were freaking great, particularly the sesame and pork toast… things… delicious.

Then came the soup, which was thankfully a tom kha gai, which is probably my favourite of all soups.  Unfortunately, the chicken was crap, and the creaminess from the coconut was unbalanced with the tang of the lemon grass, kaffir lime leaf, and ginger.  So it tasted sort of smooth and creamy – which is great sometimes, but in tom kha gai, not so much.  Tsz really liked it, but he’d never had tom kha gai before – he’s in for a wonderful surprised when he orders it somewhere that makes it really well.

Mains were yellow chicken curry, fish curry, pork & something, and a dark savoury beef thing (served the way it all was, I didn’t see exactly what was being served, so *shrug*) which were all very good.  Topped off with fruit & ice cream & a slightly unusual rice pudding, it was all really very nice.

We stayed very late, finally being kicked out long after the place probably would have liked to close – but they knew what side their bread was buttered on, and (former) Quicksilver owner Matt was picking up the tab.  Some of us tried to find a nice bar, but didn’t have much luck – we tried the sky city bars and they were all horribly loud and dark, and full of young people.  People trying to find sex, rather than people wanting to enjoy a nice drink and some conversation, so we ended up at Esquires again. (We went after Thursday Night Curry, which I’m not going to go into as it was more or less the same as every other Thursday Night Curry – far too many dorks, it’s fallen a long way since it was instituded years ago, when normal cool people would go along.  Arkady breaking his chair was a highlight of the evening.)

Saturday was time for Monsoon Poon.  We met up with Amanda & Darren, had a couple of drinks in the bar (I had time for a couple of ginger beers, Claire started sharing a bottle of vino with Amanda, and Darren was on the Macs Gold), then they finally managed to find us a table.  (The place must be absolutely printing money, it’s quite big, and totally full.  And sure, they have to pay for a really nice fit-out and lots of staff, but still!)

We ordered the starter combo platter, it was just about perfect, piled up with squid rings, Vietnamese rolls, Krishna pakora, shishkebab rolls, deep fried chilli wings (delicious) and it was all superb.  Just about the right size for 4 as well, so the price isn’t too bad.

I had a ginger ale.

Amanda had a hard time choosing a main (we were sharing, so the pressure wasn’t too high, but it seems the pressure of the large selection causes her some trouble).  But eventually we ordered a Mee Goreng Ayam, Bang Bang Chicken, Phoenix & Dragon (chicken and prawns), and Golden Lemon Chicken.  Added to this we had a cone of coconut rice, a cone of saffron rice, and a couple of garlic naan.

The girls also had another bottle of wine, I had another ginger beer, and Darren had another Gold.

The food, as it arrived, was fantastic, the Bang Bang Chicken especially was superb, very spicy, very delicious, the chicken was perfect – and a perfect match with the delightful coconut rice.  The mee goreng was great as well, I didn’t have much of the Phoenix & Dragon or Golden Lemon Chicken, but everything I tasted was good.

It was dessert time, I order the chocolate and caramelised ginger brulee (Amanda had the same), Claire had Lao Mandarin Panacotta, and Darren had handmade chilli chocolates.  About this time I realised that I’d had four ginger drinks, and was now eating a ginger dessert, so I started to wonder if I had a problem, deciding that the only was out was through, I scoffed the lot and then helped Claire a bit with hers.  The panacotta & brulee were both good but somewhat unbalanced, needing something to make them more interesting than the fruit they came with, though I’m not sure what would do it.

After dessert, Amanda, who had been drinking a bit faster than Claire, and getting instant refills from the (perhaps over) attentive waiter, didn’t realise quite how much she’d had to drink, and then she managed to break her glass on the table (very lucky not to cut her hands).

It was a great night out.  I strongly recommend Monsoon Poon to anyone, but beware that it’s quite spendy.

Sunday was felt Yorkshire Puddingish, so that’s what I had.  With lots of plum sauce and well seasoned italian sausage.  Hell yeah!

Now you’ll have to excuse me, but the groceries are here, and I have to go and get the dog off the delivery guys.  (Maybe he can smell the chorizo – none for you George!)