Social hour at Xuxu, a participant in Restaurant Month, coming to central Auckland in August. Photo/Supplied
Pull on your sneakers and make the trek into central Auckland for more than 100 specially created Restaurant Month meals. Kim Knight gets lunch and a preview with Viv Beck, Heart of the City chief executive.
The "chip" was a wispy puff of beer batter and the fish was raw.
The saleswoman at the centre of Auckland Restaurant Month said she was "brought up to eat anything" and so we did.
"I actually like brussels sprouts," said Viv Beck, Heart of the City chief executive. "A lot of people don't, but I really do."
She ate them with butterfish that had been speared by a man from Picton and cooked in a restaurant helmed by a chef recently home from New York. The fish was swimming in apple butter and there was a grapefruit sabayon along with that divisive green vege.
Oysters from Paroa. Cooked and raw. Textures of tamarillo, a fresh horseradish sorbet with a little bit of citrus olive oil and a classic mignonette. To be consumed left to right or right to left? "It's your choice," said the waitperson diplomatically, and incorrectly, because all food is political.
"The challenge is that we're a city in transition," said Beck.
Heart of the City recently supported the failed bid for an interim injunction to stop council work in lower Queen St. Local authorities promised a more people-friendly and accessible upgrade, building on temporary traffic reduction measures introduced during the Covid-19 lockdown; businesses said those works were responsible for some of the street's economic downturn.
It doesn't matter how good a restaurant is if you can't get there. Ask the taxi driver who stops outside Commercial Bay where best to stand for a pick-up and he laughs and laughs. "In the daytime? Nowhere! In the night-time? Anywhere!"
It's complicated. More complicated, even, than a mince and cheese pie, as reimagined by the Lodge Bar & Dining's Michelin-starred chef Matt Lambert (rabbit, venison and beef croquette; smoked cheddar sauce). Safer, perhaps, to talk about lunch. Also dinner and a brand new cocktail hour aimed at getting people out of their homes and into central city bars.
Auckland Restaurant Month is in its 11th year. At its heart, more than 100 specially created $25, $40 and $55+ menus. Those fixed-price meal details will be released on Friday. Meanwhile, more than half of the ticketed one-off events have already sold. Last year, spending at participating restaurants was down 10.6 per cent on 2019 - the average drop for non-participants in the central catchment was 24.5 per cent
"I think people saw it as an opportunity to try new things. It was beneficial in a year when they didn't have foot traffic."
On that note, "I've wrecked a number of shoes", says Beck. "And I tend to wear thicker heels when I'm walking around now. Fortunately, people are coming out, but who knows how many more would come if it was more accessible."
Heart of the City's catchment boundaries are Albert Park, Mayoral Drive, Victoria Park and the waterfront. Foot-traffic counts showed the impact of Covid lockdowns (and, says Beck, construction), on Queen St - from July 2019 to June 2020, 12.4 million pedestrians were recorded; from July 2020 to last month, that figure was 9.76m.
But: "I think Queen St will revive, there's no question. There are people are queuing at those luxury stores, the mid-section is starting to get quite a lot of investment because the Aotea [rail] Station is coming. It's ripe for progress."
Beck said Restaurant Month had evolved to assist with the post-Covid recovery. This year there would be six chef's table dinners (including Mr Morris, Euro and Masu), three "extraordinary evenings" (including a Logan Brown reunion with Des Harris and Shaun Clouston at Fish Restaurant, an Italian Alps-focused Giapo icecream collaboration at Soul Bar & Bistro and a Weta Workshop Unleashed event at Masu). A handful of restaurant-hosted events were also on offer (think margarita masterclasses at Besos Latinos and drag race meets trolley dining service at Culprit).
Although the international chef collaborations of past years were impossible, the likes of Matt Lambert (Lodge Bar & Dining), Marc de Passario (La Maree) and Ryan Moore (The Grove) had previously led Michelin-starred venues - and now they all live here and will be up front at the chef's table series. A new initiative, The Social Hour (two cocktails and a sharing-plate for $40), was aimed at encouraging a post-work presence in the city.
"The work-from-home thing was clearly an ongoing trend that moved exponentially during Covid and now some businesses are seeing it more ingrained than others - hopefully, this will get people thinking about seeing each other face to face," Beck says.
"The reality is, we know people are social and they will want to go out."
Auckland Restaurant Month 2021: 100+ fixed-price menus in central city restaurants across August, with one-off special events at selected venues. More information: heartofthecity.co.nz