El Camino offers a fresh take on Mexican cuisine. Photo / Getty Images
Herald Rating* * * * 1/2
Address: 480 New North Rd, Kingsland, Auckland
Ph: (09) 815 1025
Open: Wed-Fri from 4pm, weekends from 3pm
My son, Max, who is cooler than me by several orders of magnitude, wishes me to report that this tiny bar and cafe in Kingsland has the best soundtrack (of almost exclusively local music) of any place in Auckland where he has sat and enjoyed a beer. At the risk
of characterising him as a barfly, I have to say that he would know.
I got a bollocking from some readers a couple of years ago when I wrote disparagingly of local Mexican food. One reader was kind enough to point me in the direction of Mexican Specialties in Ellerslie, where I was (and remain) happy to eat my words but no other Mexican joint had come close to making me resile from my original assessment.
I actually discovered El Camino while parking outside it on the way to eat elsewhere. It's the kind of place that is easy to miss since it is about the size of a generous broom closet. But I noticed that it was full while a lot of other nearby eateries were empty or sparsely populated.
The tiny place, which opened two summers ago, gives a fresh inflection to la comida Mexicana. Proprietor/chef Stephanie Connor spent much of her teenage years in Los Angeles and the ideas she brought back and the food she whips up in her tiny kitchen at the southern end of the Kingsland dining strip almost reinvent the genre: KiwiMex, anyone?
Her regular customers would probably rather the place didn't get a good review since the restaurant is already hard enough to get into. But I don't see why they should have all the fun.
While my dining companion decided what to order, we made short work of a bowl of corn chips with which we shovelled up a bright, astringent house-made salsa. I was interested in trying the tacos (irresistible at $6 each). They turned out to be soft-shell and filled not with the oily, chilli-and-sugar-laden mince that gives the dish such a bad name but with small strips of tender beef, in a sauce with just the requisite amount of punch.
Ditto Max's albondigas - a meatball dish, Spanish in origin, which were lent zing by generous use of chipotle (dried chilli). The squid in my calamari salad, flash-fried with coriander and lime, was meltingly tender. The recommended accompaniment has to be tequila.
Cleverly, the place subcontracts dessert: a range of handmade icecreams in exotic flavours like ginger or sake and lychee, which are not conspicuously Mexican. But for the rest, El Camino is the real deal. Beat a path to the door - but be sure to book.
