Pity the chefs trying to feed a city’s obsession with eating the Next Big Thing.
At my little sister’s 50th birthday party, I asked if I should fetch some bowls for the chicken chips she was serving alongside the Maggi onion soup dip.
No, she said. That would justcreate more dishes. And then she laid the chip packet flat, took a pair of kitchen scissors and slashed a cross in the front of the foil. Four pointy corners sprang back from the centre and voila – a bowl.
“I learned that at a morning tea shout,” she said.
Far more recently, I went to the media launch of a very fancy liquor store meets wine bar. The retail space was described as “gallery-like” and the food had been “curated”. We sipped from a $200-plus bottle of sake and admired the way it paired with a single green olive.
The second course arrived. It was a bag of chips, laid flat, with a cross slashed in the front of the foil. The truffle-flavoured crisps had been piled with cured meat and, alongside, was a dollop of creamy buffalo curd.
Only in Auckland, I thought. Because one person’s chip and dip is not another person’s chip and dip and there is nothing the food snobs in this city love more than pretending to slum it.
Restaurateurs spend a lot of time thinking about how to feed this obsession. Witness Ahi’s scampi corndog and Onslow’s crayfish eclair and Metita’s cornbeef bun with caviar. The duck liver doughnut at Lillius (and the potato and truffle one by Sid at The French Cafe) and absolutely anything with a carrot, absolutely anywhere in Auckland.
Culprit's jet planes, circa 2020. Photo / Peter Meecham.
From the jet plane lollies that the chefs at Culprit infuse with everything from champagne to chamoy, to the Depot slider that is a baby fish burger by any other name, the restaurants of this city have two choices: Make the ordinary elite – or risk obscurity.
Once, I foraged for feijoas or grabbed them for free from the kitchen bench at work. Now, I order them deep fried and rolled in a powder made from their dehydrated skins and served with a ginger cake and Earl Grey custard ($25) at a restaurant called Forest. In the provinces, I go to the petrol station for a $5 mince and cheese pie. In Auckland, I hope Pie Rolla’s has not sold out of the $12 brisket, jalapeno and American cheese (the politics of palatability trump actual politics).
Pity the chef who prefers to pan fry a snapper. Ponsonby et al has zero interest in cooked fish.
Anything that could swim will be sliced, soaked and served as crudo or ceviche or kokoda or ika mata or tiradito or sashimi or carpaccio or kinilaw or aguachile or any other descriptor that makes fish flesh sound just a little bit fancier. (An Easter trip south convinced me that venison tartare is to Christchurch as raw fish is to Auckland, where the “tartare” is now roasted and also a carrot – $9 with cashew cream at Mr Morris).
Scampi crumpets at Jacuzzi, the restaurant that recently opened on the old SPQR site in Ponsonby, Auckland. Photo / Babiche Martens
Auckland’s appetite for the Next Big Thing is insatiable. If it is new and shiny or even just some instant ramen noodles mixed with cheese and meat juice and served in a takeaway cup at a Mt Albert taco shop, there will be a queue.
Right now, one of the hottest sitdown tickets in town is a bowl of soup. Literally. My attempt to get into Balmoral’s Pho Yen was thwarted by the news it was “sold out”. The time of the death of my dinner plans was 6.50pm on a Saturday night.
Auckland will see your steamed egg and raise you a bacon cream (Rhu). There will be scampi on the cocktail crumpets (Jacuzzi) and its middle classes will express irony by chopping iceberg lettuce and serving it to their friends with a Highlander condensed milk mayonnaise and wild-capture prawns that have a blue tick from the Marine Stewardship Council (Riedel glassware optional).
A few decades ago I had lunch with a Christchurch man who ordered the brie sandwich, pronouncing the cheese as though it rhymed with “try” or “cry”. Later, he went to Wellington to work for the National party where, I am certain, he learned the error of his wheys.
Does my mockery make a food snob? Just another fried feijoa’ing Aucklander? I don’t care. Not to rub ridiculously flaky sea salt in your wounds, but I’m very busy looking for the next big lunch queue.
Kim Knight is a former restaurant critic who holds a Masters in Gastronomy. She joined the Herald in 2016 and currently works as a senior journalist for its lifestyle desk.
