Restaurant review: MooChowChow, Ponsonby

The food at MooChowChow surpasses any of the Asian street-hawker cuisine that inspired the creation of the restaurant. Photo / Getty Images

Address: 23 Ponsonby Rd, Ponsonby
Ph: (09) 360 6262
moochowchow.co.nz

By rights, MooChowChow should have amassed a decent body count in the four years it's been open. The stairs to the dunny are positively vertiginous - I can't help looking up to check whether anyone's falling towards me before I attempt to climb - and even getting in is a dangerous undertaking, as complicated as a cross between origami and one of those sliding-tile puzzles.

The Professor and I were as sober as Presbyterians when we arrived last Saturday evening so we took in our stride the fact that they'd closed off the front door, which had made a brief reappearance when the place morphed from Rocco into its present incarnation. (Blocking it off is a 70s-vintage standard lamp with a red shade which gives a fleeting impression of an old-fashioned knocking shop).

Anyway, we walked along the side veranda which narrowed with every step (it must be a shocker after a few drinks) and, just before it became the width of a gymnast's beam, we noticed a waiter frantically gesturing through the glass of a folding door for us to retreat so he could open it without nudging us off the deck. We felt pleased to have made it to our table unscathed.

MooChowChow is where the Auckland trend began of letting top chefs loose on Asian cuisine. Chef Che Barrington has since branched out (Blue Breeze Inn and Chop Chop Noodle House in Ponsonby Central; Woodpecker Hill in Parnell) and others have followed suit - Josh Emett's Madam Woo is a recent and welcome arrival. But dinner at MooChowChow, where the main flavour is Thai though there are bits of Malaysian and Chinese too, felt like paying respect where it's due.

In my review when it opened four years ago, I described it as "bringing fine-dining technique to bear on the street-market food of Asia", though I must have pinched the phrase from some marketing tosh because no street-market hawker I've seen does beef short rib, slow-roasted pork hock and skin-on tarakihi, which are three of this place's more notable delights.

That pork hock, caramelised to a glorious chewiness and served with cucumber, and a sweetly fragrant curry of wild goat have been on the menu since day one but the rest has always been subject to change depending on the season and the availability of ingredients.

I was determined to catch up with the beef short rib, having missed out on it last time, and was deeply impressed with the treatment, which finished the braised meat on the charcoal grill and served it as a red curry with straw mushrooms and lemon grass to add texture and sharpness. The name of the "jungle" curry (based around four big tarakihi fillets) presumably constituted fair warning, but I missed it; it was fierce enough to bring tears to my eyes, and should impress the most gung-ho devotee of chilli.

Beansprouts always make me think of stern hippie women and soybean casseroles but the Professor's assessment that "there is just no way of making them palatable" was comprehensively dismantled by a salad of the things, made into a heavenly cole slaw with coriander and coconut cream. It was just the thing to cool the curry-burned mouth. Better still was a salad of wild mushrooms that touched all the bases of spicy and sour - a truly magnificent dish.

A dessert that paired lychee with ginger crunch - an idea born in dessert heaven - settled it: this is a fine place to reawaken taste buds dulled by bad pad thai.

• Dishes $7-$34

Verdict: The best Thai food in town ... and more.

Cheers

By Joelle Thomson, joellethomson.co.nz

Bay news

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An Auckland wine & food week

Celia Hay packed nine banana boxes, three children and all the wine she could fit in her car and drove from Christchurch to Auckland four years ago. She has since re-established her food and wine school in Auckland and is holding her second annual Wine and Food celebration at the NZ School of Food and Wine. It runs from September 13-15 and includes food masterclasses, wine and food walkabouts and Italian tastings. Details at event. foodandwine.co.nz