Editorial: New eateries mirror city's modern face

Zealong Tea Estate offers a selection of premium Chinese tea from its farm to accompany fusion meals. Photo / Christine Cornege

Opinion

Entrepreneurship and diversity that immigrants bring reflected in ventures

Over the past week, the Herald has run a series called "Far-out food". It has showcased a number of dining places whose unique fare is matched often by their unusual location.

Thus there has been a teahouse on the Zealong Tea Estate just north of Hamilton, and a Korean buffet restaurant at a remote apple orchard in Drury. More prosaically sited but losing nothing in popularity are the night markets that have sprung up in shopping mall carparks throughout Auckland.

All these eateries share much in common. First, they were all leaps of faith. Night markets started at Westfield Pakuranga in 2010 as an experiment in providing hundreds of relatively cheap food options. The financial outlay was modest. Such, however, was certainly not the case with the Waikato teahouse, which is the fruit of a $10 million investment.

There would surely have been plenty of scepticism about such a venture. And about setting up a Korean restaurant in an out-of-the-way rural setting.

Each place also says something about the modern face of Auckland, not least its diversity and the entrepreneurship that immigrants bring to the city. The reward for each of the eateries' developers has been their immense popularity.

Thousands pack each night market, while longish drives out of the city have proved no deterrent in the case of the other enterprises.

The reward for Aucklanders is an array of eateries wide enough in nature to satisfy even the most adventurous of diners.