Iconic Auckland Eats 2026: Depot Slider Makes Top 100 For Sixth Year

What dishes define Auckland? The city’s 100 most iconic eats have just been named. Chef Al Brown shares the story behind one of the most loved – the Depot fish slider.

Al Brown never set out to make a baby fish burger his signature dish but, 40 years after he ordered his first slider at a Boston sports bar, his version is an Auckland culinary icon.

Depot’s fish sliders join the raspberry lamingtons from Sugar at Chelsea Bay as the only two dishes to have made every Iconic Auckland Eats Top 100 list.

The event, organised by Tātaki Auckland Unlimited in partnership with Restaurant Hub, recognises dishes rather than restaurants.

This year’s Top 100, announced today, included 79 brand new entries – from the likes of Persian koobideh at Akdeniz in Devonport to the pāua and palasami vol au vent at downtown’s Trivet, and snapper and chips at Otahuhu Fisheries.

And while there are high-end contenders (think 1kg of bone-in ribeye at Milenta, macaroni cheese at Soul Bar & Bistro or Advieh’s crispy scampi and crayfish kataifi) around two-thirds sit in the low to mid-price range.

Three judges selected the Top 100 (scroll down for the complete list) from more than 2400 public nominations.

Brown said he was “absolutely thrilled” the Depot slider – a soft white bun filled with snapper, preserved lemon mayo and watercress – was making its sixth appearance.

Federal St’s Depot was the first New Zealand restaurant to put sliders on the menu. While the concept of a baby burger was not new, the word “slider” was. Brown remembers encountering it in the late 1980s when he was studying in the United States.

“I was on a break in Boston and I remember asking the guy behind the bar, ‘what’s a slider?’ I had my journal and I wrote it down. I thought ‘what a cool little name’.”

In 2011, when Brown opened Depot with chef Kyle Street (who went on to open Culprit), the pair worked with Loaf founder Sean Armstrong to develop the perfect slider bun.

“It could go to the moon for five years and come back and it would still have plenty of sponge in it,” Brown says.

“I always joke that essentially, all we’re tapping into are the people who love McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish. It’s the same thing, really, executed with really good ingredients. People love a butty and, essentially, it’s a butty.”

He thinks the popularity of the slider – like the lamington – reflects people’s love of food that invokes nostalgia.

“If someone said ‘you’re at the church hall, name six dishes on the bring-a-plate table?’ Nearly everyone will throw in a lamington. There were always lamingtons and they were always one of the first to go.”

“I was always in the red camp! I haven’t had the Chelsea cafe one, but I presume it’s bloody great.”

The final dishes in this year’s Top 100 were determined by judges Karen Thompson-Smith (Tātaki’s head of tourism), hospitality industry legend and The Kitchen Project manager Connie Clarkson, and Restaurant Hub’s Mark Gregory.

Nomination stories ranged from the superfans – people who had eaten 20-plus pork and jalapeno sausage rolls at Ashby Pies or more than 300 meals at Ramen Takara – to those who said the quality of their weekends was “inextricably tied” to whether they made it to Carmel – Israeli Street Food for a falafel pita.

One respondent said Giapo’s waffle scent was a “time machine” back to their childhood and another noted their dad always bought four BBQ pork buns from Māngere Bridge’s Hong Kong Bakery, “one for himself, one for my mum and two more for him to eat in secret on his way home”. The person who nominated Soul Bar & Bistro’s macaroni cheese said it was their family’s celebratory go-to (“my daughter has been ordering it since she was a toddler”) and another said they’d walked 50 minutes in a thunderstorm for the “man bun” at Waiheke’s Too Fat Buns.

Annie Dundas, Tātaki’s director destination, said the dishes that made the Top 100 carried memory and meaning.

“Food is also one of the most powerful ways we share Auckland with the world ... this list offers an authentic snapshot of the dishes Aucklanders genuinely love.”

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