Jesse Mulligan Auckland Restaurant Review: Sa-On In Henderson Is Something Different, And Quite Exciting

From instant noodles cascading over their plastic pot, to “pink nipple milk”, this Thai restaurant is worth checking out.

I eat a lot of Northeastern Thai food because Isaan Thai on Hobson St is my emergency lunch stop. I presume everybody has a place like this near their office – you forget to bring a sandwich from home, you don’t have time to hike to the salad shop, and so you pick up your mobile phone and the takeaway menu and proceed to disgrace yourself. Not that there’s anything inherently unhealthy about Thai food, it’s just that one dish never seems quite enough but eating two makes you feel like taking a shame-nap afterwards.

So when I heard about Sa-On doing this style of cooking in Henderson, I thought I was in for more of the same: a larb here, a green papaya salad there … the difference would be that I was enjoying it in a restaurant rather than al desko.

In fact, Sa-On’s menu is something different, and quite exciting. They have those Isaan standards, of course, but they also have some signature dishes which make it really worth visiting in person. Take the Sa-On noodles, which are two-minute style, fried in a sweet soy-based sauce and heaped back into their plastic Insta-pot, the noodles spilling out over the top. Balancing on the noodles is a beef short rib bone, the meat itself having been braised to gelatinous perfection then sliced and tossed through the noodles. If that all sounds indulgent but a little nutritionally bereft I counted eight different varieties of vegetable that had been tossed into the wok as well: beans, carrots, cabbage, mushrooms, onion and more plus the absolute best thing you can find in a Thai dish: fresh green peppercorns, like a tiny bunch of grapes, tucked into the noodles as a spicy surprise gift.

The restaurant itself is nice enough to spend a couple of hours in, though you wouldn’t want to live there. It’s a long, comfortable room with a bar at the back and a door through to a bathroom area that feels more like something you’d offer a hostage than a customer. It is clean and functional, but that’s it. At the rear of the space is an external door, which we had fruitlessly knocked on earlier after taking advantage of the free parking out back. I don’t think you need flash (ie painted) bathrooms to make a restaurant great, but it does unfortunately affect the Viva scoring system, which I’ve pushed to its limits given that the service is minimal and the only wine on offer is “House”.

Back to the food, then, which is good enough for you to put aside all of the above and visit Sa-On the next time you have an opportunity. There were only two of us, but I think a table of four to six would be perfect – there are so many incredible-looking dishes, and they make it even harder by putting a Five-Star Recommendation next to about a dozen of them. Even if you order perfectly, you will go home feeling like you’ve missed out.

I went for spring rolls, snack wraps, those noodles, a soup, a curry and some rice. That in itself was a feast, but missed some key genres – grilled meat and salad among them. We took half of the food home with us and I concluded that we’d done as well as we could have on your behalf. Locals (many of whom have already discovered this place after two years in business) should feel free to get in touch and alert me to any crucial omissions.

I love a spicy-sour Tom Yum soup and this one is the best I’ve come across. Served in a metal “hot pot”, it’s served with your choice of protein (we chose pork) and, rather than the uniform coconut-milky texture you may be used to in cheaper places, this one is splotched with spicy chilli oil, with plenty of lime juice in the mix.

For chefs from a landlocked part of the world, they are unexpectedly comfortable with the fruits of the sea, and one of my favourite dishes was the seafood curry. Unlike any curry I’d come across before, it features mussels in their shell, squid rings and prawns in a thick pink sauce, which I couldn’t quite get my head around. It wasn’t a gravy, more like a sort of custard … was it silken tofu? No, egg. Emulsified with coconut milk, I think, with perhaps a little red curry paste for flavour.

There isn’t much for dessert, but you may find that a non-alcoholic cocktail or tea does the trick, arriving as it does in a sundae-style glass, with plenty of milk and sugar in the mix. I didn’t have the nerve to order the “Pink Nipple Milk” but we settled on the “Thai Milk Tea”, which was indulgent enough that we couldn’t finish it.

A sign on the wall reads “Men: no shirt, no service/ Women: no shirt, free drinks!”. I’m not sure that quite captures the vibe of the Sa-On experience, but it does say something about the quirky nature of the restaurant. And, quirky or not, you’ll struggle to find better Thai food in New Zealand.

Sa-On

Cuisine: Thai

Address: 401 Great North Rd, Henderson

Drinks: Fully licensed

From the menu: spring rolls $12.99, roasted prawn $16.99, Sa-On noodles $32.99, Tom Yum (pork) $23.99, seafood curry $30.99

Rating: 15/20

Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good, give it a go. 16-18 Great, plan a visit. 19-20 Outstanding, don’t delay.

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