Jul 31, 2024 Restaurants
My journey across the Harbour Bridge to Ariana one Wednesday evening recently was steeped in mystery. The only evidence I had that the location I was driving to was anything more than an abandoned event space was from TikTok: specifically, two short videos raving about the Afghan food being served by the seaside in Northcote Point at a place called Ariana. Supposedly the restaurant had been open for almost two weeks before I visited, but apart from those TikToks, Ariana had zero internet presence — not even a Google profile. I wanted to believe this place actually existed, but I was sceptical. I’d mentally prepared myself for the possibility of having to retreat back across the bridge to heat up leftovers instead.
With its awkward location and grand scale, The Wharf at Northcote Point is a surprising place to find a cuisine I’d deem rarefied in Auckland’s dining context. (The city has just one other dedicated Afghan restaurant currently, Kabul House in Mt Roskill.) The building, initially called Fisherman’s Wharf, was built on the site of an existing pier by mid-century restaurateur Bob Sell and began its life as a marine-themed restaurant. Despite those sparkly panoramic views of the Waitematā, the building has been plagued over its 53-year history by a series of misfortunes: unsuccessful ventures, bankrupt owners, relentless changeovers, periods of being run into disrepair, and swirling rumours that the space is haunted, cursed even. Speaking of cursed, infomercial superstar Suzanne Paul took over the building in April 2004 to open a controversial tourist venture called Rawaka, a Māori village that involved, among other activities, a three-hour hāngi dinner and “a Māori combat display” — thankfully, this only survived three months. From 2007 the building operated as The Wharf, an events venue — until the 2021 Auckland lockdown sparked yet another upheaval and it was put on the market again last year.
To get there, you drive all the way down Queen St (the Northcote one), past many, many sleekly refurbished villas, till you reach the water’s edge. When I finally pulled up in front of the mammoth, window-heavy building, almost in the shadow of bridge’s pillars at Tōtaratahi Stokes Point, I sighted an open door, a menu stand parked outside and the name I was looking for, Ariana. Relief.
You enter the restaurant through a curved entrance way and then head up a flight of stairs — this was a slightly ominous first impression, I have to admit, because the space was empty and quiet, but all the eeriness dissipated upon the first detection of wafting spices in the air. The space you actually eat in — rather than the oft-photographed glitzy terraced dining hall — is a slightly more casual semi-circle space still populated by the traces of events past: tables with black tablecloths and fabric-covered banquet chairs. It’s a shame in some ways that the restaurant isn’t on the side of the building which looks out entirely to the water, but it’s still a pretty spectacular view.
The menu, not exclusively Afghan, includes a mix of dishes that whakapapa to countries nearby: next-door neighbour Iran, almost-neighbour Lebanon and distant-neighbour Greece. The list of mains is separated into pages based on where the dishes originate. There’s also a page of mezze, which leans heavily Levantine — with specialties like baba ghanoush, dolma, moutobal and hummus; plus a page of salads, which goes thoroughly international — garden salad, Greek salad, Caesar, tabbouleh, fattoush. While Afghan food is often headier and bolder than most cuisines of the Middle East — more generous with spices like chilli and coriander and cumin — because of historical links and geographical proximity there are similarities aplenty (especially with the specialties of Iran and Lebanon), enough for the dishes to feel cohesive when brought together like this. Despite the variety on offer, the operators of Ariana seem keen to emphasise the restaurant’s Afghan identity, describing what they offer as “Afghanistan and Middle Eastern cuisine” on the menu’s front page.
When it came to ordering mains, it felt correct to stick with the Afghan section of the menu — that’s what had tempted me across the bridge, after all. I ordered the qabuli palaw with lamb shank; a traditionally festive dish which arrived as a pile of rice, flecked with raisins, almonds and pistachios — all delightfully plump with spices and oil. On top sat chunks of lamb (disappointingly, without the shank), presumably cooked in the rice, and a kind of scraggly garland of ultra-sweet caramelised onion strands. This was really good, but the plate of mantu was even better. Mantu are Afghan dumplings, and here they arrived as a set of seven substantial (about three bites in each one) steamed-dough parcels filled with beef and minced onions, doused with seer moss, a type of garlic yoghurt made from a strained salted yoghurt called chaka. The gaps between each mantu provided space for little pools of spiced red split peas tempered in tomato — there was a real thrill to the slick oiliness of this mingling with the garlicky bite of the yoghurt.
I decided to opt for hummus and fattoush salad, too (both more Levantine than Afghan). The fattoush was a medley of iceberg, cucumber, tomato, tri-coloured capsicum, and both red and brown onion, with crispy scraps of fried pita on top. I questioned the point of having a garden green salad on the menu as well — why bother, when you have this vibrant little salad? The hummus, almost buttery in texture and pungently green-tasting thanks to the olive oil, was one of the best I’ve ever had.
While I ate, there were three front-of-house staff on the floor but, despite the sizeable room, just three tables worth of diners: myself (alone, because my dinner date bailed last minute), a group of four and a group of three (including one baby). By the time I left there was just one solo diner.
There’s always something a little unnerving about a quiet restaurant, especially one in a building as large and with as many empty rooms as this one. And with food this good, this is a restaurant that should be busier. The lack of online presence can’t be helping, nor can the fact that Ariana opened during the fasting period of Ramadan. (I left before sunset so perhaps there was a later iftar wave that I missed.) Still, despite the quiet, the food was good enough to transcend any real uneasiness. It left me thinking that if there’s anything that can lift this building’s misfortune, it’s got to be good food: these bowls of fragrant spiced rice, mantu, multi-hued salads and silky hummus might just do the trick.
Ariana ***
The Wharf, 2 Queen St, Northcote Point
09 480 2590
Hours
Tues–Sun, 5–10pm
Dinner Bill
Sides, mezze and salads $3.90–$19.90
Mains $19.90–$59.90
Mixed platters (serves 2–3 people) $79.90–$99.90
