Oct 21, 2022 Metro Eats
Hi all,
Last night I went to eat at Spicy Potato Noodles, a small restaurant across from the Dominion Rd Countdown. I’d never had potato noodles before, so the texture was a complete surprise to me. Made with potato starch, they look like normal flour noodles but are intensely chewy, with this long-lasting mouthfeel that forces you to live with it a bit longer than a regular noodle. The $11 bowl included tofu strips, pak choi, pork lard, and two little quail eggs in a mala soup. Two bowls between me and a friend came to $23, and I found myself thinking, fuck, how do they do this? And should they have to?
In the next issue of Metro, we’re once again doing our Top 50 under $25 feature, renamed Metro Eats for reasons you can read about here. (By the way, I’m not about to police you if you call it cheap eats in casual conversation, ha, but I feel like there is something important in reframing the language in an official sense.) We also did it because it creates a more distinct relationship between what we’re doing in the magazine, and what we’re doing here, on a weekly(ish) basis.
Every year, I look at our ever-growing spreadsheet of restaurants you can eat at in Auckland under $25 and get immensely overwhelmed, with a nagging sense that we’re missing so many great places.
This year, I’ve created a survey that I’d love for you to fill out, if you have some time, which lets Metro Eats readers have their say on what the best ramen is, or what the best place to get fried chicken is – and let me know about a restaurant that you think gets overlooked, or one that we never include and should definitely include. You can answer as many, or as few, questions as you want – if all you want to do is send me the name of a restaurant we should check out, then you can do that, and it’d be extremely helpful and appreciated. All submissions are anonymous.
Take me to the Metro Eats! survey.
Thank you for your help – if you’d like to email me directly, you are also welcome to do that.
I’m flying off to Sydney soon and so there will be no Metro Eats for the next couple of weeks (it is not a media trip, so suggestions for things to do are welcome). I will be eating and drinking coffee and maybe climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge, who knows?
— Jean
P.S. Hi, I know that I’ve already asked you guys to do one thing for me, but I’m also going to ask you to do another thing. My friend and I are making ice cream this summer, possibly to sell (on a small scale, via Instagram) and we’re experimenting with flavours at the moment. If you have a flavour idea, send it through here. The weirder the better.
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What’s Happening
AF x Lucky Taco
There is a Diwali dinner at Homeland next week, Thursday 27 October, celebrating the festival of lights with good kai and good company. There might be pāua pani puri, goat curry, cauliflower 65 and more. Tickets are $145pp.
Candela / Barcita is teaming up with Australian winemakers Unico Zelo for a Sunday Spritz party on Sunday 30 October, with Cubanos, chimichurri fries, and glasses of Unico wines, vermouths and cocktails.
The Modern Preserver returns to Annabel’s, for pickled plates paired with Amoise Wines, on 29 October. Seatings at 5pm and 7.30pm.
I think I said nearly the exact same thing last year (are we doomed to repeat over and over till we die?), but the impending summer means new drink releases, some of which have come across my desk in some form lately, including…
– the new AF drinks x Lucky Taco collab, in the form of a Grapefruit Margarita drink (alcohol-free ofc, with the Lucky Taco smoked chilli salt included in every case); a new kombucha-forward RTD, from the people behind Good Buzz, called Quite Good. I find the lime vodka one quite good; and the Batched x Stolen Girlfriend’s Club collab, a limited edition espresso martini which is designed to be shaken up with ice and poured into its special-design martini glass.
What’s Good
I loved our little class trip to Cielito Lindo , the Mexican place in Henderson, after a failed and cursed jaunt to Costco. I’m always a fan of the sopes, with the fried masa base, and the pork tacos, where the red oil drips down your hands and splatters straight onto your pants.
I went to Cotto for the first time in a while a few nights ago after my friend said they had a craving for the spinach dumplings. The dumplings were, as expected, tasty and salty, with that cheesy moreishness that do make them so craveable; I also really enjoyed the burrata with smoked tomato.
I was gifted a Home Spice dinner last week, which is a home delivery service that serves up a ready-to-heat meal for two (or more) people to your door once a week. Housed in reusable dabba tins (or you may know them as tiffins), the meals include a chutney, dal, curry and rice; you then leave the tin out on the doorstep to be taken away and replaced with a new meal. I had a urad (white lentil) dal, a pumpkin curry and pickled chili chutney. It was very satisfying and wholesome – the kind of thing I would assume you’d come home after work and be grateful you could just pop into the oven (or microwave if you’re short on time) and not think about, or make any decisions about (you don’t even have to scroll on UberEats).
I had a solo lunch at Bon Ga Ne the other day, which is near the intersection of Upper Queen St and Queen St. I had the spicy pork belly and squid, which was a good verison of what I expected it to taste like. Furthermore, it was really, truly solo, as I sat on a table that faced straight into the side of the fridge and only had one chair. Better living, solo diners.
My parents were in the area yesterday for lunch, and since they are quite influenced by other people saying something is good, we went to Sri Pinang. (Sri Pinang was recently named in the Conde Nast Traveler magazine as one of the best restaurants in the world; I truly didn’t even know they made their own roti canai in house.) I tried something different this time and got the Claypot Chicken Rice, generally something I enjoy because a) it’s hard to find in Auckland and b) it’s rice.
I went to the Saturdays series at the Flight Coffee HQ on Dom Rd last weekend and had some of that Cinco Sangria Rum (a collab between Honest and Unkel Wines) mixed with lemonade and it was very delicious. I had two.
What’s New
A new coffee and bagel spot is going in next to the Okra Espresso Lounge in Sandringham. It’s called Everyday, which I tried to find on Instagram but was unsuccessful, due to a lot of things being called Everyday.
There’s something opening up on K Rd, near Daily Daily and the old laundromat, called Roses. A dining room. Not necessarily a restaurant, or so I’m told. Coming soon.
