Apr 11, 2025 Metro Eats
Kia ora,
Excuse the lack of a newsletter dispatch last week — I took some time off to catch up on my studies. For that reason, I spent much of last week at home, practically tethered to my home desk (okay, dining table), typing away with my Pomodoro timer ticking ominously in the background. It was, admittedly, quite a dull week, but the monotony of it all only seemed to imbue the food I ate with more colour, more comfort, more cheer.
I settled into a consoling rhythm of ‘meal prepping’ in between the bursts of study: letting a great big pot of minestrone made from the myriad vegetables lamenting in our crisper drawer bubble away while I worked. For uncomplicated lunches, I made a dhal, which I froze in portions, and a pumpkin and sage quiche. For breakfast, I’d boil two eggs at a time: one for that day, the other for the next. I like this kind of gentle, generous meal prepping, which feels more like an act of self-care than a form of efficient productivity. I also rediscovered my love of afternoon tea: a 2.30pm milky tea and biscuit squeezed in between one of the endless rounds of my Pomodoro timer became the highlight of my solitary days.
Sometimes I feel that the more I write about food, the more my eating of it is mediated and intellectualised. The more I consume it for content, ingest it on other peoples’ behalf, the less connected I am to its simple visceral pleasures. A week at home, cooking and eating just for me, in my quiet little world of study might have been the refresh I needed to reacquaint myself with the inherent joy of food — although, now I’ve gone and turned it into newsletter fodder. Nothing is sacred!
Hei konā mai,
Charlotte
—-
Comings and goings.
I have high hopes for Lai Fu, a new all-day eatery on Dominion Rd (right next to La Voie Française) that’s open from breakfast till dinner time. From what I’ve seen online, it’s self-service style whereby you take a tray, pick what you want from their selection of pastries, dim sum, braised dishes, hot dishes, cold dishes and more, and then pay. I’ve pencilled in plans to visit this weekend, so will report back.
*
BISTRO SAINE, a new French-inspired eatery, opened last week on Albert St. The menu is presided over by Executive Chef Yutak Son (ex Orphans Kitchen , Sidart , Black Estate, Te Motu and Daily Bread ) and looks to be French bistro meets the Mediterranean meets New York — think, steak frites, octopus salad and cheeseburgers.
*
VIE COFFEE AND VIETNAMESE STREET FOOD on Shortland St have just opened a sister cafe on Courthouse Lane called Vie Vietnamese Cuisine and Desserts — and I have high hopes. I’m yet to visit and haven’t been able to track down a menu, but I’m very excited about their focus on chè — sweet dessert soups and puddings which they serve here in a whole heap of varieties. Also, in the photos of their dishes that I’ve glimpsed online, I’ve spotted herbs like Thai basil and mint — which is somewhat of a rarity in this city’s Vietnamese dining scene. While they’re not the great big leafy piles of foliage you find in Vietnamese restaurants overseas, they’re herbs nonetheless, and I was happy to see them.
*
I find myself sort of perplexed, but also amazed, by the concept behind the newly opened REUNION BBQ and Cafe in Newmarket. By day, the spacious and industrial-styled eatery serves French-style pastries and coffee, and has a brunch menu. But come evening the focus shifts, to a bar and accompanying barbecue menu. Though the barbecue seems to be repetitively described as ‘Chinese-style’ in a lot of write-ups online, I have to say, it looks very much like a Korean-style barbecue to me.
*
There’s a new tea-focused shop on Victoria St East called CHARLIE’S TEA. My understanding (tea-shop experts please correct me if I’m wrong) is that the brand originated in China and has since expanded to stores globally. The menu encompasses fresh milk foam teas, cream-topped teas, pearl milk tea and, at the simplest end of the spectrum, pure tea. They’re open 10am–10pm, every day of the week.
*
Change is afoot in Kingsland. First, there’s a new restaurant called Kingsland BBQ Cafe in Mekong Neua’s old site — it’s serving mostly Cantonese food (predominantly roast meats and claypot dishes). Interestingly, there’s just one shop (a vape shop, naturally) between them and stalwart Cantonese BYO Canton Cafe. Meanwhile, just across the road from the competing Cantonese cafes, Jamaican eatery NANNY’S announced last week that they’ll be closing up, though when exactly that will be remains undetermined. Oh, and both the late-night dessert spot Elisabeth and RnB-centric Groove Bar are listed for sale online.
*
Last November the Sandringham cafe VOILÀ closed after at least 10 years of operating at the site. Sad! The good news is that they’ve now found a new home on Mt Eden Rd. Even better, the crêpes are still very much on the menu.
*
We’ve long felt that some of the best pizza in the entire city is found in Grey Lynn at THE MASTER & MARGHERITA, so North Shore inhabitants will be over the moon to hear that they’ve just opened an offshoot in Birkenhead. While the Grey Lynn branch is a slip of a space and largely takeaway focused, the new branch looks more geared toward dining in, with a larger dining area, and what looks like a vast bar section. The pizza looks much the same, though: sublime.
*
Sid and Chand Sahrawat’s restaurant Kol , which is located in the cursed two-storey building on Ponsonby Rd and featured on our Top 50 restaurant list last year, has announced that it will be closing next month. The restaurant’s last service will be on Sunday 11 May, after which the space will be transformed into a “hospitality incubator” concept called KOL/LAB. According to the announcement, the incubator will be open to hospitality professionals, who can apply to take over the space, with “no lease commitment”. Also included is use of the fit-out and chattels, plus “mentorship from Sid and Chand Sahrawat and support from the Restaurant Association”. Head to their WEBSITE for more details.
*
And just a few blocks away on Ponsonby Rd, another closure: Manis Bakery, best known for their aesthetically pleasing Balinese-inflected pastries, announced last month that it was finishing up. For those in need of a pastry fix, their sister bakery, Mill Bakery in Henderson, does endure.
*
More chaotically, Newsroom has reported on the tumult surrounding James Tucker, the director behind restaurants like Mad Mex, Downlow Burger, Kohi Beach Eatery and Habitual Fix. It is essentially a story of liquidated companies, with young workers filing claims for unpaid wages and holiday pay — but you should read the full piece HERE.
—–
Islay via Aoteroa
Metro x Laphroaig
—–
Where we’re going.
Head to Coffee Pen tomorrow (Saturday 12 April) between 9am and 2pm for Little Crossroads. The collaboration between Coffee Pen and Noa Records will include Māori, Pasifika and Japanese creatives (including Brett Graham, Thea Ceramics, Cora-Allan, Courtney Sina Meredith, Janet Lilo, Ao Cacao, Serene Hodgman, Lucky Dip, Misma Anaru, Whatu Creative, Sina Leo, Yuri Nagashima, Onta Yaki, Shoichi Kudo) and performances by Noa Records, plus kai by Coffee Pen. For more information head to their WEBSITE.
*
It might be early enough into feijoa season for the green ovoids to still feel like a novelty. But as happens every year, there will inevitably come a time when the thought of a feijoa crumble fills you with dread, when you’ve exhausted your networks of friends, colleagues and whānau who will take some of your glut, and when the fruit starts to pile up — either languishing in your bowl or rotting in your garden. When that day comes, consider donating your feijoas to FAIR FOOD, a West Auckland-based food rescue charity that distributes fresh ingredients to prepare meals for 1,700 people daily — they never tire of feijoas (or any other excess produce you might have, for that matter). You can drop off your bounty at their hub in Avondale. And if you have not only feijoas but some spare time as well, why not volunteer?
*
OPEN COFFEE on Karangahape Rd is celebrating Record Store Day with DJs, records (obviously) and a barbecue from 10am to 4pm tomorrow (Saturday 12 April).
*
Esther ’s High Tea is back. Every Saturday from noon til 4pm enjoy a smorgasbord of snacks, including king crab in a condensed-milk bun, green deviled eggs, tiger prawns and spiced lamb hand pies. There’s a French-inspired dessert trolley too, piled with cakes disguised as fluorescent Santorini lemons, dishes of tiramisu, and Portuguese tarts. BOOKINGS start at $99 per person, and include an arrival cocktail.
