Restaurant Round-up

A ye ar o f di n i n gin-house and at home

Kim Knight highlights the memorable moments in a year of interrupted eating

Two hours after lunch, my bowels clenched. Inside my gut, a game of ping-pong was at fever pitch. Something had to give.

There are three women’s bathrooms in my downtown office building and I laid waste to them all. These are the moments restaurant critics don’t talk about.

My stomach is a cast-iron cauldron but autumn’s Auckland restaurant vegetable du jour pushed it to breaking. On menus, the culprit appeared benignly as “earth apples” and “sunchokes”. The one thing I wish I’d known before I ate an entire dish of roasted jerusalem artichokes for lunch? That they are also called “fartichokes”.

The nutty, knobbly root vegetable with a pleasingly chewy skin and creamy interior contains inulin — a nondigestible carbohydrate, fermented by our gut bacteria. Not everybody’s digestion will react as drastically as mine. Soaking, peeling or slow baking can all apparently mitigate the flatulent effect — but consider yourself warned: jerusalem artichokes are an easy-to-grow perennial and, as restaurants expand their vegetarian repertoires, I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them. Top tip for 2022 date nights: approach the artichoke with caution.

Regular restaurant reviewing was interrupted this year. Figures for the calendar year are not yet in but the Restaurant Association reports that for the financial year ending March 31, Auckland sales were down $656.3 million, or around 13.6 per cent. Those numbers don’t take into account the city’s recent long lockdown. In total, Covid restrictions cost Auckland’s sit-down dining establishments 17 weeks (around 33 per cent) of businessas-usual. Two long-standing and high-end big names permanently closed their doors — RIP O’Connell St Bistro and Euro. Saxon + Parole (Commercial Bay’s glitzy steak-centric import from New York) also shuttered, blaming Covid-related border closures. The biggest Auckland food trend this year? Breakfast, lunch and dinner at home.

But this is not a story about how much cheese we put on our toast (answer: a lot). For eight heady months, Aucklanders let rip with their credit cards. Overseas travel was off, and the extra bottle of Bolly was on. What was on the city’s menus in 2021? Here are seven of the most memorable trends ...

3SAY CHEESECAKE

Specifically, Burnt Basque Cheesecake. It popped up on cheffy Instagrams during the first phase of the pandemic and made it on to multiple Auckland menus this year. The recipe is simple, but this is a pudding best left in the hands of experts accustomed to dealing with death-defying quantities of cream cheese and actual cream. It is the haggis of puddings. Tastes amazing but you really don’t want to know what goes into it. Get your by-the-slice fix at Esther, Candela and countless daytime cafes.

1PAUA TO THE PEOPLE You grow up with paua and then you leave home and never eat it again. Until this year. Homeland put paua on toast. Depot put it in a pie. Mr Morris sliced it thin and served it with okra, baby corn and Korean rice sticks. Ahi’s had a hint of hangi smoke. Onemata (in the new five-star Park Hyatt) served paua in a miso butter-soaked risotto. Suppliers told me prices had come down, but also perhaps a pandemic-weary public was ready for a little luxury. Recently, ahead of Auckland restaurants reopening under red traffic light Covid settings, I asked chefs to nominate some favourite dishes from their newest menus. Early signs point to crayfish being this summer’s paua. How on earth will we cope?

2BITE YOUR TONGUE BITE YOUR TONGUE

The first thing you need The first thing you need to know about ox tongue is that it might ox tongue is that it might actually be beef tongue. On the farm, oxen are a very specific kindtongue. On the farm, oxen are a of castrated and domesticated animal. of castrated and domes In the kitchen, the language is less In the kitchen, the specific. The other thing about specific. The ot this organ this organ mea m t darling? It’s delicious. delicious. I couldn’t get enough of the ox tongueenough of souvlaki at Daphnes Bar souvlaki a Taverna,Taverna, all thin-cut a and skewered and scorched crispy skewered and on the edges. From souvlaki toon the edges. Fr the tacos at Mexico to the lamb’sthe tacos at Mex tongue at Onslow and on to the bravesttongue at Onslow and iteration of them all. Alma diditeration of them all. Alma not attempt to hide the nature of the beast. The to hide the nature of the beas Spanish newcomer went full tongue newcomer went full tongue — a — giant slab, studded with dozens of tiny slices of green olive. Everything offal is eventually new again and, this year, Auckland enjoyed a civil tongue. 4ROUND FOOD Find your centre. Donut worry. Many people spent this year glazed and confused, when every second cafe seemed to specialise in doughnuts. Meanwhile, in the round foodadjacent universe, two new and much more interesting stars: Pani popo — aka Samoan coconut buns — got a delicious fine dining makeover at Mr Morris. Across town, Bar Magda’s albondigas — aka meatballs — combined duck and pork, with a velvety liquorice-spiked sauce that I still think about sometimes.

5A WHOLE LOTTA LAMB

In level 3, we killed the fatted lamb. I don’t know what vegetarians ate when restaurants on’t ants opened for takeout, because every menu I looked at featured slow-baked hunks of our national protein. Hello Beasty’s red chilli and Szechuan sauce-soaked shoulders scored high social media praise but my taste buds were blown by Cotto’s lamb ribs with honey and balsamic. It was my first restaurantcooked takeaway and it invoked the sense of physical amazingness you feel the day after a hangover. Anything is possible. Everything is going to be okay. (Postscript: when we asked chefs for their summer menu picks, lamb was the mostlauded land-based protein — one of the prettiest was Andiamo’s, pictured here.) ked at otein. oaked my ith hefs mostst was

6EVERYTHING ITALIAN When the chips are down, humans eat ... chips. Or, at least, carbs. Hospitality operators read the room and many of Auckland’s recent openings have been built on a foundation of pasta and pizza dough (take a bow Spiga and, also, East St Hall for a tasty post-lockdown pivot). Italian was the flavour of the year. One of my favourite experiences was at Pici, the tiny eatery that scored a food trend double — its citrus cheesecake with olive oil and salt was like lying on a fresh-cut lawn under a lemon tree on a very hot day. And if you still haven’t managed to score a booking at Ada, keep trying. I don’t think they could serve a bad meal if they tried. 7MOCK MEAT There’s nothing new about the rise and rise of meat-free meals (see: artichokes). But in November, the big guns landed. California-based Impossible Foods launched its beef into restaurants in Auckland, Mount Maunganui and Christchurch. The plantbased “meat”, which many consumers claim cooks, looks and tastes like the real thing, is being used in burgers, chawarma, lasagne and kofte at the likes of Burger Burger, Fatimas and Waiheke Island’s Vino Vino. (If pork belly and seafood are more your faux-thing, head to Ponsonby’s Khu Khu for a mock meat meal that is so visually meaty, you may want to leave bona fide vegetarians at home.)

THE HUNGRY GAMES: The Leftovers

1 What food tops New Zealand’s food waste charts? a Lettuce b Bread c Bananas d Cooked rice

2 “Bubble and squeak” uses leftover what? a Potato and cabbage b Cabbage and mince c Mince and potato d Ham and turkey

3 What salad uses up stale pita? a Ful medames b Fattoush c Balela d Tabbouleh

4 Where did arancini (made from cooked risotto rice) originate? a Tuscany b Umbria c Sicily d Piedmont

5 Which word means “a warmed-up dish of food”? a Revivre b Relancer c Repeter d Rechauffe

6 When is the best time to eat trifle? a Christmas Eve supper b Christmas Day lunch c Boxing Day breakfast d Any of the above and also tomorrow

Created and compiled by Kim Knight ANSWERS: 1b, 2a, 3b, 4c, 5d, 6d

S AL E O N N O W

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