The setting was similar in style to L'ouef, with long wooden benches, palms, and what looked like giant cocktail umbrellas, but with more than twice the space for seating.
Plenty of space at Kiss Kiss.
The service was standard, friendly and laidback. We were asked where we wanted to sit, given drinks and menus to start, and checked on at regular intervals.
Flat white at a table outside.
What we ate included:
Bangkok filled roll with pickled vegetables and crushed peanuts ($12.50 + extra fried egg $2.50) - this was fresh and beautifully crispy at the edges, and the egg yolk was still oozy. The tanginess of the pickled carrot and daikon sticks (in the salad served on the side) nicely offset the butteriness of the bun with mayo.
Bangkok filled roll with fried egg.
Fragrant crispy rice salad, served with herbs and homemade Northern Thai sausage ($18.90) - spicy and refreshing, the flavours were as vibrant as the colours of this dish. I thought the crispy rice might be puffed rice, but they were more like arancini that have been deep fried multiple times. Yes, please.
Crispy rice salad.
Overall, these guys clearly know what they are doing. We came in with high expectations, and were not disappointed. The dishes we tried not only looked pretty, but tasted delightful. Check this place out and bring some colour into your life too.
Counter food is also available.
Restaurant Details
Kiss Kiss
1 Rocklands Avenue, Balmoral, Auckland
(09) 600 3076
Now that the cold weather is truly upon us, I often have a craving for something hot and soupy. And if you want to connect with family and friends rather than hibernating for winter, there is no better meal to have than a Chinese steamboat experience.
Chinese steamboat.
It ticks all the boxes really. Also known as a hot pot, a steamboat meal starts with a large simmering pot of stock in the middle of the table, and you cook your food in it yourselves. You are allowed to be loud and raucous, the young ones can play with their food, the grandparents can warm their achy bones and boil their portions to mush so they don't need to chew, and everyone gets to pick and choose, not only what they put into the soup base for cooking, but also how long it is cooked for, and with what sauces it is flavoured afterwards. It is conducive to conversation, because everyone is interacting constantly, with food arriving at the table, being dropped into the pot, and being scooped out again, being passed around, dipped in sauce, eaten. You can revel in a hive of activity.
There are plenty of steamboat restaurants in Auckland, but the one we have been going to is Golden Steamboat, upstairs in the middle of that strip of restaurants on Dominion Road in Balmoral. You want to go with a group of people, because that all-important pot of stock is going to set you back about $20 already. After that, though, it is all too easy to keep adding to your order, with a plate of meat balls for $4, meat slices for $6 - $8, vegetables for around $3, herbs and bowls of dipping sauces for $1 or $2, and cooked food like fried dumplings for $7.
There are a good number of soup bases to choose from, and you can also have half-and-half, which we like to do, to cater for spice lovers and heat-avoiders alike, or meat-eaters and vegetarians, as the situation arises. The vegetarian mushroom soup base seems to hold a special status. If you order this for your stockpot, a staff member will ladle out a bowl for each person at the table as an appetiser. And it makes sense too, to savour these beautiful fresh mushrooms before their delicate flavour is submerged in everything else you throw into the pot.
Mushroom soup base, served before the stock is polluted with other food.
Then the frenzy begins! One by one, your orders come out, until there is no space left at the table. The staff will refill your pot when the liquid begins to run low, but otherwise, you are now in charge of your own dinner.
Prawn paste and beef slices, on the side as there was no room on the main table.
Fresh whole fish, and various sauces.
Wheat glutem balls.
I like to drink the soup from the pot, but if you are still thirsty, there is not only Chinese beer and wine available, but also a wide variety of fresh juices (diluted with water, the way I like it). For $5 - $8, you can have not just a glass, but a whole jug!
Kiwifruit, grapefruit and pomegranate juices.
The food at Golden Steamboat is fresh and varied, and it's great fun to have a hands-on dining experience. With nearly everything simply simmered, it is both healthy and very reasonably priced, and your meal is never cold!
Panda Recommends
The important thing here is variety. Don't get three different types of meat balls; try to order something from each section. The exception is the vermicelli. You will probably be too full to eat any starch, and you can always order the noodles afterwards if you find you are still hungry.
Vegie Pandas
Who would have thought you can safely share a meal with friends without ordering something just for yourself? Here, you can have half a pot of the mushroom soup base, and cook in it any number of things, including six different types of tofu, four varieties of mushroom, and an assortment of Chinese vegies, from lotus root to tong ho (if you have not had garland chrysanthemum before, be aware it has a pungent flavour). Warning: Do not eat the Golden Steamboat Special Sauce—it has meat in it. And the mushroom dumplings in the meatballs section is there for a reason—it is basically a fish ball with a mushroom filling.
Northern style Chinese dumplings seem to be all the rage these days. And notwithstanding Al Brown's endorsement of Barilla Dumpling on Dominion Road, one of the places where people get their fill is another little eatery down the road called New Flavour. Since Natalie Smith wrote about the place on the Eat Here Now website nearly two years ago, a number of other bloggers have picked up the cry, including Her Worldy Pleasures, Andrea at Dlish, and Nessie at Baking Equals Love. Even the vegans love the place. Not surprisingly, if you turn up at dinner time, chances are now pretty slim that you will find a seat without waiting. The fact that the eatery was shut down earlier this year after receiving an E food grade rating (it has since cleaned up its act and is now rated A) didn't diminish people's enthusiasm at all.
The other bloggers have done a great job of raving about the dumplings, handmade ("manual") noodles and vegetables at New Flavour already, so I won't carry on about the savoury dishes you can have there. What I would like to share is a sweet snack I have not seen at many other places in Auckland: apple fritters coated in hot toffee (拔絲蘋果/拔丝苹果), served with a sprinkling of sesame seeds and a bowl of water so you can cool the molten sugar, turning it hard and crispy.
Apple in hot toffee
Unlike the Western toffee apples on a stick, you don't need to strain your jaw trying to eat this dish. You do, however, need to eat quickly, savouring the warm, soft interior and the sweet, crunchy exterior of each mouthful, before the toffee coating the battered apple pieces loses its heat and sticks onto the plate in one giant clump.
New Flavour also offers banana and kumara chunks in hot toffee, the latter simply deep-fried without a batter, but we prefer the candied apple, because we are usually so full by the time we get to dessert that we find it difficult to handle the thought of something as heavy as sweet potato. These other options are delicious too though.
Kumara in hot toffee
If you want to try making this at home, there are a bunch of recipes online:
But I'd rather enjoy myself and leave it to the experts.
Panda Recommends
New Flavour has a very large menu, and we have yet to try even half the items in it. Mains: dumplings, noodles and vegetables Dessert: apple in hot toffee ($16). We wanted to try the deep fried milk too, but they didn't have it the two times we asked.
[Added 8 August 2012: This eatery is now sadly closed, having been open for only around 4 months.]
It was the photo of a grilled quail which drew us in. On this cheap and cheerful stretch of Dominion Road, dominated by noodle and dumpling places, animal organs here, rice and lentils there, this little bird seemed almost too exotic to belong. I was sure that if we tried to order it, we would be told "sorry, we've run out". The last place I tried to order anything interesting, I was rejected three times before I found an item I could actually have.
Modern and clean look.
Well, I have yet to be told that a dish is unavailable at Point Restaurant. This is probably because most of the offerings at this Macanese eatery consist of noodles or rice, baked or fried (or boiled, in the case of rice porridge), with a repeated selection of accompaniments such as bacalhau (Portuguese salted cod) or BBQ pork.
The fried rice here is one of its strengths, but fortunately the menu also has some non-rice or -noodle dishes. The Deep Fried Soft Shell Crabs with Wasabi Mayo appears under the "Yummy Snack" section and was beautiful cooked, while being very affordable at $8.50. The whole Grilled Quail was also a tasty treat.
Partially eaten: Deep Fried Soft Shell Crabs with Wasabi Mayo; Fried Rice with Combination Meat, Cashew Nuts, Pineapple and Curry.
Grilled Quail with Five Spice Salt.
Our favourite fried rice so far is the Combination Meat one pictured with the Soft Shell Crab above, but the Seafood with Tomato Sauce Fried Rice is also pretty good. I thought it would be like a Spanish paella, but it is definitely fried rice, with less liquid and some egg fried with it. The seafood reminded me of "Mini-Me": apart from normal mussels, prawns, and squid, it also had tiny versions of the mussels, less than 10 times the size of the regular ones, and little shrimps as well.
Seafood with Tomato Sauce Fried Rice.
We found the noodles less exciting, though we have by no means tried them all, and the Fried Udon with vegetables was not bad.
Garlic Mushrooms and Vegetables with Fried Udon.
The main weakness of Point Restaurant is that there isn't a lot of vegetables to be had. What dishes there are, the vegies tend to be a minor ingredient, or covered in cheese, and there isn't anything I would refer to as "green leafy vegetables". Then again, I have felt a lack of vegetables in many other restaurants, even in, say, vegetarian Indian restaurants. I don't really have anything against cheesy bakes anyway, even the mildly curried and sweetly coconutty ones.
Steamed Mix Vegetables Baked with Cheese and Coconut Curry Sauce.
Although no one was hungry after the large portions we were served, we couldn't go past trying the Serradura for dessert. Named after the Portuguese word for "sawdust", this pudding looked like tiramisu, but was simply whipped cream layered with biscuit crumbs, garnished with grated chocolate. Plain, yet enjoyable.
Serradura, or Macanese "Sawdust" Pudding, made of whipped cream and biscuit crumbs.
Point Restaurant is the only eatery I know of in Auckland specialising in the Chinese-Portuguese fusion cuisine of Macau. It doesn't have the egg tarts and meat jerky slices sold from the sides of cobbled streets, which I've come to associate with this Chinese Special Administrative Region, but it does offer a large variety of other delights such as baked rice dishes and Portuguese sausage, all without breaking the bank.
Panda Recommends
Entrees: Deep Fried Soft Shell Crabs with Wasabi Mayo ($8.50), Grilled Quail ($12.00) Mains: Combination Meat, Cashew Nuts, Pineapple with Curry Fried Rice ($12.50), Seafood with Tomato Sauce Fried Rice ($12.50)
Vegie Pandas
Limited choice, but be aware that you can look beyond the Vegetarian section for suitable dishes.
Menu - page 1
Menu - page 2
Restaurant Details
Point Restaurant (葡點)
Unit 4, 583 Dominion Road,
Balmoral,
Auckland
(09) 623 4279
We first discovered Ras Vatika several years ago, after passing by the brightly lit window and having a spontaneous curiosity about Indian vegetarian food. Fortunately there were not many other customers, as we were faced with a vast array of options from the wall menu and needed the hostess to explain nearly everything. After asking vague questions about what to eat, we chose the Special Thali (selection of different dishes served in small bowls on a round tray) which she suggested we order, as we could then have a little bit of everything. The Faluda (a delicious drink with icecream and vermicelli available in three different flavours back then: rose, pistachio and saffron), which we also sampled, was a visual feast as well as a great taste sensation, and made sure we returned with friends in tow, even the self-professed carnivores.
Wall menu that had us at a loss as to what to order
Special Thali - 5 roti, 3 curries, rice, dhal (lentil soup; could also have chosen khadi, or yoghurt soup), salad, poppadom, pickle, gulab jamun (milky balls in syrup) - too much food even for two people
Rose Flavoured Faluda
While the curries have great flavour without the heavy creaminess offered by many other restaurants (though sometimes a little too salty), we have decided that this little restaurant particularly excels at dishes made to order, settling on the dosa (fermented rice and lentil crepe), uttapam (Indian pizza) and a couple of other dishes as firm favourites.
Dosa served with coconut chutney and sambhar
Chole Bhature - bread puffs served with chickpea curry, yoghurt, onion salad, poppadom and pickle
Pullav and side salad. The slab of butter and fresh coriander made it even more delicious.
A couple of months ago, the restaurant introduced printed menus, which came with descriptions of each dish, helping with the decision making process without making the items any less exotic. Perhaps we will choose new favourites as we try more dishes, or perhaps not. Service can be slow in this homely eatery, but in any case, we will be coming back for more.
Panda Recommends
Mains: Chole Bhature ($10.00); any of the Dosa and Uttapam variations ($7.00 - $13.50), especially Mysore Masala Dosa ($12.00) and Tomato and Onion Uttapam ($10.50) Sides: Dhai Poori ($7.50), Chili Pakoda ($1.50) Drink: Rose Faluda ($7.00), if you are very hungry Avoid the thalis - they aren't bad, but the curries from the warming drawers are definitely not as good as the freshly made dishes!
[Added 18 May 2014: This eatery has now been renovated, and even has branches in the city and in Howick.]
The first thing that drew us to Shaolin Kung Fu Noodle was the name of the eatery. What on earth might martial arts have to do with food? The movie Kung Fu Panda sprang to mind. After driving past several times asking the same question, we eventually found the courage to investigate. The place was full (always a good sign), the items pictured in the window looked interesting, and we entered.
The star attraction, the item after which the restaurant is named, are the freshly made noodles pulled to order. The chefs, with closely cropped hair in keeping with the theme, pound and stretch the noodles behind a booth in the dining area. The smell of cumin permeates the air. As soon as a table became free, we eagerly perused the menu, which fortunately had reasonable English translations, though what was written on the specials board remains a mystery.
The noodles we saw being made were fantastic, served in soup that tasted like real stock rather than MSG water and garnished with fresh coriander, but what blew us away was actually the cheapest item on the menu: fried bread pieces, brought out with a shaker labelled "Oregano", which in fact contained cumin. The bread was perfectly fried, crispy but not oily, and as you can see from the picture below, we tore through most of it before we managed to take a photograph.
Deep Fried Chinese Bread Patty
Kung Fu Beef Noodles
We were so enthused we invited friends to Shaolin Kung Fu Noodle just a few days later, this time to try the lamb kebabs and other items. Again, there was a small wait for a table, which was well worth it. There was minor confusion on our part, because the filling for the chapati (in case you were wondering, these are soft bread rounds like the wrappers for Peking duck) was brought out well before the flat breads arrived, and we had to ask for the cumin shaker for the fried bread this time. We also discovered that there are at least two different types of noodles on the premises, in addition to the hand-pulled ones, so make sure you specify Kung Fu noodles if you want to have the noodles the chefs stretch to order.
Selection of dishes at Shaolin Kung Fu Noodle - Cleaver Sliced Beef Noodles, Yummy Lamb Kebabs, Chapati with Braised Lamb and Spring Onion Filling
This was unlike any Chinese food we had had before, featuring lamb, cumin and hand-pulled noodles, so as soon as we got home, we did a bit of research online. One forum participant referred to this eatery as serving Xi'an food, and the menu of the Xi'an restaurants in America certainly appears to have the same sorts of dishes. Xi'an is about 550km west of Zhengzhou, where the Shaolin monastery can be found. Below is a video of Shaolin Kung Fu Noodle making in Zhengzhou, which is a lot more spectacular than in our recommended little New Zealand store. Lamb kebabs with hand-pulled noodles also seem to be associated with the Muslim Uighur people of the Xingjiang region in northwestern China, so perhaps this is eaten throughout the north of China? Resident experts please enlighten us.
[Added 8 Feb 2014: A fellow blogger named Lucy has a newer review (with great pictures).]
Panda Recommends
Mains: any dish with Kung Fu Noodles ($6.50 - $9.80)
Sides: Deep Fried Chinese Bread Patty ($2.00)
Avoid dishes that look like they might have been put there to appeal to a Western audience, such as Stir Fried Chicken with Cashews and Veges ($13.00).
Vegie Pandas
The fake meat of the Vegetarian Chicken Noodles was not so inspiring, and the soup it came in was probably not really vegetarian. Have the Kung Fu Dry Noodles with Eggs instead. You also have a selection of bread, tofu and vegetable based options.
[Added 10 July 2011:
The menu below is out-of-date. In their updated menu, they have done away with the Vegetarian Chicken and the Chapati, but added other items, like fried rice and chicken kebabs (the lamb ones are better though). Prices have been revised upwards for some dishes but not for others, and this place is just as popular as ever. Oh, and the fried bread patty is no longer the cheapest item.
Added 13 January 2013:
The latest menu nearly doubles the number of offerings, with more seafood dishes (including fish, prawns, shrimps, crab and scampi in addition to the squid that was previously available), new sweet and sour meat dishes and a greater range of tofu dishes.
Added 4 January 2014:
The updated menu now contains colour pictures, an enhanced selection of dumplings, more kebab options (including skewers of chicken gizzards and hearts), whole blue cod (I saw this being brought out to a table and it looked great), and of course, higher prices.
]
Menu - page 1
Menu - page 2
Note
Groups larger than 4 people will have difficulty finding a table.
[Added 26 December 2013: They have opened up the upstairs area some time ago, and can now also cater for larger groups.]
