From Thar to Turduckenqua: Wellington on a Plate 2012

The programme for this year's Wellington on a Plate festival in August was announced ten days ago, and I was surprised to discover that amongst the restaurant deals, tours and events on offer, I actually learnt something new.  That something was the existence of an animal called thar (or tahr), which you can sample as part of the Logan Brown Ata Rangi Wild Game Degustation Dinner.

Apparently, this relative of the wild goat has a huntable population only in New Zealand, which draws people from around the world; in fact, it is so numerous here that the DoC considers it a pest and has put in place Control Plans for the Himalayan Tahr, although other thars in other parts of the world are endangered.

At the risk of sounding like a voracious carnivore, I was also amazed to see that there would be Turduckenqua at the Larder.  I had heard of turducken before, but stuffing quail as well inside a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey was new to me.  Given that this event is sold out already, I am not the only one who finds it novel.

And novelty is definitely in, with events dedicated to feet (all five sessions sold out already!) and offal, as well as themed dinners such as R.M.S. Titanic: The Last Dinner, featuring an 11 course menu as served to first class passengers on 14 April 1912.  I was also pleased to see traditional Māori food on offer, including braised muttonbirds with horopito on creamed pūhā.  Even the participants of the Burger Wellington challenge are striving for uniqueness: The Cheeky Pipi Moa Burger has an ostrich patty, and The Larder is offering The Brain Burger with gremolata-crumbed lambs' brain, of all things.

I also discovered (not from the programme directly, but through inspired web browsing) that people eat lamb fries in many places around the world. These are very different to lamb's fry (the former is testicles, the latter liver), which is a traditional dish available from such institutions as The Green Parrot, which has been open in Wellington since the 1920's!

None of the above elicits a shocking reaction as much as a shellfish called geoduck (pronounced "gooey duck"), which is nowhere to be seen in the festival, despite being apparently commercially harvested in New Zealand.  Maybe next year.

Apart from promising new foods to try, the festival programme has highlighted some movements in the Wellington food scene that I was previously unaware of.  For instance, Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, which is due to open its doors in September, is available for a sneak preview, and its Cuisine and Pâtisserie Introduction courses are already sold out.  And where the greasy Munchen Burger joint used to be (next to Logan Brown), a new Spanish and Argentinian grill restaurant called El Matador will open in July, a new project by the owner of Ernesto Cafe.

All these exciting things has prompted us to purchase our flights to the capital already.  We are still planning what to eat, and I suspect many items will be sold out before we get a foot in the door, but I am sure we will encounter many culinary delights.  As a fallback plan, you don't need to make a booking for Oyster (a "food truck style" event in a carpark daily), where you can apparently get six kinds of oysters every night, though I suspect they just mean served six ways.

Bon appétit!

A Birthday Dinner, and Cultural Observations

It was my mother's birthday today.  For the second time this year.  It's not really the paradox that it seems, because she celebrates her birthdays by the Chinese lunisolar calendar.  While the Gregorian or Western calendar adjusts for discrepancies between the calendrical year and the astronomical year by adding a leap day in the years which are divisible by 4 (except for those also divisible by 100, but not by 400), the Chinese calendar inserts a leap month, or intercalary month, based on complicated rules to ensure the northern winter solstice always falls in Month 11.  This year, Month 4 was repeated, an uncommon occurrence that my mother naturally wanted to celebrate.

We went to Hee's Garden for dinner, because they have a special for the month of June (advertised on Chinese TV) whereby you get two courses of Peking Duck for only $35 (normally $65).  It was pretty good quality duck too.  The first course was, of course, the crispy skin on a bed of prawn crackers, served with thin flour pancakes, cucumber and spring onion sticks, and hoisin sauce.   The second course was a bit boring though, just the chopped up chunks of meat, as opposed to the flesh being used in something requiring a bit more effort, such as sang choi bao (lettuce wraps) or tofu soup.

Peking duck first course, the leftovers.

Mum spied a group of young students at the next table, and wanted to tell them about the Peking Duck deal, but they had already ordered before she could do that, selecting... almost unbelievably... fried rice, lemon chicken, and BBQ pork.  Surely this is Chinese takeaway-style food from 20 years ago?  Over at another table, a couple had steamer baskets full of dumplings in front of them.  What, asked my mother out loud, are they doing, eating brunch for dinner?

I have been guilty of eating dim sum for dinner myself.  It's great that you can eat what you like when you want to, though I wish people from other cultures would let me know when I am doing something totally weird.  Like, are you only supposed to have masala tea after your meal, rather than during it?  And when you order tsukemen, must you dip the noodles in the soup, rather than pouring the soup over the noodles?

But wait staff can be overly helpful as well.  I was surprised when I was offered a fork at a Chinese eatery, simply because I spoke in English.  At a Vietnamese restaurant recently, the server showed us how to pour the fish sauce over the rice noodles.

I guess you can't have it both ways.  Either you have silent staff, or ones that might end up telling you something obvious.  In the end, I guess it doesn't matter if you eat something "the wrong way".  But I still want to know.

Review: Point Restaurant (葡點) *CLOSED*

[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

Opening hours:
Mondays closed.
Tuedays to Sundays 12 – 3pm, 5:30pm – 9:30pm

Point Restaurant is in the same complex as Banzai, next to Aji Ichiban.

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Review: Lunch @ Morita

The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?

                            -- Douglas Adams, Chapter 35, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I can tell you about a sophisticated place you could go for lunch.  You've probably even heard of it already, if you follow the Metro Restaurant of the Year awards, since the French-Japanese fusion restaurant Morita made it into the Top 50 shortly after opening in 2011 (and again this year).

Tucked away in a corner of a dead end street, I would never have stumbled across this hidden gem by myself.  Now, I don't make a habit of visiting award-winning restaurants for lunch, but a curiosity as to what French-Japanese food might taste like, coupled with the persuasion of a very reasonably priced lunch menu (complete with photos on the restaurant website), made me go out of my way to find this basement venue.

Dark yet elegant interior.

For food court prices, you can have lunch in one of the city's best restaurants, where even tap water is served in a wine glass from a classy bottle.  I also love it that the mains always come with a salad, so you feel that you are getting a balanced meal.

I generally order the less Western sounding options, which are definitely not pure Japanese.  The omurice pots, for instance, are basically tomato risotto with an omelette on top.

Tomato and egg omurice pot, served with a side of salad.

The donburi sets, which are extremely good value and not featured on their website, are just a little different from what you might expect, though it's hard to put a finger on why that is.

Teriyaki chicken donburi set, served with (clockwise from top right) fish nanban, salad, pickles and miso soup.

I should probably give their less interesting sounding items (like pasta) a go as well, but I struggle to forego the tried and true in this case.  Whatever you order though, I am sure you will enjoy it.

Panda Recommends

You can spend up to $70 on a lunch at Morita (four course business lunch with wagyu steak), but I stick to the more affordable items.  The hayashi rice ($11.00) is fantastic, and the donburi sets ($9.90) and omurice pots ($10.00 - $16.00) are all delightful and great value for money.

Vegie Pandas
I thought the Vegetable Kakiage Don ($9.90) would involve a mix of tempura vegetables, but it was all onion, which I guess fits in with the French theme.  The tomato and cheese omurice pot ($10.00) is a good choice.

Lunch menu outside the restaurant.

Special lunch menu (not on the restaurant website).

Normal lunch menu

Restaurant Details

Morita
12 Swanson Street, Auckland Central
(09) 337 0506

Opening hours:
Mondays to Fridays, 12 - 2pm, 6 - 9pm
Saturdays 6 - 9pm

Morita has a corner basement location.

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Heston Blumenthal Live

I'd been looking forward to Heston Blumenthal Live for months, a "one night only" event (Saturday 5 May in Auckland) starring the award-winning celebrity chef which included New Zealand for the first time.  I had no idea what to expect, other than what I had read in a news article, so I was ready to be surprised and delighted by the "extravaganza".

Tickets and a souvenir from the show.

It started off well, with Heston cooling a meringue with liquid nitrogen to the sound of dramatic music, which he then fed to host Mike Hosking.  I also enjoyed hearing about the chef's past, how he worked 120-hour weeks with just a pot washer and two front-of-house staff, after starting up his own restaurant (The Fat Duck) with only two weeks' experience in someone else's kitchen.  I held my breath when he told us about his first big reservation, a table of eight booked six or eight weeks in advance, and how disaster struck at 7:30pm on the evening of the dinner.  And I was impressed by video clips of some of his exquisite dishes being made: mock turtle soup being shaped into the form of a gold-plated fob watch, as well as the construction of a very thin tart which looks like a Queen of Hearts playing card, both in keeping with an Alice in Wonderland theme.

Fob watch tea bag and Queen of Hearts tart (photos from Popcorn & Toast).

I enjoyed the show, and I admired the man's talent, but I couldn't help feeling just a little bit disappointed.  We didn't really learn anything new (sous vide and other techniques were barely mentioned), there weren't any cooking demonstrations (unless you counted the making of ice cream using dry ice), and there were no practical cooking tips as promised in an interview with Viva.  Heston's thoughts on eating as a multi-sensory experience, including the difference between taste and flavour, are already widely available online.  In fact, his talk with Paul O'Grady was pretty much what we witnessed last night, with the exception that we were not shown either of the demonstrations in the talk show.

Having to sit through multiple advertisements did not help either (did they need all these sponsors when we were paying hundreds of dollars for a ticket?).  The audience participation activities (which you were excluded from unless you were sitting at the front downstairs) were cheesy, with plenty of fake reactions from those on the stage.  The questions at the end were pre-selected rather than spontaneous.  To add to the disappointment, news reports claimed that Heston took us through his "logic-defying hot and iced tea" and his "famous snail porridge", when in fact he did not mention these dishes at all.

Despite thinking the show could have been much better, there were a few things which made the evening worthwhile.  It put the scale of Heston's work into perspective. We discovered, for instance, that the Fat Duck gets 30,000 calls per day, and they need to have two people dedicated to reservations for the 42 customers that they can fit into the restaurant.  We also learnt that the chef is helping prepare a 5-course menu for 13,000 guests at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee next month.

I have now been motivated to watch many episodes of Heston's Feasts, which are both entertaining and inspirational.  Although I would not pay so much money to see Heston live again, it is nice to be able to say I was in the same room as someone of his calibre.  Hopefully, I will someday be able to experience his creations for myself too.

Review: Yum Cha @ Crown Chinese Restaurant (皇冠酒樓)

Our favourite yum cha restaurant in Auckland at the moment is not a place you might accidentally wander into.  Even if you happened to be in the Otahuhu/Papatoetoe area, you would never have noticed the faded exterior of Crown Restaurant, the peeling paint, the narrow doorway leading to a set of uninviting stairs.

And if you had seen it, you would have dismissed it instantly.  It has all the wrong vibes: a dirty mat at the front door behind a sandwich board proclaiming "BUFFET ALL YOU CAN EAT!!  EVERY Sun. & Mon. evening...," no way of seeing who (if anyone) was eating inside, no mouth-watering menu on display which you could have used to entice your sceptical friends.  It's a place that looks like it has remained unchanged for many decades, from the days when Asians in New Zealand were a novelty and rice cost a fortune and had to be supplemented with white bread.

Your fears might grow as you force yourself up those old, rickety steps, take one last look out the grimy window at the top, and follow the corridor around the corner, past the kitchen and towards a roadblock: people waiting to pay on one side, children in front of crayfish tanks on the other, and waitresses trying to push trolleys in between them.  Once the chaos clears though, you will see a large hall in front of you, surprisingly full of customers, including some sitting on the stage area at the far end, next to a historic-looking Chinese wall painting.  It feels like an RSA crossed with an old school theatre, a place at once incongruous with a thriving restaurant and reassuringly without pretensions.

Old but perfectly acceptable dining room, popular with young and old.

What brings us out here is the food. That, and the fact that you can just turn up without booking.  There is a good variety of dishes to choose from, pushed around in metal trolleys, and it comes out quickly, so you don't need to sit around for hours waiting for something you like the look of.  Spare ribs, chicken feet, tripe and tero-tero (intestines) project an authentic image, although there are also friendlier options for the less adventurous.

The steamed dumplings are hot, fresh and tasty, and we particularly enjoyed the open prawn and coriander dumplings which looked beautiful with a few golden vermicelli strands placed on top.

Special prawn and coriander dumplings.

Crown Restaurant also has excellent congee, which they top with fried breadstick and spring onion slices when you order it.  [Added 8 December 2012: They now also offer deep-fried fish skins!] I've always shied away from eating foods at restaurants which are made from cheap ingredients, which I could easily cook myself at home.  Trouble is, I have never made a successful congee at home, even though it is in essence just rice boiled in water with a bit of oil and salt.  This place makes up for all my past failures with just the right flavour and texture in their rice porridge.  They offer multiple types of congee, including the classic lean pork and preserved egg version (皮蛋瘦肉粥), which is the one which came around in a trolley on our last visit.

Simple but delicious bowl of congee.

Another dish we were excited to find here are the baked BBQ pork buns, char siu bao (叉燒包/叉烧包) of the smooth, glazed variety, although the more common steamed buns with the cracked top are also available.  The fried items such as the taro dumplings are more of a gamble, as they are prone to being only lukewarm.

Baked BBQ pork buns and deep-fried taro dumplings.

Those with a sweet tooth will be pleased with the dessert selection, which includes egg tarts (both the Hong Kong and Portuguese styles), fried sesame balls filled with lotus seed paste (煎堆, jin deui), pancakes filled with red bean paste (豆沙鍋餅, dou sa wo beng), mango pudding (芒果布丁, mong gwo bou ding) optionally served with Carnation condensed milk, the flat crumpet-like steamed "white sugar cake" (白糖糕, bak tong gou), and more.  [Added 8 December 2012: The selection today included tofu jelly (豆花, dou fah) and durian icecream balls (榴槤糯米糍, lou lin no mai ci).]

Trolley with dessert options, including egg tarts, mango pudding and filled glutinous rice balls.

Crown Restaurant may not be the type of place you would take your in-laws to, but look past its exterior and it offers you cheap and varied options for filling up on your favourite dim sum dishes.

Panda Recommends

[Added 8 Dec 2012: Crown Restaurant currently has a D grade rating, but New Flavour used to have an E and it was always full.  I've never let a rating put me off good food.]
Go for steamed dumplings and congee.
Avoid the fried things on offer, as these can be cold and unappetising.

Vegie Pandas
As with yum cha in general, to avoid eating only desserts, you may need to order something off the menu to supplement the few vegetarian items on the trolley (delicious as they are, steamed ricesheet rolls served with sesame and sweet sauce hardly make for a balanced meal).

Restaurant Details

Crown Restaurant
1/F, 12 East Tamaki Road, Papatoetoe, Auckland
(09) 279 8398

Opening hours:
Yum char Mondays to Sundays 10am - 2:30pm

Never judge a book by its cover.

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Table Manners

Oh my goodness, I am getting old.  The other night at dinner, I found myself watching some children at a Chinese restaurant, and noticing all the things they were doing wrong, which I as a child would have been disciplined for.  I'm not sure when I turned into an etiquette nazi, but these little things also reminded me of the new rules I had to learn when we arrived in New Zealand decades ago.  I can't begin to imagine how many mistakes I must make at restaurants of other ethnicities, from not knowing the unwritten norms of behaviour.

I expect some rules are universal.  I would be pretty surprised if there were a culture somewhere where people would not consider you ill-mannered if you broke one of these:

• don't lick your bowl or plate
• don't take more than your fair share of a group dish

Other rules are more culture specific.  I've tried to write down all the ones I could think of, but I would love to hear of other people's experiences too.

Chinese Etiquette

I don't know if the guidelines I have been taught are Chinese etiquette, or specific to my area or family.  Some things, like

• use communal chopsticks (or serving spoons/forks) to bring food from the shared plates to your own bowl

were brought into effect later on, perhaps due to greater health awareness after a number of Asian bird flu pandemic scares.  Some restaurants offer chopsticks in another colour to make it easier to differentiate between personal and communal serving chopsticks, but at other restaurants, you have to ask even to get extra chopsticks of the same colour.  As I said though, the use of communal chopsticks was a relatively new rule, and I remember I was surprised when a Taiwanese friend came over for dinner over a decade ago and asked if it was okay to pick up food with her own chopsticks, since there were no serving chopsticks on the table.

The fact that the kids the other night used their own chopsticks to grab food from the centre of the table and put it straight into their mouths also broke some other rules my father would remind us of:

• bring your bowl up to the plate of food you are taking from
• always put the food into your bowl first, even if it is just a quick dab onto your rice before you put it into your mouth, and
• always bring your bowl up to your mouth to eat, rather than bending down to the table or eating with your bowl at a great distance (this is very different from Korean etiquette, where bringing a bowl up to your mouth is considered rude)

Perhaps he made those up to stop us from dripping sauce all over the table.

Some rules are just general politeness, such as:

• don't pick through the dishes, though you can select the best bits for someone else, such as an elder
• don't reach across the table or pick food from the far side of the plate from where you are sitting (飛象過河/飞象过河, lit. "flying elephant crosses river", a reference to the rule in Chinese chess where the elephant is not allowed to cross the river, and perhaps also to the distance travelled by your chopsticks)
• pour tea for others before pouring for yourself

Others are more chopstick-specific Chinese rules, for instance:

• don't put your chopsticks sticking up in a bowl of rice (because this alludes to the ritual of burning incense for the dead)
• don't use your chopsticks to point at other people

And if you are the host:

• offer far too much food.  There must be leftovers

After the meal, if you have some food stuck in your teeth:

•  always cover your mouth with your free hand while you are using a toothpick with the other

Then there are the tea-related signals or gestures:

• if someone pours you tea, thank them by tapping gently two or three times on the table with bent index and middle fingers.  I believe this is a Cantonese thing, and the story goes that this came about because in the Qing Dynasty, the emperor liked to travel around incognito.  When he poured tea for a servant, the servant could not kowtow in public, because that would give away the emperor's disguise.  Instead, he made this small hand gesture to signify the kneeling and bowing he would have done
• when the teapot is empty, leave it with the lid ajar (but still on the teapot)

It looks like there are a lot of rules to remember for Chinese table manners, but there are equally many in Western culture, though you may not realise it if you have been brought up with them.

Western Etiquette

The first thing which is different in Western dining is that you use different utensils for eating.  I just about knew how to use a knife and fork, but the first time I had a multi-course meal I was stumped.  It is not obvious that you should

• use your cutlery from the outside in

though I guess you might have noticed some slight difference in the size of the implements.

Cutlery humour from imgur.

Everyone has their own plate of food, so although you would also wait at a Chinese table for everyone to be ready, there is more of a delay at a Western meal to

• wait for everyone at the table to receive their food before beginning to eat

Once you are actually allowed to start your meal, there are any number of rules you should observe, such as:

• don't put your elbows on the table
• don't talk with your mouth full
• close your mouth while chewing
• don't slurp your soup
• don't smack your chops.  In fact, make as little noise as possible
• don't blow on hot food to cool it down.  Stir hot soup, or simply wait for the food to cool
• cut your food into small enough pieces for a mouthful.  Never lift a large food item and take a bite from only part of it
• eat slowly; don't put so much food in your mouth that you have bulging cheeks
• don't put a knife into your mouth or lick it
• respect the table cloth, i.e. avoid drips and don't pile your bones on the table
• when you are using a knife, the fork should be in your left hand with the tines pointing down; when using a fork on its own, it may be in your right hand

Then there are the cutlery positioning signals:

• when you are taking a break from eating, leave your cutlery at a diagonal, with the tines of your fork pointing down
• when you have finished eating, place your cutlery together side by side in the middle of your plate, with the tines of your fork pointing up

I've also noticed that at a restaurant, waitstaff

• never stack plates on the table when clearing the dishes

Other Cultures

I don't have much of an idea about table manners in other cultures, though I do know that for Indian cuisine, you should always eat with your right hand, and wash your hands before and after the meal.  In Malaysia, after eating banana leaf rice, you fold the top of the leaf down to signify that you enjoyed your meal, or fold the bottom up (away from you) to signal it was was not satisfactory.

What else do I need to know to avoid becoming an uncouth barbarian in other parts of the world?