Eating in New Zealand

Situated roughly an hour away from central Auckland, the markets in Matakana are a neat little place to visit during on Saturday mornings, when they have their market days. I’ve never heard about this until I enlisted myself as the driver of showing two lovely ladies who knew where they were going but weren’t quite sure how they were getting there. Ahem… since it was promised to me that there’d be some good food in store, I decided to come along with a day trip.

As you can see, the Matakana markets are a neat little place, filled with stalls that are manned by families. It is quite rare to see a face that’s not smiling in the market, everyone is quite friendly and usually the food stalls offer some sort of a tasting station.

As you can see, a lot of the wares and food being sold here emphasize their accommodation of gluten-free and dairy-free varieties. As one of the nations with a high number of people suffering allergies of this sort, markets such as Matakana (and other farmers markets) focus on home-made, allergy friendly and mostly organic produce and foods in particular, which was quite an eye opener because I’ve never quite experienced a farmers market before :) However the price of the wares reflects the efforts to which the vendors have gone to make their products allergen free, which I didn’t realize until my friend forked out a $50 note for a few dozen organic farm eggs - quite expensive but at least you know the chickens aren’t battery-hens - perhaps that the consolation for my heart from the money spent had I footed the bill! But the eggs certainly looked a lot bigger than the usual ones (I forget the egg sizes purchased) so perhaps there’s a good reason for the price tag.

Although I was quite tempted to try their home-made pies, there was one other things catching my attention…

A stall selling whitebait fritters! I thought I smelled something :) Although (I believe) it’s the tail of the whitebait season, these fritters are usually quite nice even after being frozen - and they didn’t taste bad at all! There was even a line in which I waited roughly 10 minutes before I had the pleasure of holding one in my hand (which semi-assured me it was decent at the very least) - at $5 it’s not exactly a cheap snack, but definitely something to try if you’ve never had it before. Usually in fine-dining restaurants you get the plumper whitebait variety but that can set you back anywhere from $22 and upward if you decide to have the larger ‘main size’ portions. Whitebait, fritter mix and eggs, salt and peppers, with a healthy squeeze of a lemon slice - the saltiness, lemon zest, and the whitebait fully satisfied my cravings for the time being. Money well spent to me!

I had to take a picture of this stall as well (gasp - its not food related!) as we bought a few things here :) The lady was quite nice in accommodating my friends request to make new bracelets for them - and she said it’ll only take an hour! $15 for a small bracelet to go around the wrist - I thought to be quite reasonable. Will definitely visit this place again if I have female guests to impress hehe :)

I also had lunch at Makatana, however that will be left until a later post. Toodles!

[First part of this post can be accessed here]

The gelatinous rice chicken - essentially a gelatinous rice patty, stuffed with chicken, mushroom, mince and other ingredients, then wrapped in a piece of lotus leaf before steaming - is quite filling. Although each yum-cha restaurant does it slightly differently with some using dried small prawns instead of mince, or use different flavors - when you see the lotus leave, it’s likely to be this dish!

In New World’s case, their one is steamed quite well, with the rice quite soft and you can taste the grassy flavor mixed with mushrooms in the rice. The mince was slightly bland, probably due to the fact its taste has been steamed away into the rice, and it was quite filling (each dish comes with two patties) so for those with large appetites, order a few of these and you’ll be set!

Literally called “intestine rice strips”, these steamed rice strips are actually really, really nice. Not very many restaurants do them well because apparently a lot of skill is involved in creating the pastry, then folding them over with the ingredients inside and steaming them all without breaking the skin or having the ingredients fall out - and in our case the BBQ pork inside didn’t come out unless I fumbled with my chopsticks (which is pretty often!). The other component of this dish, apart from the resiliency of the skin, is the sauce. Those in the know will probably disagree with me, but I really love the sweet soy sauce that is accompanied with this dish, to the extent that I always ask the attendant to pour some extra every time :P The rice skin is twice as thick as the steamed dumplings and goes down quite smoothly.

This is one of the dishes that I haven’t been able to find at any other Yum-cha eateries that I’ve visited, and it is a really refreshing dish to have at the end of the meal. The jelly is lightly sweet with some flowery aroma from the chrysanthemum encased inside the jelly, and when served cold makes you feel like you’ve just had a small cup of tea.

Another dish that New World does quite well are these deep fried sesame balls, with black sesame fillings. There are copious amounts inside compared to what I’ve experienced in other eateries, and if you love the sesame taste then you’ll love this dish - it’s a little bit on the sweet side though and the skin may be a bit oily, but the crunchiness and the feeling of the black sesame filling the mouth will convince you of any reservations you may have had in the first place :P

Usually Newmarket is buzzing with activity and Yum-cha seating at this eatery actually fill up quite fast, so this time I made a reservation the night before just to make sure we get a seat this time round - and even with a reservation we didn’t get one without a 5 minute wait! The same theory applies for parking so, if there’s anyone wanting to try out this place they’ll need to arrive early (say, at 12′o clock on the dot at the restaurant) if they’re walking and even earlier if parking is required, as Newmarket can be notoriously hard to find parking in.

For two people the total came to roughly $50+ dollars, which is quite a bit and could be attribute to the fact that we really filled our stomach to the brim today :P Usually it’s more expensive to have Yum-cha if you have less than 4 people so we expected as much, but perhaps it’s not as expensive elsewhere in the world? Surely the costs in New Zealand are above average! Let me know :)