Eating in New Zealand

Due to the arrival of another friend visiting from overseas, I had the joy of revisiting the Yum cha restaurant I previously blogged about (part 1 and part 2, namely New World Restaurant. This time round, I was smart enough to book a reservation a few days in advance and made sure we arrived a little bit early so we can score the seats before the crowds start to pile in.

As it was a really really hot day, I decided to start things off by ordering the cool Osmanthus jelly cake. The osmanthus combined with the tea-like taste of the jelly gave us the break we needed from the hot weather and gain back some of our appetite. I find that my appetite somehow dwindles on hot days while increasing on cold days… perhaps its the body’s way of compensating for additional energy spent on cold days and the reverse for hot days? Perhaps I’ll explore this issue in a future post… :) But for now, we move on to the next dish!

One of the specialty dishes that I’ve found only at New World is this dish of rice noodles stir fried with XO sauce, which is a seafood-based sauce that ranges from moderately spicy to extremely spicy; the homemade variant of XO sauces (starting point for your research here) are usually of the extremely spicy kind, and the heavy taste that comes with seafood, black beans, and spices makes it a great accompaniment to carb mains like rice and noodles. The rice noodles are pan fried slightly so they’re a little stiff to take away the floppiness, with the sauce stir fried into the actual noodles. It’s one of the dishes I order at this eatery on the particular days where I don’t feel like eating a diverse range of dishes. Just like the gelatinous chicken, this is a filling dish :)

One of the things I like about this eatery (and I’ll probably repeat this every time I re-review this restaurant) is that they prepare their meat dishes very well. The meat is seldom left to harden and too chewy for consumption, with the sauce prepared well to fully saturate the taste into the meat itself. In the case of this dish, the sauce was a little bit too salty from the spices and the black pepper, but since the portion was fairly small it wasn’t that big a deal. If in doubt (and wanting to save money), just order a bowl of rice or congee to go with a salty or heavy-taste dish - you’ll fill up in no time and the sauce just gives you more incentive to gobble up more rice!

At this point in time, my palate was feeling a little numb from all the beef dishes; they all taste pretty good but at the same time, the taste difference between each beef-based dish is minimal due to the way New World prepares and cooks their beef. My advice to would-be yum cha goers is to avoid ordering dishes that taste too familiar - you’ll just get sick of them! Instead of order all meat dishes, try a congee, soup, or vegetable dish. Dishes with a plainer taste are usually good because they help to reset your palate a little (drinking tea will definitely help too, but will also fill you up quicker), but most importantly bland-er tasting dishes provide a point a contrast from which you can better appreciate something that perhaps your palate was previously numb to due to a dish that heavily saturated the part of your palate. I’ll definitely write an essay on this topic in future, but for now… let me warn you in advance because there’s nothing sadder to me than to have something wonderfully prepared in front of me, yet I have no facility to properly appreciate it. It’s worse than throwing away good food! OK, I’ll stop the rant now :P

One of the staple dishes of yum cha, and one dish that I usually order without fail at this eatery. It’s oily but not extremely so, and the meat is tender according to the standard of New World - its a dish that I order to remind myself what yum cha should taste like! In the limited realm of the New Zealand yum cha scene, anyway…

As my friend is a lover of seafood, we grabbed the prawn dumplings when the trolley swung by our table. Best eaten hot off the steamer to savor the prawn juices that haven’t been absorbed by the pastry skin. The prawn used by New World is also of a decent size, which does make every bite fairly satisfying!

Over all another good experience at this eatery, and of course it’s a place that I keep at the back of my mind if I really don’t want to disappoint out-of-town visitors! Should any of you, the readers, decide to visit New Zealand and Auckland in particular, feel free to give me a shout for suggestions on where to eat and if I have time, I’ll cook up a culinary tour for you :) Until then, I’ll keep reporting from this little corner of the globe to keep enticing you with pictures of food, food, and more glorious and yummy food… ;)

For dinner tonight, I opted to show my friend around Mission Bay where all the restaurants are; we weren’t feeling too hungry but the smell of food kept wafting over to where we were! So we crossed the road around the Movenpick corner and started browsing each eatery that sat along the street. As a general rule, the places with the most people are usually the staple restaurants of the area, while the less crowded ones or worse, the empty restaurants are at best hit and miss and at worst, somewhere you will never want to revisit without a strong reason (and possibly a strong drink beforehand wouldn’t hurt).

And as it happens, I was feeling slightly adventurous and wanted to try out a new place - and then I saw Capri. It looked nice with a cosy decor and a raised dining area lined along the pedestrian walkway. Why not, I thought… and well, if you haven’t picked up the hints I’ve been dropping along, let me give you one more - it was empty save for one table when me and my friend sat down. No, I thought, maybe this restaurant will be different! Maybe it’ll be one of those hidden gems that others haven’t discovered yet! Maybe the regulars here dine later during the night… sigh. Long story short, we made our order and the below is what we got!

[Seafood Chowder Soup]
Very creamy, but otherwise missing all the spices that are flavorful in nature. As a result, this soup tasted very, very bland. The pieces of garlic bread that came with the soup ended up being the highlight of the dish! I was tempted to ask the waitress whether this was a joke or whether this is the way the chef prefers to cook; I held myself back though, and since there were a few more dishes coming up - I guess I’ll have my answer then.

[Bruschetta]
Interesting how they serve the bread before the soup; the menu description read “with fresh Basil, garlic, [and] olive oil”, which did match the toppings sitting on the bread. Unfortunately the taste also matched… the blandness of the soup prior. At this point in time, I was desperately looking forward to the next dish, hoping that it’s all just been a big misunderstanding… maybe the chef ran out of salt, right?

[King prawns pan fried in garlic, brandy, served on rice]
I will definitely say that the prawns were succulent, but they lacked the natural sweetness which comes with fresh prawns. And in line with their offerings tonight the taste is bland, bland, bland. The lightly flavored garlic rice was perhaps the most flavorful component of the entire dish. Sigh!

At the outset of this blog, I had intended my reviews to be overall positive for the places I go - I’m fairly optimistic that each eatery will be good at at least one thing, and I usually go for the ‘normal fare’ so that if they don’t do the fancy stuff right, their basic offerings should still be palatable. However in the case of Capri, I could only say that perhaps their dessert is the only thing I would consider trying in future. I don’t know if the chef was throwing a tantrum, or had a creative moment or something - my taste buds were out for blood from the blandness of the entire meal! Even steamed vegetables with a sprinkle of salt had more flavor!

Contact details:

93 Tamaki Drive
Mission Bay
Auckland City
(09)521 1898

Hours:
Mon: Thu 10am onwards
Fri: Sun 9am onwards