Eating in New Zealand

It’s a buffet place but with a twist - desserts! Just located within the Stamford Hotel on lower Albert Street in the City @ $18 per person for a all-you-can-gorge sugar rush. Given that couple of my friends have several sweet tooth and haven’t visited this place, I thought I’d bring them to this place but with a caveat - the selection at the buffet will be very limited. All right, they said…

[Shot of the dessert buffet table]

Though I wasn’t able to get a shot of the dessert selection themselves (I’m still quite self conscious…sigh) I took a photo of the dessert selection - all of which sit under the lighted section as shown in the photo. Apart from four different kinds of cheese and the various canned / fresh fruits (canned peach & Pineapple, fresh watermelon, rockmelon and other things), there are a number of sweet-looking items that looks like they pack some decent cholesterol… it’s a little counterproductive to think about these things at a buffet, but the way these desserts looked were totally shouting “…eat me! It’s a buffet so it doesn’t really matter if I, the cheesecake, look a little bit crumpled from all the other diners digging into me! Just eat and forget!~”. Hallucinations aside, the offerings at the dessert buffet were really quite tiny give the price we’ve paid.

[Cheese platter courtesy of moi!]

If I was going to pack on fat and calories then I might as well doing it with my preferred dairy products - cheese! Thankfully their cheese selection is decent (most NZ cheeses are) and I had a fun time trying to rid of myself of a block of blue cheese, amongst a gathering of Camembert, nuts, dried apricots and crackers. Way better than the overly sweet desserts, I say! (I did end up having a serving of the tiramisu that my friends said were OK… and it was :)

[Fruit platter for me!]

The effects of guilt after stuffing myself with an insane amount of cheese (relative to my normal consumption, which is almost nil) prompted me to get some fruits in the hopes that it will ‘balance out’ the sins I’ve committed.. er… I mean the five-plus-a-day balanced diet thing. Gotta eat your fruits and veggies! I had some honeymelon and watermelon given that I didn’t like canned peaches and pineapples too much. They were fairly fresh and not artificially sweetened with sugar water or anything so that was good. I would’ve gotten myself a bit more but it didn’t seem the establishment were too keen on refilling the dessert buffet section too often, which is another reason why I thought the price we paid was quite expensive. We did have a big group though (around 7 of us) so wherever we go with our plates is going to end up like the aftermath of a locust swarm anyway - but I would’ve thought that given it’s a hotel environment, they would’ve kept things looking nice and filled up the empty cheese platter or the non-existence of watermelon on the fruit platter (both thanks to the careful work of yours truly).

Overall, this place is OK - if you’re wanting a ‘dessert buffet’ experience. If you’re not averse to the price of High Tea then I’d strongly recommend you have that instead (Langham Hotel does this) to get your sweet tooth fix. Otherwise at $18 per person, the dessert buffet is somewhere good to visit if you have no high cholesterol, no heart problems, and have a penchant for punishing yourself by eating really really sweet things in large quantities! Me and my friends probably won’t return until end of the year, when we’ve all forgotten forgotten the shock of so much sugar rushing through our bodies… but if that sounds like your cup of tea, the contact details are below!

Contact details:

Stamford Plaza, Lower Albert Street
Auckland
(09)357 9220

Hours:

7 Days: 6.30 - 10am, 12 - 3pm, 6 - 10pm

Although a little expensive and not exactly the best tasting yum-cha in town, it’s the closest yum-cha experience available to students studying at the University of Auckland! It’s situated at the bottom of Anzac ave, right next to Downtown Foodtown, a mere 10 minute downhill walk from University of Auckland. One unique thing about China Chinese Restaurant is that it’s the only place in Auckland, to the extent of my knowledge, that offers all-day yum-cha. Now that may not surprise anyone living in Asia but here in New Zealand, all-day yum-cha is unheard of! It’s quite cool to be able to devour chicken feet at lunch AND night… don’t you think? OK, maybe egg tarts is a better dish to use in the example… but I’m sure you get what I’m hinting at!

[From top: Prawn dumplings, Chive dumplings, Seaweed salad with chili and sesame seed]

Since one of my friend was a vegetarian, we did our best to accommodate her by ordering the veggie dishes… Sadly she could only eat the seaweed salad! Thankfully the dish was suitably sweet and crisp… to the detriment of my friend as we too started attacking it! The prawn dumplings were OK but the prawns within was on the small side, with the pastry skin being a little bit thin. The same could be said for the chive dumplings which had both chives and pork mince balls, which also had an average taste.

[Dry four season pan fried beans]

Usually you’d order this dish at a Chinese restaurant, so I was a little bit surprised to see the dry pan fried beans doing the rounds on the Yum Cha trolley. It didn’t taste as good as most eateries do them, probably because it wasn’t straight from the wok. The beans were a bit soggy from being out in the open for a while so unless it came straight out from the kitchen, I wouldn’t recommend anyone ordering this.

[Vietnamese spring roll]

We were quite curious as to what these long sticks were - turns out they were spring rolls done in the Vietnamese style, which somehow meant the inclusion of prawns, spring onions and other stuff inside a deep fried pastry, sitting in a pool of sweet chili sauce (with the absence of chili). While nice, again this dish had been out in the open too long so the spring rolls were a little bit soggy too! Otherwise, it was an interesting snack.

[China special tofu]

This tofu was anything but special, sadly. As a tofu lover, I’ve had better dishes and sadly China’s special tofu did was not in this category. The regular appearance of sweet chili sauce is starting to get to me at this point, as everything is starting to taste extremely sweet and similar in taste when paired with the sauce! Just by serving a bed of fried tofu and sprinkling some cucumbers, peanuts, and sweet chili sauce does not make it special in my books. However my vegetarian friend seemed OK with it… so it could just be my obsession with good tofu dishes!

[Chicken feet / Phoenix feet]

I felt extremely relieved to finally bite into a dish that could be discussed in a positive light. Although the skin weren’t steamed to the softness that I’ve experienced at other eateries, the sauce coupled well with the chicken feet and the tendons were nice too. I particularly liked the spices and capsicum taste they put into the sauce, which prevented the sauce from being too heavy on the palette.

Overall as a Yum cha joint, I’d avoid it if I had my car and time available to go to a decent joint somewhere else. But as the closest Yum cha joint to University of Auckland that offers Yum cha at night, it’s definitely a strong contender for my hard earned $$ if I ever had the desire to have chicken feet at random times of the day. Apparently China also offers formal dining (i.e. ordering separate dishes) but judging from the quality of their Yum cha offerings, I’m slightly hesitant at finding out how well they compare to other eateries in that department. Do let me know if anyone does manage to try out this aspect of China!

Contact details:

Ground Floor, 2 Beach Rd
City
Auckland
(09) 309 4808

Hours:

7 days, 12pm - 10pm