Category: Restaurants

Fancy!

We went out for a fancy dinner the other night, celebrating a bit of Christmas and New Year’s all at once. That’s us strolling around the marina beforehand.

We drove our trusty rusty Honda Fit, but others pulled out their fancy cars. When I was a boy, the Jaguar E Type was the car I wanted. I still think it’s the prettiest, but grownup me shudders at the price, the gas-guzzling, etc., so I’m content to admire from the outside.

We had the 6-course tasting menu. When we got there the places were already set with five knives and forks. That was sorta cool but sorta over the top in my view. For what we were paying, couldn’t the server lay down new cutlery for each course? But restaurant service is a bit different in NZ… even in nice restaurants it’s common for cutlery and serviettes to be in a little box on the table and you grab your own.

We’d been to this place once before, and didn’t have a great experience. This time, it was much better, good food and good service.

Happy New Year! Now the diet begins…

0

My core values

Have changed.

There was a time when $3 or on a very hungry day $4 of food from the Wendy’s value menu gave me a good lunch. And by good I mean I liked it, it tasted good (enough) to me, and it felt like you really were getting value for money. Burger, salad, fries, chili, Frosty… good! A group of us would go there for lunch from work at the Missouri Hospital Association fairly regularly.

But this weekend I tried Wendy’s drive thru for I think the second time in the past dozen years. The price has gone up, and the portions have gotten smaller: the Frosty came in a Dixie cup. But most importantly, nothing tasted very good. Not actually bad, just not very good.

I don’t know how much of the change is on the Wendy’s side, how much is due to being in NZ, and how much is in my head. Probably I’ve aged out, just like with nearly everything on TV. But anyway… not something I’ll do any more often than every few years.

2

Election Face

That’s us as the returns rolled in, all dressed for a funeral, and headed out for an end-of-the-world dinner and a bottle of wine. Dark red wine, darker than blood. Blood, wine, smoke, carnage. The orcs are inside the city walls.

But then we got to the restaurant, where our perpetually cheerful hostess Svetlana leaned in and reminded us in her Boris-and-Natasha accent that we can’t influence the high politics. Never could, not anywhere. Still or sparkling?

The lady behind us was wearing a fascinator, maybe getting an extra day’s use out of her Melbourne Cup accessories. Hard not to smile at that.

And so we glumly ate the delicious chicken livers and the rigatoni with the rich red sauce and drank the wine and then since it was the end of the world we ordered a ridiculous foo-foo dessert.

It did help, at least a little.

1

The (touristy) red light district

My Australian colleagues have been to Manila a few times recently. They’ve developed a ritual to eat at the Filling Station each trip. It’s an over-the-top shrine to a sort of 1950s America that probably never existed.

My verdict? Atmosphere 14 out of 10… more kitsch than should be possible in one place. Food meh… I like diner food and this was ok, but that’s as far as I’d go to recommend it. But dinner out with your workmates is always fun no matter what, and we had sampled plenty of Filipino cuisine at other meals, so there was something to be said for comfort food.

The restaurant is just at the edge of the Makati bubble. Inside the bubble is lots of foreigners and lots of money. An American can walk down the street in relative security. Outside the bubble, it gets grittier.

It turns out that the restaurant is on P Burgos Street, a well-known red light district… so our group of five were enthusiastically offered massages and other unspecified services by an array of girls and boys. The restaurant is in the same building as a hotel, and the rates were helpfully displayed in the men’s room. 30 minutes and up…

I’m sure there’s a lot of poverty and diseases and debts and addictions and exploitation behind that whole scene. But being inside the bubble, and out on the street (definitely not legal like in Amsterdam), all the problems are scrubbed and hidden, so it was almost carnival-like to walk through.

0

Chikin!

No, I most certainly did not eat at Chick-fil-a. But I DID eat at Gus’s (whose politics could be just as offensive for all I know).

Awesome……

I substituted fried okra for baked beans, which was even more better.

0

$tarbuck$

Less than 36 hours after getting home from Dallas, I was back on a plane to Brisbane for a couple days of teaching software developers about the intricacies of sending health-related data between computer systems.

On the plane, I had to fill out the little arrival card that you always have to fill out when you go to a foreign country. Although NZ has recently digitized that, which is nice. But anyway, somehow, and I still don’t know how, that card disappeared. So, I was rooting around under the seat, trying to find it. I never did. But I did find a Starbucks gift card, and it turned out to have a $5 balance on it. So now I am at Starbucks, having a mocha and a croissant for breakfast. Of course that was way more than $5, but at least I got a discount.

0

Cielito Lindo Taqueria

Tipped off by a Facebook post, we added a detour to Cielito Lindo Taqueria to last weekend’s Costco trip. The tacos and sopes were delicious and we’ll go back when we’re out that way. But even though the owner is legit Mexican, you can tell you’re in Auckland instead of LA… first, it was $25 for 3 tacos. And second, that didn’t include any chips. And third, lemon instead of lime.

0

Tauranga

Weekend before last we drove the three or so hours south to Tauranga for an overnight getaway. Above is the boutique hotel we stayed in… the old Post Office building. It was quite nice. We appreciated the mocktails in the beautiful lobby bar as our Dry July experiment continues.

Google recommended this fish n chips place. We were warned of the wait, which made it slightly easier… but still it took a looong time. The food was good, but actually, we’ve never had fish n chips that was any better or worse than any other. One’s perception of fried fish in NZ might be all about the day one is having, I think.

We walked around downtown, sleepy on a Saturday afternoon in winter, even if it was a holiday weekend. Some pics…

And then we had a good Vietnamese dinner that nostalgically reminded us of the surprisingly good Vietnamese restaurant near Bradley Airport that we used to go to sometimes.

But Sunday was the main event… a truffle hunt! Next post.

0

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

For all our time together, Lee has impressed on me the importance of NOT moving to Texas. The weather is certainly one of her reasons for that stance.

But you can’t choose where your family lives. So when I have a stop-over chance to visit them in Houston, I take it.

It was hot for sure. But I survived my 40 hours on the ground and got to see the whole clan. And ate a lot, including a delicious dinner at Ninfa’s on Navigation.

1

The four Brazilian food groups

We were invited to the birthday dinner celebration for our friend Susana held at Kika’s West Brazilian BBQ across town in Henderson.

Just as we Americans pine for a decent taco, so Brazilians lament the lack of decent meat. It’s surprising since NZ has a robust BBQ tradition, but for the Brazilians it just ain’t the same.

And after eating this meal, I have to agree. We got the combo platter for two and wow. Melt in your mouth, spicy and delicious. Felt nearly comatose afterwards, and there was enough left for breakfast AND lunch the next day.

0

Hot Like a Mexican!

That’s Andres, and he sells the best tacos in New Zealand under the moniker Hot Like A Mexican. I was so glad somebody in our Expats Facebook group posted about this place, just a hole in the wall in Wellington.

1

Qué rico sabor

On the one hand, a perfectly ordinary meal at a neighborhood Mexican restaurant (La Paloma in San Bruno, CA).

On the other, a wonderful superlative orgasmic delicacy because you just can’t have it in New Zealand.

0

Hot enough for ya?

These Korean wings were advertised as “dangerously hot.” But here in NZ, I’ve learned not to worry too much so I told them to bring it on.

The cook came out to say “are you sure?”

Game on.

Sweating, flushed, coughing, snot running from my nose, I finished the whole plate. They brought me more (un-spicy) chicken to honor my courage and fortitude.

We exchanged a ceremonial bow and went back to our respective days.

0

Fergburger

Everybody told us we had to eat at Queenstown’s famous Fergburger. But the lines at lunchtime were ridiculous. No burger is that good.

But if you’re willing to eat a burger at 9 AM, and we were, you can walk right in.

Apparently Fergburger has been around a while, but Lonely Planet named them as some sort of global best burger and it really blew up after that.

I still wouldn’t stand in a long line for it, but it was pretty damn good and we went back, again at breakfast, on our last day.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑