The Don

When you mix cheese with Japanese food, it’s surprisingly good. The Don is one place I’ve noticed using this technique (there’s probably more of this and people need to tell me!). The Don is located on High Street and has been highly recommended in other blogs. I’ve been here a few times and have taken a fair amount of photos. Here goes:

Chicken Namban Don.

Pork Cheese Katsu Don.

Pork Katsu Don.

Soy Sauce Braised Beef Udon.

Prawn Cheese.

Beef Cheese Roll.

To save writing up prices of the meals that will certainly confuse you all; the meals costs $11 or $11.50, the Pork Katsu Don and Beef Udon at the higher end. The side dishes (tapas) such as the Prawn Cheese and Beef Cheese Roll cost $7 and $6.50 respectively. So expect to pay around that per side dish, which isn’t too bad. Oh, they’re only available after 5pm.

Overall, I’m impressed with the dishes. No disappointment on my visits there and environment is good for a quiet meal. The pricing and quality of the dishes are above average with just the right amount of variety. My rating is 8.5/10. The cheese can be overwhelming (and I believe fattening). A must try though. =)

Kang Nam Station 2

I have this in my draft for a bit too long, so it’s time I took it out for the world to share.

Kang Nam Station 2 is somewhere near the Auckland City Library and SkyCity Cinema. That probably didn’t help as there’s probably like 3 to 4 Korean restaurants around there. It’s not the one directly opposite Borders or the library, but in between those two, right around the corner. It’s not hard to spot and they apparently have two parkings available.

Kang Nam Station has an original (no. 1) which is quite nearby I believe. Actually, I don’t know where the original one is, but I’m thinking somewhere near the row of Korean shops on Upper Queen St. It’s a weird restaurant because when you enter the place, there’s a pokie machine section on the right hand side. I don’t know why, maybe it’s like some Korean dual business thing. But pokie machines in a restaurant can be a bit weird, and plus, those machines attract a different kind of crowd.

Some samples of the food are shown below:

Steamboat package.

Bulgogi.

Bibimbap.

The price of the Bulgogi and Bibimbap are $12 each, and they were pretty good. I do, however think they’re getting a bit stingy with the side dishes. But otherwise, for the price, they have good meat dishes.

The steamboat package from memory comes in three or four types – I can’t remember what they were. This one above cost $35. For this one, I got everything, vegetables, meat, rice, soup and also noodle. It’s very filling and tastes great on a cold winter night.

My rating is a decent 8/10. The pokie machine section can be easily ignored and the slight stinginess is bearable (as most Korean restaurants are going that way unfortunately). However, the positive is relatively cheap, great tasting Korean food.

Angie’s Kitchen

I got recommended to this place and heard lots of good things about it. Angie’s Kitchen is located very near to AUT in the CBD. Parking is quite a pain to find, but on the weekend it’s alright. The place is also a halal restaurant which is pretty good.

Samples below:

Kapitan Curry Chicken on Rice.

Braised Beef Noodle Soup.

Teh Tarik less sugar (with a free apricot biscotti).

Kopi  less sugar.

I thought the Kapitan Curry Chicken was very good, but the braised beef noodle was plain. The mistake was probably not selecting “traditional” Malaysian food, i.e. Nasi Lemak, Laksa or whatever.  The price of the food was above average, I don’t remember it being less than $10, so not a cheap option. The coffee and tea drinks didn’t taste that great.

My rating is average, 6.5/10. The pricing didn’t help.

Deli & Noodle Bar @ Sky City Casino

The Deli and Noodle Bar at the Sky City Casino is always an all-time favourite for me. It opens late, and there’s plenty of pokies and slot machines to keep you entertained for the whole night – that is if you’re a gambler.

On a late winter night, I was trying to figure out where to go for dinner and decided upon the casino as I haven’t been there for ages. The Deli and Noodle Bar isn’t exactly a quiet place to eat and lighting isn’t that great. Also, your meals don’t get served to you. I decided to try the Noodle Bar since I had fond memories of the beef brisket. Samples below:

Beef Brisket Hor Fun.

Soya Chicken on Rice.

For most of the meals, you have a choices of either rice, rice noodles, egg noodles etc. The soya chicken cost $10.50, while the beef brisket cost $8.50. So, price-wise, it’s standard. Flavour-wise, the soya chicken is tasty, while the beef brisket needed extra flavours from the chilli. Overall, it was quite a good meal for the time frame as well as flavour. My rating is 7/10.

The other thing you could always try is the Deli which has various Western options. But the best way to utilise the Deli is to register for the Action Card (which is free I think). That way you can get discounts on meals.

Two Monkeys Vietnamese Restaurant

I am back, for the moment. I have been around but just didn’t have time to post any reviews. Anyway here’s a quick one.

This is for Two Monkey’s Vietnamese Restaurant located on Dominion Road (easily noticeable), near all the fast food place i.e. Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, Burger Fuel etc. First impression, the place does look somewhat authentic. Once you get in and see the menu (and hear the staff talk), it’s not really a Vietnamese restaurant. Although it does try to be. Perhaps, the boss or someone is. Who knows.

The first thing you don’t see is the lemon grass dishes, and it has random Chinese favourites in there! For this occassion, ordered the Beef Pho and Roasted Chicken on Rice (I thought this was lemon grass). Both are $9 which is cheap and I had the meal around 4pm.

Beef Pho.

Roasted Chicken on Rice.

Surprisingly, the rice dish was not bad. The Beef Pho was very average. The chilli they put on each table looked a bit dodgy and wouldn’t recommend to try.  Overall, not very Vietnamese at all. The price is reasonable and they seem to feed anyone at anytime which is good. Customer service is also OK. If you’re hungry at 3.30pm on a Sunday, this place is your best shot other than the fast food places.

My rating 5/10. It’s not horrible, but won’t recommend for authentic Vietnamese food.

Royal Buffet

A random one for the month. I went to this place with friends and was quite disappointed.

Royal Buffet is a newly opened restaurant, located on Short Street in Newmarket, opposite T Mark.  To compete with the neighbouring restaurants, for instance $10 pizza/pasta/salad lunch at Archie’s, Royal Buffet offers $12 Buffet lunch and $25 main buffet. Not a bad move.

I am not a fan of buffets, and I think I’ll never be. But decided to give it a try because the main buffet is advertised as having top chefs cooking the best cuisine and providing a variety of food. The cost was $25 per person. The initial look of the place looked OK, but realised it was below average and with limited variety after spending 15 mins in there. The items were not very good – chicken curry hardly has any meat, no real fish in their sushi variety, low quality instant coffee. Some of the stuff were alright, for example miso soup, frice rice, deep fried squid and japanese cold noodle.

The place truly lacked variety and for the amount you pay, it’s not worth it. Also, during dining there was a very unhappy couple who complained about the food (which is fair). But poor guys, they got chased out.

My rating is a 0/10. It’s crap. Not worth it at all.

KK Malaysian Restaurant

I’ve got a love/hate relationship with this place.

KK restaurant is based on Manukau Road, quite close to Alexandra Park. It’s hard to spot unless you know the place. And most Malaysians know or heard of the place. From outside it looks small, and you won’t be wrong to assume that. It is damn tiny.

Anyway, it has been a while since I’ve been to this place, so decided to give it a try. At 12pm on a Saturday, I was surprised to find a seat immediately, but was placed in a round table sharing with two couples. It’s weird but food was the priority, not comfort. The conditions were cramp, so don’t expect plenty of breathing space at KK restaurant.

A sample of the dishes below:

 

Hainanese Chicken Rice.

 

Nasi Lemak with Beef Rendang – served on Nasi Kerabu.

The chicken rice was $10, and the nasi lemak was $12. Both looked and tasted good. I’d say the KK Nasi Lemak had a lot of appeal because of the blue coloured rice (my favourite colour). The beef rendang was moist and tender – same goes for the chicken. The chilli side dish was very nice. Price-wise, I thought it’s pretty fair for the quality.

The place has two problems though (1) space and (2) customer service/attitude. I guess space in any popular Asian restaurant has a proportional relationship to its quality of food.  So, this was no exception, it is good so it’s cramp. Fair enough. If you don’t like being cooped up, I’d recommend the takeaway.

However, the customer service and attitude is a bit bad. It’s probably the thing that irks me about KK restaurant. The last time I was here, there was an older lady (perhaps the owner) who would often give you the “look” if you didn’t order more than one dish per head, as if we owed that much to her. Similarly, now there is a lady there as well who gives the “look” probably for similar reasons. On this occassion, she gave the “look” to a customer who asked for her order to be taken after waiting for quite a while. So, I guess there’s a similar conclusion, get the takeaway if you can’t stand the attitude.

My rating is based on many criterias, the food being very tasty and reasonably priced. However, the attitude needs some serious improvement because they are in the hospitality industry (and they are Malaysians!). My rating is 7/10.

Saigonz

Finally, another decent Vietnamese restaurant in town. Saigonz is apparently a new Vietnamese restaurant on Beach Road. It’s quite near Foodtown, but parking is difficult to find like any place in the city. I think the place caters for the nearby businesses and residents. Just by initially looking at the place, which is small with only a few tables and with their dishes served in plastic bowls. Their menu is small, which makes decision making somewhat easier. They have a website, and  even an 0800 number (0800 SAIGONZ).

Anyway, the dishes sampled are shown below:

 

Beef Pho.

 

Lemon Grass Chicken on Rice.

 

Lemon Grass Chicken Curry.

 

Pork and Prawn Summer Rolls.

 All of the above dishes cost $9.50, except the rolls, which cost $7.00.  I have to admit, all the dishes tasted great! The only niggle is the plastic dishes they were served in. A bit too takeaway-ish for me, but I guess that’s what the business is catered/designed for. I was hoping the rolls would be cheaper, perhaps like $4 or $5. Perhaps we need more Vietnamese immigrants like Melbourne. =)

My rating is a very favourable 9/10. It’s something new, the flavours and pricing do not disappoint. The rolls could be cheaper but I guess they’re one of two Vietnamese restaurants in town.

Food Alley

The Food Alley. Yes, yes, yes.

I’ve always wanted to try this place. But I couldn’t be bothered because parking is extremely difficult to find and they have too many choices. Perhaps that’s why they’ve won the Best Cheap Eats last year – lots of competition for pricing and better tasting food.

Food Alley is on Albert Street, more towards downtown. There were many places that I sampled. Some of them are as below:

Chicks

Chicken Rice Large.

Chicks is serving purely chicken dishes. The above dish is $9 and it’s not bad. I thought the soup was a bit luke warm. Most of their dishes is below $10 which is good for those cheapos like me. However, overall it did not impress me.

Waroeng Wardani Indonesian Food 

Seafood Balado.

Ox Tail Soup on Rice.

Both dishes were $11 each. I thought the Balado was quite good. The seafood was the “fake” seafood, so perhaps my next try would be chicken or something. The Ox Tail is unique. Overall, not bad. Something I’d try again. There isn’t a lot of Indonesian places around.

Umaiya Japanese Cuisine

Chicken Bento.

The above was $10.50 and it had a lot of stuff. I thought it was a good dish and damn good value for money. It’s definitely worth a try for a value meal. But Japanese food tends to be the same all the time, so it wasn’t very exciting. 

I can’t exactly give a rating for this place – it’s a bit unfair since I haven’t tried everything else. There is definitely a lot of choices, and each with their own strength and weaknesses. I’d say try the Indonesian place which is right at the back of the food court.

Selera

Another Malaysian place. I know. Boring. But why not? =)

I hardly go to Selera, which is situated in Newmarket (also near where I live). I was there about 10 months ago and I got pee-ed of with the “quality” of the food and price. But I’ve heard they’ve changed ownership and/or management. Some things that annoyed me previously was the crappy fatty left-overish char sieu they put on their kon low mee and the very MSG-ed laksa. I had to drink a bucket of water after that. That was before.

So during the weekend, I decided to have a look. Two dishes were sampled:

Kon Lo Mee.

Nasi Lemak.

After trying the two above dishes, I was pleasantly surprised. Although the price is still expensive (above $12), they have tried to reduce their price only for lunch during the weekdays ($8.90). The Kon Low Mee, flavoursome although still lacking substantial protein. The Nasi Lemak with Beef Rendang was tender and moist. I can’t complain, although price-wise it is high they have specials for the weekday.

My rating is 8.5/10. They do still have some work to do in terms of reducing their price. It’s just $2 more expensive (on average) compared to the nearest Malaysian restaurant (Laksa House at the Newmarket Food Plaza).

Do give Selera a try – only during weekdays for lunch. =)

Sichuan in Remuera Restaurant

The restaurants in surburbia land are getting more and more, especially in Auckland. Maybe it’s always been like that? Those were the days when the closest thing to Chinese food near your house was the odd takeaway next to the Dairy. On top of selling fried rice and random Chinese food, they also sell fish & chips.

The Sichuan in Remuera Restaurant is one of those, except more decent and formal. It’s situated behind the Remuera Shops (off Remuera Road), but you’d have to drive to the back. It’s relatively hard to spot unless you know the area well. Anyway, I heard things about this place and decided to go.

Three dishes were sampled as shown below:

Honey Pork Chop .

Mapo Tofu.

Sizzling Fillet Steak in Chinese style.

Overall, the experience was somewhat disappointing. Perhaps because I didn’t try the traditional Sichuan food. The menu was littered with every single “standard” Chinese food you can think of. Nothing in the menu stood out. But surprisingly, there were people going in and out.

The Honey Pork Chop was $18, and it was quite average tasting. The Mapo Tofu was slightly better costing $18. The Sizzling Fillet Steak in Chinese Style is $22. Clearly, the food was quite average (for me anyway) but it wasn’t bad tasting. If there was a Sichuan Restaurant, I’d prefer HP8 on Nuffield Street.

My rating is 7/10. Average. If you’re hungry and near the area, go for it. Lai Lai Noodle House is a much better alternative, but I don’t think they do dinner.

Lonestar

Lonestar, it’s all over the place.

I went to this restaurant for a birthday celebration, where the birthday guy didn’t know anyone else. Fantastic eh? I’ve been to Lonestar a few times. I’ve tried the lamb in Rototura, and it was quite nice – it probably helped that it was paid by the company *grins* I even tried the vegetarian option, I believe it was the burrito (I had a no-animal for food phase a year ago – check out the PETA website and you’ll see why). Both times I was satisfied.

Just a quick overview about Lonestar, they are like the Hooters of NZ. Girls dress as little as possible, usually wearing a singlet and short shorts. Nice eye-candy for the boys, probably not so for the gals.

This time round to Lonestar, I was pretty disappointed. Maybe because I chose the wrong dish.  Two dishes were sampled shown below:

Kiwi Joker.

Cajun Chicken Salad.

The salad was not ordered by me. For $25.50, it was a nice dish but a tad overpriced. Personally, I have not seen a salad over $20 yet, maybe because it was during lunch. I ordered the Kiwi Joker, for $35.50. Now here comes the pun, I thought the dish was a joke! The beef was a ribeye, and I ordered it medium rare. It tasted very average. Nothing in the dish impressed me. It probably took the kitchen 10 mins to make it up (beef + potatoes + coleslaw + mushrooms + onions). For $35.50, I could have had a better dish somewhere else, or 3 very good Asian meals at the Newmarket Plaza Food Court.

This is a biased post as usual, so don’t take the rating too seriously.  Lonestar is just a tad overpriced and could do better with the meals. I probably chose the wrong dish, but sorry Lonestar, I ain’t gonna come back anymore unless someone really likes the place.

My rating, 5/10. I believe they do have good dishes, but to charge $35.50 for a dish, it has to be a flagship product.