Frankie's Wurstbude, Auckland Central

Have you ever picked up a plate of food, momentarily felt your arm drop slightly with the unexpected weight, and thought for a second "I'm going to be about this much heavier in about 10 minutes". Amazing, slightly worrying at the same time.

I love big food. There's a part of me that really warms to honest, hearty, unapologetic dishes, and the sausage features in many such plates. With mash, in a bun, in batter, in a stew... all good rib-sticking, stout fare. Attacking a serious sausage dish for a working lunch is not for the fainthearted.

And so it was with some trepidation that the salesman and I headed to Frankie's around 1pm. We had no idea what we were in for, and so I foolishly ordered a chilli dog with a Bavarian bratwurst. He, something equally sausagy with mash etc. When the server passed it to me over the counter, all attempts at masculine nonchalance failed me and I think the words 'Good... God...' may have passed my trembling lips. I was about to gain a good few kilos.

This thing was a clear foot long, with a definite... girth. Loaded with a portion of chilli that wouldn't look out of place served on its own. Topped with a generous handful of cheese, if those hands belonged to the BFG. Served atop a hotdog bun which had been literally flattened by the burden. I took a deep breath, rearranged a few internal organs to make space, and got involved.

'Good' doesn't somehow do this brat justice. Anything more expressive would seem somehow... wrong - you know what I mean. I'll settle for 'damn good', and that it was - juicy, densely meaty and remarkably subtly flavoured, covered in a great, rich chilli with a generous capsaicin whack, and cheese. Just cheese. Lots of it. I loved every single mouthful and yes, I managed the lot.

Get hungry, go there, order big and eat it all. If you love food, you'll love Frankie's.

Frankie's Wurstbude

Elliott Stables

Shop 4, 41 Elliott St

Auckland Central

+64 (0) 9 365 2700

Dida's Wine & Tapas Lounge, Ponsonby

Weekend lunches are one of the best things ever. I have been known to make them last all day, starting shortly after a summary piece of toast and coffee, and finishing with a G&T to mark the passing of lunch into dinner. I like long weekend lunches so much, I almost dislike weekday work lunches because they always fall so far short by comparison.

Dida's is a good place for lunch on the weekend. It's on my way to work, and spitefully reminds me as I pass it twice a day that lunch today will be a disappointment. So tempted, I vowed to turn as much of Sunday as possible over to Dida's. Not without a hint of trepidation, though, as I've long been a fan of Spanish cooking, and have visited Dida's excellent delicatessen a few times in the past, so expectations were high.

And they were met. Laid-back, friendly service delivered an array of superb dishes, and the afternoon slipped by with quiet chatter and bold, complex flavours. Stuffed artichokes were tender, rich mouthfuls; pork meatballs were moist and paprika-scented; accompanying Manchego and charcuterie were both excellent... I could go on, but you get the picture. The only mildly disappointing piece was the Chorizo al Vino, which in itself was a well-executed dish, but based on a good spicy pork sausage, sadly not chorizo. I'm coming to expect this, though, and regular readers will know this is a bit of a hobby horse of mine.

Tapas for me is about relaxation, grazing, and complex, comforting flavours. It's easy to get wrong by being over-fussy or generally crap at cooking, and I've been subjected to both many times both in the UK and abroad. Dida's gets it right, by focusing on great basic ingredients, taking time and care with their preparation, and serving them without ceremony in a pleasant, convivial place on Jervois Road. The only shame is that I'm not still there now, working my way through the back half of the menu.


54, Jervois Road,
Ponsonby
Auckland 1011

+64 (0) 9376 2813

Orbit, Auckland Central

Say what you like about Auckland's Sky Tower, but I'm a bit of a fan of it. It's hard to imagine what Auckland would be like without it - the standard of architecture here is generally pretty poor so something to give the city a bit of identity is much needed. Not that it's particularly attractive, but you have to admit it's an impressive structure, even more so considering Auckland's tendency to earthquakes and the like. The view from 186 metres up (the height of the observation deck), as you'd expect, is terrific.

I do start to get a bit twitchy though, when I'm approaching a restaurant at which the food is not the star attraction. It's a fairly obvious deduction to make that if you own a restaurant perched atop something like the Sky Tower, there's little incentive to focus on the quality of the food, when you know full well that a) no one's paying that much attention to it, and b) people will come for the view regardless of the quality of the food.

Selfless chap that I am, and fortified with little more than a brace of vodkas and a fairly enthusiastic G&T, I accompanied the future in-laws up the tower for a birthday meal (not mine). Perhaps it was my lowered expectations, but I was really quite impressed.

The food, then. A prix fixe including a slightly over-fussy but perfectly good smoked duck and mushroom tart, followed by roast lamb loin with a 'tomato, rosemary and kalamata olive compote' and a 'grilled spring onion', completed by a chocolate parfait, for $65 with a couple of glasses of wine thrown in. Whilst it was far from phenomenal (a well-executed but cacophonous starter, lacklustre (but perfectly cooked) lamb and frankly bizarre pairing of otherwise excellent flavours in the dessert), from a value perspective you couldn't beat it.

Service was that of a slightly more expensive restaurant - all the staff seemed properly trained, helpful and knowledgeable, and didn't seem to mind helping people find their seats again after a bathroom visit - the whole restaurant revolves about one and hour, which can get disorientating after a couple of revolutions. The wine list wasn't exceptional, but did the job very well indeed, and without the usual wallet-rape that's become all-too-frequent in this town.

So on the whole, pleasantly surprised. I was expecting awful, and instead got above-average, and crucially served at a below-average price. On the whole, if you're entertaining people from out of town who understand that sometimes the food can play second fiddle to stunning views of Auckland, Orbit could be a good bet.



Orbit
SkyCity Auckland
Corner Victoria and Federal Streets
Auckland
+64 (0) 9 363 6000

Wishbone, Auckland Central

I don’t generally review weekday lunch venues, as there’s only so much you can say about sandwiches, but I think Wishbone deserves a mention, for having served me one of the worst lunches I’ve had in my four months of working in the CBD. To be fair, I’ve had sandwiches from here a number of times in the past and they’ve generally been a good average; fresh, well-filled and so on, and not disastrously expensive. The hot food looks tempting, and last week I was eyeing the ‘Chicken and Chorizo Paella’ hungrily, but for some reason went to the sandwich display instead.

This week I once again ignored what I’m learning are pretty good instincts, and ordered the paella. I’m regretting it right now, as I’m also regretting passing up the opportunity presented by numerous bins on the walk from Vulcan Lane to my office.

True, for $7 I’m not expecting miracles. From a metal dish kept under a heat lamp all day, I’m not expecting rice that’s not overcooked. However, budgets and cooking facilities don’t make up for a box of mushy rice and stringy chicken with so much aggressive seasoning it put me in mind of a washing up liquid I once bought, all acrid chemically rosemary and stinging salt. This is what I imagine Milton Keynes tastes like.

Let’s talk for a moment about the Chorizo. I have been living in Auckland for nine months now, and have been on the lookout for real cooking Chorizo (actually, real Chorizo of any kind would do), with no results to show so far. My luck did not turn at Wishbone, whose paella actually contained several wafer-thin slices of what seemed to be a sort of highly processed pork sausage, seasoned with a powerful chilli pepper of some kind, again artificial and tasteless beyond the burn. Grim beyond belief.

So I say this to whoever calls themselves a cook at Wishbone, and to the butchers of New Zealand in general – Chorizo is not just a spicy pork sausage, and to sell a stick of processed, acridly spiced MRM as such is criminal.

Anyway, my rant about sub-standard pork produce aside, the sandwiches are acceptable at Wishbone, but the hot food seems pretty dire. Avoid.

1 Vulcan Lane
Auckland 1010
+64 (0) 9 368 5044

Bouchon Creperie & Wine Café, Kingsland

After last night's appalling meal, we needed something to redress the balance. A bit of simplicity, a bit of basic good cooking. Having walked past Bouchon a fair bit in the past on the way to other places, we'd been meaning to actually walk in for a while. The promise of some decent crepes first thing in the morning was too much to resist on this occasion.

There's a fine line a venue has to tread between authenticity and pastiche, and Bouchon manages to fall on the right side of it, mainly through an authentic French don't-really-care attitude, which I personally love. Careworn walls, ancient adverts for various French things, everything in its right place. Sunny, charmingly unaffected service.

The missus opted for a sweet option - banana, honey and almonds. Pronounced it 'good', with the sort of look on her face that I only wish I could invoke more often. As for me, I went with the Classique - a buckwheat pancake filled with cheese, eggs, and in my case, lardons the size and intensity of which I've never seen before. So very, very good. Full-flavoured, generously portioned, and only about $12. Good coffee, too, actually slightly better than the one I had from Roasted Addiqtion the morning before.

The wine list looks interesting, too, although even though it was a French place and they probably wouldn't care, I couldn't stretch to a Bandol at 10:30am on a Sunday. We're definitely headed back there for dinner at some point though - if they can get a staple like a savoury crepe absolutely spot on, the omens look good for the evening service. There's stiff competition for food in Kingsland, and Bouchon holds its own with a particularly insouciant, effortless Gallic ease.

Bouchon Creperies & Wine Café

479 New North Road

Kingsland

Auckland

+64 (0) 9 845 1680

Estasi, Ponsonby

Come on, you knew this could never be a positive review. Look at the name of the place for Christ's sake - unless this place is knocking out pills of the decidedly dodgy type, it's never going to live up to it, is it? It doesn't end there - styling a restaurant like some low-rent Euro-disco circa 1992 just doesn't get the appetite going.

But where friends go, friends must follow, and thus I ended up spending part of my Saturday night perusing one of the most challenging menus I've seen in the last six months and wondering if it'd be rude of me to excuse myself to visit the Murder Burger down the road. Challenging in the wrong way, in case you wondered.

Let's start with the wine list, because that's what I did. Brands abound, with a double slap in the face in that not only did we recognise most of these from the middle shelves of most supermarkets, but that the enormous mark up was that much more obvious this way. I used to work in wine wholesale, so I get the economics at work here, but there's no way you can get me to shell out $40 for Oyster Bay, the one purest expression of how utterly pallid New Zealand wine can get. Forgive me for being mildly disappointed, but aren't we in a wine-producing country here? Pride in a national product, anyone? There's plenty of astounding wine being made here, much of it very reasonably priced, so there's no excuse for it not to turn up on restaurant lists.

So, disappointment so far. For some reason, we were taking our time to decide on the food order, despite several increasingly urgent requests from our waitress. Perhaps some sort of extra-sensory perception was holding us back - our brains warning us not to go any further. Or perhaps we were just desperately scouring the list looking for anything remotely edible.

Trust your instincts, mother always used to say, and on this occasion I sorely wished I had. With the kitchen having run out of lamb shanks (at 8pm on a Saturday night - nice ordering, guys), I went for the steak, opting for the simplest option on the menu for safety. Rare, came the done side of medium. A very poor piece of meat, which the kitchen had attempted to disguise with a slick coating of dense mushroom sauce. Piled precariously next to it were some leaden sauteed potatoes topped with 'mushy peas' - in reality some garden peas which a particularly venomous chef had cooked until dry and then squashed with a fork.

Lack of anything of interest in front of me led to me checking out the other plates. On the one opposite me, chicken. Doused in the same sauce that drowned my steak. On the one next to me, venison, with the same bizarre vegetable tower as on mine. The cynicism from the kitchen flavoured everything - when they constructed my meal, did they think carefully about every component or chuck together whatever they had in the fridge? The same accompaniment, the same sauce for multiple dishes doesn't really make you think there's a particularly discerning hand at work back there. The fact that both elements were extraordinarily badly cooked didn't help matters.

Funnily, given her earlier clinginess, our waitress disappeared completely shortly after the second bottle of wine (between five people) was ordered. We eventually managed to collar a colleague and terrorize them into bringing one over, but this continued. Dessert was skipped as firstly there was literally nothing on the menu worth the bother (a rarity in itself when dining with three women), and secondly as we seriously thought we might be there until Sunday evening.

Coffee then. Predictably awful. The price? At $30 a main dish on average, not horrendous, but not brilliant either. I'm not sure what's more offensive, the cynically constructed, badly cooked food, the frankly weird service, or the fact that at the end of all of this, they actually want you to pay for it.

Trust your instincts. Go anywhere else.

Estasi

222 Ponsonby Road

Auckland

+64 (0) 9 361 3222

http://www.estasi.co.nz

Mekong Neua, Kingsland

One of the many food-related things that London does pretty poorly is Thai food. For every Soho Thai or Busaba Eathai, there's a hundred local aberrations such as Ta Krai and the like. Seriously, London has a great rep and some terrific restaurants, but scratch the surface and there's some horrible crap there. Tough, overcooked meats; thin, spiteful sauces; cynical chillies; limp... everything. We had to leave, if only for the sake of our dinners.

Fortunately since coming to Auckland we've had some tremendous Thai meals, one such being a midweek sojourn at Mekong Neua - a comparatively understated little place quietly holding its own amid louder neighbours such as Canton Café. It's a curious little place, with a roaring fire in the front section comically lent a bit of heat by a strategically-placed electric heater. Odd little touches like this aside though, it's comfortably forgettable inside.

The food's the star in this one though, with the crispier appetisers showing a deft hand on the fryer handle and a typically simple yet effective dipping sauce setting the selection off perfectly. Curries were rich, flavoursome and powerfully chillied as requested, with everything in them perfectly cooked and still bursting with flavour and character.

I don't mean to be controversial, but I think there's only so far you can take some cuisines. Thai, certain Indian, Cantonese - all great foods but you wouldn't want any of them messed with, elevated to rarified heights like the finest French or Japanese dishes. Their charm lies in their substance, their earthiness, their unfussed simplicity. So-called 'Royal' Thai as practised at places like Fulham's Blue Elephant leaves me a bit cold (not to mention irritatingly poorer).

This is where it's at - fiery chillies, substantial sauces, experienced cooking and great service. All of these are in ample supply at Mekong Neua - worth braving Kingsland's notoriously appalling parking for.