Restaurant Review: Mai Thai

Students are, by definition, perennially poor. This often makes dining out difficult, especially if you want to have your wine and drink it too. And that is why God created the BYO restaurant. A step up from cheap and cheerful, and rarely cheap and nasty, BYO restaurants are one of the few places outside of a bar where one can drink, be merry, and get pissed in a vaguely dignified manner.

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Hotel DeBrett. Since its recent big refurbishment, I have been rearing to go see its transformation for myself, and in particular, get a taste of its celebrated Kitchen, which has received much praise. It is one of our city’s premier boutique hotels, full of history and housed in the shell of Auckland’s first hotel, The Commercial Hotel, which survived several fires and the eighties. Still standing today on the corner of High St and Shortland St, this white beacon hails from days gone by where city planning was not a total disaster and sophistication oozed out of every cornerstone.

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‘Kumara, in touch with his roots, seeks underground scene for smokin’ hot fun.’ When one starts to see food innuendo invade the sides of buses, newspaper ads and billboards, it can only mean one thing. That the editor of the lonely hearts pages got hungry, or that the Food Show is coming to town. I think about food more times a day than is probably normal, and if these thoughts had a caloric equivalent, I’d probably be morbidly obese. Heck, I write a column every week about ‘eating-out’. So it would strike some people, myself included, as surprising that I had yet to visit the annual Food Show. I sought however to remedy such gaps in my foodie experience and present to you an account of the good, the bad, and the ugly truth of the Food Show.

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Restaurants tend to go through phases and crazes; once it was pork belly, then it was foams of all descriptions, and for a while now it has been tapas. A buzzword originating from the shores of Spain, once entailing unpretentious and delicious food has here come to mean small plates with large price tags. A visit to Tasca on the trendy Newmarket strip known as Nuffield Street proved itself to be unspectacular and rather disappointing, with the food lacking the gustiness and flare of Spain in all but name.

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There are certain things a girl must do in her lifetime. One of these things is Yorkshire puds. The other is watching the big game in a pub. I’ve never prescribed myself to the college of those who watch the game in bars and pubs on a Saturday night. Not intentionally at any rate. I didn’t even know there would be a game on last Saturday as three friends and I trawled the Newmarket Cock and Bull in search of a free table. As we found out, it seems that drinking and feeding holes such as the Cock and Bull are wildly popular spots where one can find beer, camaraderie and a decent feed.

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As three friends and I ended a night at the much-famed Coco’s Cantina on K’Rd, we contemplated the evils of celebrity, celebrity endorsement, and Dan Carter. For it was on this very fateful Saturday night that four females rubbed shoulders with the burlier ones of Mr Carter himself, shared a few brief words with one Lady Hawke outside the ladies room, and were treated to one very memorable dining experience.

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