today we're hunting down the best food in our hometown of Auckland, New Zealand
New Zealand is home to over 200 ethnic communities, food from every corner of
the globe makes our food culture vibrant and diverse, this is our 4th
video from New Zealand and we're in Auckland watch out for delicious Indian
chaat, killer spicy Szechuan noodles and authentic Māori food
in this four-part
series we're travelling all over New Zealand to show you the best food from
our homeland from iconic Kiwi snacks to rare foods plus a tonne of Aotearoa's
breathtaking beauty you don't want to miss this series get ready for some
mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate, we hope
you're hungry let's eat!
Auckland's an incredibly culturally diverse city so we were born and bred here and
it's really nice to be home for a little bit to film some content and show you
some of our favourite stuff so growing up here we have all sorts of food on the
menu so there's over two hundred, two hundred ethnicities living in Auckland
because there's been a lot of immigration and migration here over the
years so we want to show you some of the best food today some of the stuff that
we love eating when we're back home in New Zealand, let's go
Auckland is a beautiful city with volcanoes everywhere and a lot of water
all around it, it's surrounded by harbours so we've come right down to the wharf on the
harbour for our first thing we're gonna eat and that is hāngi which is a
traditional food cooked by the indigenous people of New Zealand the
Māori and this is actually quite hard to find in a restaurant it's very
uncommon to be able to go somewhere and purchase hāngi so we were really, really
stoked when we saw this place The Māori Kitchen had opened up down here right on
the wharf serving hāngi we'll tell you more about how they cook it which is a
pretty neat technique but let's order some first
check out this huge plate of hāngi so we ordered the works the full shebang so
we've got some pork here there's some mesclun, some salad leaves on the top a
couple of potatoes this here is kumara which is sweet
potato and then we've got some pumpkin now look this is rapidly getting cold so
I'm just gonna get in first and talk later oh underneath the pork there's
also some stuffing, I've got some pork some stuffing and pumpkin on this
mouthful
hmm really simple flavours but really vibrant flavours so the pumpkin is really
sweet and creamy, that stuffing has got a tonne of herbs
inside so a lot of thyme I can taste and then that pork is so juicy and it really
just falls apart it's not dry at all
now the team at The Māori Kitchen are really
intent on cooking hāngi the traditional way so what they do is they take these
stones, stones which have been in the family for generations
they heat those stones up with Manuka timber and then the food is placed on top
of the hot stones to cook with earth piled on top of the food and so it
essentially steams and cooks in this underground oven for about seven hours
the results are amazing the meat is really smoky and the flavours
are really really pure and vibrant
look at that there's a whole bunch of cabbage
down there too so we've got cabbage and stuffing but the reason we're having
this hāngi so there are some hāngi shops around Auckland not many though at all and
most of them now cook their hāngi in a sort of a stainless steel above-ground
gas-powered hāngi cooker but these guys do it properly it's underground so
the process that Sheena talked about that is what they use to cook their
hāngi and outside of the home or the marae it's really hard to get
traditional hāngi like this at a restaurant so this is pretty special
It's really really good
so because we're eating that hāngi right here on the wharf with the ships
right behind us this is not where the hāngi pits are so we couldn't show you the
process of the hāngi being cooked but that was an awesome start to this video
so now we're going to head off and we're going to show you some more of the other
cultures here so we said there's over 200 different cultures living in
Auckland so there is a massive variety of food to have
next up we're going for
some Indian street food now this is one of my favourite types of street food in
the world and I love that we can get some really good stuff here in New
Zealand as well so this place we're going to we've eaten at before it's
really good so lets go check it out
New Zealand doesn't have a street food culture so you do have to go to
restaurants to eat foods which are typically street food dishes in their
countries of origin we are at Mumbai Chaat and these guys do really good chaat
I am so ready for it let's go
we've got two dishes and these are two of our
absolute favourites so this is dahi puri and this is a samosa chaat so under there
is a samosa hiding under all those ingredients now both of these dishes
we've had in videos when we've been in India we absolutely love them both so
it's definitely high on our list to get when we're back here in New Zealand but
I'm gonna start with this dahi puri so the puri is a little sort of puffed bread
thing you can see where it's been cracked with a like a thumb's cracked
through and then inside it's filled absolutely filled with curd let's get
this one there's a bit no wait this one ha here we go so you can see there's a bit
of curd just spilling out then it's got some sev all over the top which are
these little chickpea noodles that are broken up all over the top it's got some
tamarind chutney that's the brown one and then the green one that's hiding in
there is probably a coriander chutney and there's some fresh coriander on top
too now it's all about one delicious explosion of flavour here so I'm gonna
put the whole thing in in one go ohhh
Oh man
Oh that is so good
it's a burst of flavour
I forgot to say as well under that curd so under the yogurt is some
potato some spiced curried potato so it's got a creaminess from that, a burst of
flavour the the chutney the tamarind chutney is tangy a little bit spicy with
chilli and then the curd is just super fresh and delicious and really tangy as
well man they are a burst of flavour and I love the puri on the outside because
it's very very crunchy all those flavours and textures go really well together
how good does this samosa chaat look so we have got a tonne of that sev on top which is
the chickpea noodles there's some drizzles of chutney so tamarind chutney
and the same coconut oh coriander and mint chutney sorry that Thomas had in
the dahi puri and then it's hiding underneath that samosa, so a samosa is a
deep-fried pastry that's stuffed with potato and you can see that it's been
broken up and I'm just gonna be able to get really delicious mouthfuls of this
samosa and mixed in with it is also some chole which is a chickpea dish I can
spot some peas too that must have come from the inside of the samosa all right
I've just gonna get in
Wow it's got a beautiful heat to it it's a little bit spicy
those chickpeas are so soft they just turn into a creamy mush in your mouth I
then you've got that vibrant chutney the tamarind chutney is really sweet the
coriander mint chutney is really um zingy and then that samosa is really good
the potato is super creamy I've gotta go for another bite
all right
hmmm
that potato there's some really big chunks of onion in there and they're
really sweet and soft
the spices are just really intense and flavoursome so
the guys at Mumbai Chaat make everything from scratch so all of the
chutneys and you can really taste the quality in that oh this is such a good snack
holy moly that food was so delicious now we forgot to tell you before chaat is
a general term for savoury snacks in India and those were so authentic for a
second I felt like I was back in India I think that's what's so brilliant about
Auckland it's so diverse and you can get a taste of all these different cuisines
it's one of the things I love about it
there are heaps of Chinese restaurants in Auckland and there are loads of
restaurants that are regionally specific so we are heading to one of our favourite
spots in the city they specialise in Sichuan cuisine now Sichuan food is
known for being really pungent and intense and ferociously spicy
this is one of our favourite places to come in Auckland for this particular dish
this is the dan dan noodles so this is an incredibly spicy noodle dish and look
at all this spice in there and all that chilli oil sitting in there but what
we've got is some pork, some hand pulled wheat noodles and that's all swimming in
this beautiful chilli sort of oil and chilli soup and it's laced with a lot of
Szechuan peppercorns a lot of garlic it's gonna be an absolute punch of
flavour and to go with that we got some classic pork and chive dumplings and
they are also absolutely covered in that spice look at all that chilli on there
and a little bit of spring onion cut up and well that's all just swimming in
sort of a simple soy sauce and chilli oil soup as well but for me it's all about
these dan dan noodles so I'm just gonna dive right in and get a huge oh look at it
so all that soupy oily goodness is just coating those noodles oh yeah you can
the smell from this is unreal it's very deep in its spice so it's really getting
into my nose
ohhh that is good Sichuan peppercorns make your mouth go numb so
straight away my tongue has a really numb feeling on it really nice and spicy but
not crazy so that you can't taste the flavours so there's a lot of sweetness
the pork is beautiful ohhh okay that spice catches up that just went from my tongue down to
my throat oh these are so good and this is our favourite place to get this dish
in Auckland this is uh well it's not overly common but relatively common here in
Auckland to find this this style of cuisine and this place always always does the
best version of it
unbelievably good
one of my favourite things about this dish is the smell of it
you can really smell that...
that chilli and that garlic and that Szechuan
pepper so all those really bold flavours that Szechuan province is known
for in its cuisine and why are they called dan dan noodles? So back in the day the
street vendors who used to sell these noodles used to balance them on a
pole called a dan dan, so a dan dan pole and then wander up and down the streets
and sell their noodles like that that's why they're called dan dan noodles
cause of the pole that used to balance all the noodles but I've got to get into my
second favourite dish ohh favourite equal favourite these delicious-looking
dumplings so we ordered the pork and chive dumplings and they're just
wallowing in this really dark looking sauce so full of chilli oil and a little
bit of black vinegar, soy and then a tonne of dried chilli over the top alright
there's a really beautiful sweetness that comes out of that, it's really really
spicy the chilli is hitting me at the back of the throat
but the dumpling skins are really soft still have a bit of texture though
and that filling the pork and chive filling is super flavoursome ohh I could eat about
50 of those
absolutely incredible meal it was so good actually that we
tacked on a whole lot more dishes and had a feast, my mouth is on fire and it's tingling
I can't really feel my
tongue at this point super super good and now we're going for something really
interesting a bit of a take on some food from one of the Pacific Islands
we've decided to go outdoors for our next snack it's a really nice day here
in Auckland so we've gone out into the sun and we're sitting in the Domain
which is the big gardens right near the heart of the city we've got a stunning
view out over the Auckland harbour and we're sitting right beside the Auckland
War Memorial Museum which is one of the most gorgeous buildings in Auckland but
what we've got is a pie now we've had a lot of pies in this New Zealand series
because these are really iconic here so savoury pies are just a real massive
thing in New Zealand but this pie is really really unique and unusual in that
it's a palusami pie now palusami is a Samoan dish which is
made up of taro leaves, coconut milk and corned beef now this is very unique I've
never seen a pie anything like this normally in New Zealand it's a beef
mince or a steak pie or a chicken pie not palusami pie and this looks
super buttery so I think this is gonna be really interesting
holy moly I'm so
excited to try this palusami pie so even though Auckland is the city with
the largest Polynesian population in the world it's really not that common to
find Polynesian restaurants the best food is found in the home so when we
heard about this palusami pie we knew we had to get in, it's quite weighty
really hefty all right and that flaky pastry look at that whoaaaa okay
look at that filling so you can see in there all of that corned beef that's that
pink meat there the corned beef and on the top is the lu'au so the lu'au is
the coconut milk and taro leaves mixture, I've got pie all over my face
the flaky pastry is so buttery and soft oh man this pie is good
so the texture of the filling is just really soft and mushy
the taro leaves and coconut milk mixture the lu'au it's almost custard-y and its
really soft those leaves are just melt in your mouth and then you've got the
texture of the corned beef it's not, it's just really soft and very savoury in
flavour, that's a really good combo