Hanoi Rocks...

Good name for a band but this post is about a restaurant in Auckland, a very fine one in Auckland's burgeoning Britomart District that specialises in Vietnamese food, Cafe Hanoi. We like it so much that we've eaten there twice in the past week and felt it was well worth a blog. Tony McGeorge and Krishna Botica are no strangers to food and hospitality as stalwarts of Ponsonby Social Club and the legendary Prego respectively. The pair saw an opportunity for a quality restaurant serving Vietnamese cuisine and knew that Britomart was the right place to set up. Along with chef Jason van Dorsten the duo spent plenty of time in Vietnam researching the food, decor and culture of a country steeped in tradition and taste bud titillation, and it shows.

For dinner last week we sampled a few of the dishes on the menu which are quickly garnering the eatery a reputation; sweet pickled shrimp open wontons, summer rolls of braised pork and shrimp, skewered chicken thigh with kaffir lime, lemongrass and ginger and the utterly memorable peppered soy shaking beef! Scrumptious. For lunch on Friday we decided to investigate the menu further and ordered a bottle of Margaret River Barwick Black Label Shiraz 2006, well priced at $48 a bottle to whet the whistle. We started with three dishes; beer steamed cockles w/ ginger, chilli and tamarind, again well priced @ $18.50, Crystal Bay prawns in a delicious sweet tamarind sauce and papaya ($26.50) and a fresh Savoy and red cabbage salad w/ Vietnamese herbs and palm sugar vinagrette, superbly priced @ $7.50. We followed that up with two more dishes; a hot pot of caramelised pork belly w/morning glory ($23.50) and wok seared market fish (ling) marinated in tumeric, ginger and galangal w/ green beans. Mouth watering yet? Ours were...

The service was brilliant from host Hector Palmer through to the young waiter that looks like Orlando Bloom and the environment was bubbly and comfortable without being too full on. Back in the 80's when Rachael was a young cook at the Verandah Bar and Grill, someone, it may have been Judith Baragwanath, used to often say, "What a mouth fuck!" and that is exactly how we felt about Cafe Hanoi. 5/5.