OUTSTANDING IN ITS FIELD
WE ARRIVED:
Fields Cafe has popped up, seemingly out of nowhere, in the fields that gave its name. It could just have easily been called Orchards as the cafe is in the middle of Auckland’s original fruit bowl. Now it’s part of the Albany mega mall, fronted by tyre shops, furniture stores and the North Harbour Stadium. You drive past half-constructed apartment blocks and big-box retailers to a grassed area, where a carpark has been marked out with rope and gravel. Fields is so new you can still smell the freshly hewn wood of the large deck outside. It is scattered with bean bags for those brave enough to publicly perform the inelegant extraction of returning to an upright position from the bulging embrace of the shifting beans. We sat outside but soon regretted it as we struggled with the bright sun reflecting off the white-painted wall that hemmed in the space. Another umbrella would have been useful out here.
WE ATE:
A lot of thought has gone into adding an element of difference to pretty much every meal here: the eggs benedict ($19.50) came with okonomiyaki, a Japanese-style omelette; and the infamous smashed avocado on toast has been updated to smashed edamame and broad beans on kumara sourdough. The teenager made a brave attempt at the benedict but found the okonomiyaki too dense and left most of it on the plate. I braved the words that warned of heat “tingling”, “sriracha” and “Sichuan” and ordered the tingling fried chicken burger ($22). It lived up to the words but in a well-balanced rather than a mouthexploding kind of way. The thick-cut chips it came with were cooked to crispy perfection.
WE OBSERVED:
Despite being brand new, Fields’ wait staff were efficient, knowledgeable and the morning passed hiccup-free. Mostly. They struggled with our water: none for me, thanks, still for her. We both got sparkling. A second glass didn’t arrive at all and she hopped up to fetch her own, only for two more sparkling glasses to arrive. We also loved the large playground outside in full view of the large deck and the parents trapped in the bean bags.