Hidden Panmure
ANDRÉ TABER joins a walking tour of a multicultural neighbourhood in New Zealand.
“YOU PEOPLE ARE LUCKY because you tasted all the food… And you haven't put on any weight.” At the restaurant Klasiq Kitchen, Dudu has just served us bunny chow and told us openly and honestly about his life as an ethnic Indian in South Africa under apartheid. It gives us pause to reflect on how privileged we are to have just met chefs from all over the world and tasted their food.
…Auckland is now officially classified a super diverse city…
BUNNY CHOW IS a product of apartheid, our guide Mary Taylor tells us, when indentured Indian labourers were forced to eat on the street with no utensils. Their solution was to hollow out a loaf of bread and put their curried stew inside it. Now it's a classic South African comfort food. We tear off corners of the filled loaf and with each tear we get a bite-size portion of bean curry, which has a sweet cinnamony flavour and a chilli heat which really creeps up on you. In the mutton curry version the creamy fat from the meat is remarkably comforting, and similarly it's a chillilover's dream.
We're on an Eat Auckland walking tour of the main street of Auckland's eastern suburb of Panmure. Queens Road is long and lined with single-story 1950s-era shops. For decades Aucklanders have considered Panmure charmless, even undesirable and a place you drive through on the way to somewhere else. But now, among the bargain stores and barbershops, no-nonsense ethnic eateries are becoming the darlings of adventurous eaters.
Mary takes us to Hesari Bakery where Ali, originally from Afghanistan, serves us his naan. To call this a flat bread is a disservice: it's long, thin, its surface bumpy and scattered with nigella and sesame seeds. Its texture is fluffy, supple and irresistable. Ali bakes throughout the day (seemingly a lost skill in New Zealand) and fresh from the wood-fired oven the toasty aromas make you dive into the slightly salty, satisfying bread.
A few steps down the road is the supermarket run by Ali's son Addnan where the shelves are overflowing with products from the Mediterranean, Balkans, Middle East and Persia. Mary declares it the best Middle Eastern food shop she has ever seen in the world — and she's well travelled. She is an experienced guide who specialises in food tours through Bali, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and India, who chose to buy Eat Auckland during the global pandemic. Eat Auckland was established by Lisa Loveday in 2012 for locals to discover their ethnic neighbourhoods. Food tours in New Zealand have always meant being driven in a mini van to wineries and farmers' markets, so Eat Auckland is ahead of the curve with all tours on foot through urban immigrant communities.
At Beijing Duck, Chef Wang, as is proper, carves our ducks tableside and loads the duck slices, steamed pancakes, slivered spring onions and cucumber, and hoisin sauce onto our lazy susans. Spinning the ingredients and assembling our own pancakes is the perfect way for tour participants to get to know each other. Make sure you get as much duck skin as you can while it's still hot — saturated with fat and crispy at the same time.
Malaysian-Chinese fish-head soup awaits us at Blossom Court. The soup is milky white, achieved by carefully preparing the stock with fish bones. Don't worry, the fish
won't be staring back at you — here at Blossom Court they use the cheeks only and batter and deep fry them to add more appeal. Rice noodles are obligatory and a combination of bitter melon, pickled plum, mustard greens, pork rind, a touch of tomato and lots of garlic makes for a balance of sweet, salty, bitter, sour, pungent and umami which has you coming back for another helping. Equally impressive is the laksa, a coconut-based soup in which the flavours reflect all the Malay, Indian and Chinese influences on Malaysian cuisine. Plus, it's loaded with unctious wheat noodles.
Blossom Court is the most salubrious of the dining rooms we visit today. Patterned ceramic tableware awaits us on shiny black tabletops in Jason and Angel's small but well-appointed restaurant. All the other stops on our tour are, at best, basic environments, but of course they serve knock-out food.
Panmure was an important place for inhabitants of Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) before the arrival of English colonists. It's high above the shore of the Tāmaki River, which was the equivalent of a highway for Māori, who would navigate their canoes past the densely-populated Panmure, and the biggest kūmara (Pacific sweet potato) plantation in these islands, to the nearby narrowest piece of land — the best place to haul canoes to the western coast. The colonial administrator tasked with establishing Auckland as the capital of New Zealand is even said to have favoured Panmure's access to waterways as the ideal site for the new city instead of what is today's Queen Street in the city centre.
In the 1860s Māori and English were at war and Panmure became home to retired soldiers, many from Ireland, who were given a small plot of land in return for defending the perimeter of the city. In the end, there was never military engagement in Panmure, but if you have a taste for history head to the eastern end of the main street where you can visit the old pub with its glorious Victorian pilasters, parapets, balustrades and cornices; the Stone Cottage Museum, HQ for the local historical society; and St Matthias Church, a fine example of New Zealand Gothic in white-washed wood with its historic graveyard just above the water's edge.
Auckland has long had three visible minority communities: Cantonese who first sailed to New Zealand for the 1870s gold rush and decided to stay. Gujarati and Punjabi immigrants have been arriving for just as long but were a smaller community. Both Chinse and Indians for most of the twentieth century specialised in growing and retailing fruit and vegetables. The promise of plentiful jobs drew many immigrants from the South Pacific Islands to New Zealand from the 1950s, but the bouyant optimism which helped build Panmure main street wasn't to last. The nearby public housing projects gave Panmure a less than favourable reputation. New Zealand's immigration laws changed from only allowing limited countries of
origin (read: Whites preferred) to a merit-based system, and from the 1990s there was a flood of immigrants from the People's Repblic of China and India, many on student visas.
And where students go, good cheap eats follow. Auckland is now officially classified a superdiverse city and Eat Auckland's Hidden Panmure tour is the best place to discover this.
Hidden Panmure all right. Mary navigates us past a construction site, through a desolate parking lot, under a dark awning and we arrive at Valley Fresh, which opens up to a souk-like space crammed with Indian groceries and produce. Sathnesh confidently answers all our questions, and then Mary asks us if we know what the most successfully and widely marketed food product is. Sathnesh has the answer: salt, and leads us upstairs to his other business, Salt City, where you can buy Himalayan salt — both culinary and medicinal. But they have another surprise for us. The salt cave has salt-covered ceilings, granulated salt floor, and walls made of backlit salt bricks. It's designed for salt therapy — you relax in a chair and let the salty atmosphere do its healing.
At Peach's Hot Chicken we have Nashville-style wings and tater tots. Kiwi owner Alex has roots in Tennessee, and it's more palate-burning thrills for the chilli-heads. At Satay Noodle House Cambodian chef-owner Sambok tells us how he went from working in a factory to becoming the only non-family member privileged enough to be part of a small empire of shops started by a Cambodian immigrant to Dunedin, in New Zealand's South Island. He uses the Satay Noodle House name, but the satay sauce is all his own — and even though he's friendly and enthusiastic he refuses to give us too many clues about the recipe. The mild, aromatic sauce pairs well with the skewered chicken, which has a chilli kick from its marinade.
To finish, Mary has snuck us some Turkish delight from
Hesari Supermarket. If you have energy to burn after the food tour you can join locals for a power-walk around the Panmure Basin, a volcanic cone which fills with the tide. Or on a hot summer's day thrill down the water slides at the Lagoon Pool & Leisure Centre.