Bonus content: the best (and biggest) $20 meal in Auckland
Put this one on your weekend brunch bucket-list
I received a Teams alert yesterday from Gaurav Sharma - full time RNZ Senior Journalist and part time I Ate Auckland food correspondent.
“Had this today. Try it if you can. It’s awesome. Everything including the dessert.”
Gaurav does not mess around with food recommendations so within 24 hours I was there to check it out for myself and I can tell you it’s one of Auckland’s great food experiences.
I’ve been trying to decide how deep into this newsletter to let you swim before telling you that the restaurant is in Brown’s Bay, a suburb that for central Aucklanders may as well be Raglan. I have a long short list of other places to check out in the same area but there is almost never an evening where I feel like joining rush hour motorway traffic for 30-60 minutes in the hope there’s a restaurant good enough to suggest others do the same (locals will eat locally anyway - they don’t need my reviews to convince them; in fact arguably they would prefer I stayed away so that they could maintain an unchallenged view that their restaurants are world class eateries inexplicably escaping the attention of the Michelin inspectors).
Anyway like I said Gaurav is different. When he says something is good you act, and so I did, arriving just after 11am this morning at Flavours of India, a little restaurant located inauspiciously on the edge of a New World car park.
We’ve rightly been taught over the years to be suspicious of restaurant food marketed by its low price, but every so often you come across a unicorn, where the meal is of both extremely high quality and extremely good value. That is the case at Flavours, where the $20 breakfast (it runs from 10am-2pm Saturdays and Sundays) features around 20 very special South Indian dishes, and is all-you-can-eat.
The customers are almost entirely Indian and seem to know what they’re doing but if, like me, you aren’t and you don’t, the staff are very happy to help you with any questions around the food or how to eat it (the picture below was taken before I realised that there were separate bowls for the chutneys).
The kindness of the staff is one of the loveliest things about this restaurant by the way, do engage them in some chat if you get the chance.
There are four curries including a sambar (I didn’t notice at the time but all the food is vegetarian), along with three fried delicacies, plus breads or their equivalent like the idli (steamed rice cakes) or the dosa and poori which are served hot and “pan-to-plate”.
Then there are the chutneys and the spice powders - a staff member kindly showed me how they pour a little ghee over an idli and dust it heavily with, in this case, curry leave powder.
Then there are chutneys - ginger, peanut or coconut - all made from scratch and very rich in the textural ingredients they’re named for. And an exceptional dessert - a festive Muslim dish made with milk, cardamom, vermicelli and almonds - which I’d be surprised if you can get anywhere else.
It all tastes incredible and it’s very difficult to stop eating - clearly a flawed part of the business plan. My favourite was this bisi bele bath, a one pot lentil and rice dish which had a bit of crunch to each bite. It was smuggled out of the Mysore palace kitchen and now has worldwide fame although again I haven’t spotted it anywhere in Auckland. The waiter spooned a little clarified butter over this one to serve.
If this is your sort of thing book a table for next weekend and enjoy the meal of your life. For just 20 bucks!
If you can’t be bothered driving to Brown’s Bay, I hear you. Here are three great Indian restaurants in Auckland city that I’ve reviewed for Viva (paywalled):
looks great. kind of like the Higher Taste (Hare Krishna) places maybe? They are currently running in central Wgtn and Newlands but I think the Auckland one has closed