There’s more to this south-central suburb than outlet shopping. From community-building cafes to creative cocktails and a particularly strong showing in the bakery department, Onehunga rewards exploration.
Cafes and restaurants
Honey Springs
An unexpected find in an industrial part of the neighbourhood, Honey Springs’ evocative Palm Springs
aesthetic bestows on customers a sense of summer on even the shortest days. The food nails the visual appeal, too – a souffle take on eggs bene, fluffy French toast with dulce de leche, perilously loaded MacSprings burger, and drinks like vanilla sea salt latte or blueberry matcha perfectly poured into groovy bubble glasses all scramble for your camera’s attention.
Mr T’s, Onehunga Mall. Photo / Fiona Goodall / Getty Images.
Mr T’s
This popular, family run brunch spot and bakery draws a loyal crowd for its greatest cafe hits meets Vietnamese classics menu, pleasing both your eggy brekkie diehard and those who’d rather slurp a pho or crunch down on a banh mi (made with the requisite light and crisp baguettes, baked in-house). The pies and pastries are rather hard to go past, too.
Toast by day and Everybody Eats by night, Onehunga.
Toast and Everybody Eats
Toast by day, Everybody Eats by night: both offer tasty, nutritious nosh at accessible prices. Social enterprise Everybody Eats was established nine years ago on a mission to feed everyone, no matter what they can afford to pay for the meal. Onehunga, the first of three permanent sites, serves an ever-evolving three-course set menu using rescued food. Most dietaries can be catered for, and diners pay what they can. Recently founder Nick Loosley also took up the daytime operations in the space, launching Toast. The cafe’s namesake comes as one or two slices, with various toppings, from simple peanut butter to spicy harissa beans. Hot oat offerings include tahini and date, with mulled wine syrup and pistachio, and toasties and salads round out the line-up. While dinnertime with Everybody Eats is pay-as-you-can, Toast’s prices are, as founder Loosley describes, fixed but accessible.
Slabs, Onehunga.
Slabs
In the style that originated in Detroit, pizzas at Slabs are baked in special blue steel trays, which helps caramelise the cheese-laden crust to perfection. The tray bake method keeps the base light and fluffy while enabling toppings to be generous and saucy. The ‘Angry Hawaiian’, with pepperoni, bacon, pineapple and house-made hot honey, is a favourite.
Ajimi Restaurant, Onehunga.
Ajimi
The folks behind Ajimi know that some of the best meals are enjoyed while sitting on plastic stools. Here they’re a bit sturdier than street-food stools; bright orange crates, at long wooden shared tables, with vintage posters for beer and sake and Japanese calligraphy covering the walls. On the menu are artfully arranged sashimi platters, barbecue sets, donburi and a host of smaller snack dishes to nibble away on. A fancy new Japanese soft serve machine churns out flavours like uji matcha and Hokkaido vanilla. Clink cups of sake or big pints of crisp Sapporo: kanpai!
Sim’s Kitchen
Further proof that venturing into warehouse and factory territory can yield tasty surprises, the food served up by Sim’s Kitchen far surpasses the humble expectations one might hold when approaching the white-painted concrete block exterior. The menu ticks off a tight list of Malaysian comfort food classics, from nasi lemak (you can choose from fried chicken or chicken curry) and Hainanese chicken rice to char kuey teow and mee goreng.
Manna Kitchen, Onehunga.
Manna Kitchen
This casual Filipino restaurant is always packed out on weekends and is a great place to explore popular dishes like sisig (a sizzling plate of pork jowl in soy-vinegar sauce), lechon (crisp pork belly) and beef kare kare (ribs braised in peanut sauce). With bold flavours and generous portions, you’ll want to bring a friend or two.
Selwyn Island BBQ, Onehunga.
Selwyn Island BBQ
This Tongan-style barbecue joint slings plates laden with turkey tail, lamb flaps, chicken thigh, taro and slaw, and sides including raw fish salad or lu sipi (taro leaves and lamb). If you can manage to save room for dessert, there are keke (doughnuts) with myriad toppings, and brownie.
Bakeries to bookmark
Vaniye Patisserie, Onehunga.
Vaniye Patisserie
Those who appreciate impeccably turned out French pastries have been flocking to baker Sonia Haumonte’s Parnell shop for years. But a bit of a well-kept secret is that Sonia and partner Mark opened a second shop last year, at the industrial end of Onehunga. Tarts, cakes and desserts (almost) too pretty to eat, glossy laminated pastries, and some of the city’s best baguettes line the shelves. The multipurpose space (the family lives above) allows for Haumonte to teach masterclasses and host events with local artists and makers – keep an eye out for what’s coming up.
Sophea Tang of Penny Lane’s.
Penny Lane’s
This humble bakery has been collecting pie awards for decades longer than pie influencers have been slicing, stacking and snapping them for the ‘Gram. In the latest national awards, Penny Lane’s creamy vegetable pie took a gold, and the mince and cheese has a wall’s worth of awards. It’s also exciting to see owner Sophea Tang introducing touches from her home country Cambodia in a few fillings, buoyed, she says, by the fact her customers increasingly recognise there is more to Southeast Asian cuisine than Thai. Grab a cookie pie for after.
A finger bun at Oven Spring.
Oven Spring
Pick up naturally fermented loaves, classic finger buns, hearty sandwiches and a few Sri Lankan specialties at prices that put over-processed supermarket stuff to shame, while supporting a small family run business.
Bread n Brew, Onehunga.
Bread n Brew
I was saddened to see that old favourite Bread and Butter Home Cookery recently shut shop, but the good news is that its famously good doughnuts remain. They’re the proper kind: round, deep-fried, dusted with icing sugar and filled with whipped cream with a dab of raspberry jam. Like its predecessor, Bread n Brew makes old-school English baked goods, like those doughnuts and jam tarts, alongside Filipino treats including ube cake, ensaymada and torta de cebu.
Sipping Spaces
Onehunga was the orignal site of Dear Deer.
Dear Deer
There are now five Dear Deer sites spread around the city, but Onehunga was the original, opening in 2018 as a place for Yukichi Shikano to continue the legacy of his family’s coffee roasting and brewing business, bringing Japanese coffee culture to Aotearoa. Aficionados and those wanting to expand their knowledge can try around 50 different beans from coffee farms around the world, brewed by different methods, from espresso to pour-over using the Shikano family’s famous Kalita apparatus.
Springs Tavern, Onehunga. Photo / Babiche Martens
Springs Tavern
Cold beer, hot food, live sport on the screens or IRL live just down the road at Go Media Stadium (Mt Smart), family focused, great for groups, and dog friendly throughout: Springs Tavern is whatever you need it to be. The large sheltered and plant-filled courtyard and roomy indoors hosts quiz nights, DJ nights, daily happy hour, escape room-inspired ‘Pubble’, and watch parties for Warriors games.
The Bramble, Onehunga.
The Bramble
Onehunga mightn’t have loads of options when it comes to bars, but it has The Bramble, and that counts for a lot. This characterful, owner-operated spot is the only cocktail bar in the neighbourhood; it’s open until the wee hours every day except Sunday, and boasts a cosy indoors as well as a covered back deck. Epitomising a friendly local, The Bramble took the gong for best local establishment in this year’s Lewisham Awards for the hospitality industry. If you like the idea of a liquid dessert, head here for the Smore’s Espresso Martini – it marries Laphroaig 10 with creme de cacao, espresso, nuoc mau (Vietnamese caramel) and a touch of salinity with a marshmallow and cracker rim.
Epic Taproom, Onehunga.
Epic Taproom
If you’ve ever wished Auckland could take a leaf from the craft brewery scene in Sydney (Marrickville in particular), Epic Taproom is for you. Epic takes its cue from the blue-collar setting in the industrial heart of Onehunga, providing a come-as-you-are casual vibe while nailing the two things it sets out to do well: beer and pizza. Ten beers on tap from this brewery, a pioneer on the craft scene when it launched 21 years ago, and pizzas, each with 300g of dough heavily loaded with toppings (Epic Loves Bacon, featuring guanciale, is “a bit of an Epic insider pizza”, says owner Luke Nicholson).
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