The food here is as beautiful to eat as it is to look at.<\/p>\n
\n I love taking my family to yum cha but it can feel like the blind leading the blind. Am I ordering the right thing? Am I allowed to eat with my hands? Is the owner angry
\n with me or are they always like that? All of these questions run through my head and inevitably take some shine off the experience.\n <\/p>\n
So, to my daughters\u2019 dismay, I left them at home for this meal and went to lunch with Connie Clarkson, Auckland\u2019s doyenne of Asian cooking and founder of The Kitchen Project, a council incubator that helps small-scale food producers become thriving businesses. A few weeks earlier, I\u2019d asked Connie to suggest an artsy Chinese restaurant and she reminded me about \u201cMeat Barbie\u201d, a beautiful\/grotesque dish involving a plastic doll draped in beef, Lady Gaga style, created by West Auckland restaurant Mr Lobster to celebrate the Margot Robbie film. I just knew she\u2019d come through. <\/p>\n
Mr Lobster on Lincoln Rd. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
Everything about Mr Lobster is maximally efficient. The first thing they do when you get there is key in your licence plate number to make sure you don\u2019t get towed. Then you\u2019re shown to a table and handed a menu with a QR code so that you can get things underway without waiting for a waiter to take your order. Your food begins arriving approximately six seconds after you press \u201cORDER\u201d. There\u2019s no such thing as staggering the cooking here, so if you\u2019d like to avoid having six different dishes arrive at once, you\u2019d be well advised to order as you need them. Trust me, you will never find yourself tapping your foot and waiting for the kitchen to catch up.<\/p>\n
The chilli snails on the menu at Chinese restaurant Mr Lobster. Photo\/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
Thanks to Connie and a helpful waiter (everyone here is warm and friendly, even as they hurry around), we ended up with a selection of Mr Lobster classics, including a dim sum platter which would almost be enough for one person on its own. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to get the classics right,\u201d reckoned Connie, \u201cbefore you can do the wacky stuff.\u201d <\/p>\n
They definitely do that, with some steamed prawn dumplings that are so tightly packed they look like they could bounce. I ordered some tripe (not for everyone I know but irresistible to me), which was chopped up well enough that its gastric origins were mostly hidden except for the honeycomb texture. It was braised in something spicy and served with some equally enjoyable beef tendons. <\/p>\n
The turnip cake on the menu at Mr Lobster. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
My favourite yum cha order is always the turnip cake, for its subtle flavour but also its starchy yet variable texture. I think of it somewhere between tofu and potato, but at Mr Lobster they make a special effort, offering a first glimpse at the theatrical elements of their menu. The turnip cake was placed in front of us, already looking exciting with orange caviar and a squiggle of wasabi mayo, then a waiter stepped forward with a pretty grunty blowtorch, proceeding to scorch and caramelise the toppings right in front of us. <\/p>\n
It got better. One dish \u2013 \u201cdeep-fried savoury bread fritter with sesame\u201d \u2013 was the size of a rugby ball, and needed a waiter with a big pair of snips to cut it up into manageable portions. Even a pretty standard dish like battered spring rolls \u2013 here more like a cigar-shaped tempura \u2013 was cut on the diagonal and served vertically, in a ramekin lined with parchment. <\/p>\n
Mr Lobster’s dessert dim sum. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
As we moved into sweet courses, the kitchen\u2019s sense of fun became even more apparent. One of the fried goodies in the supreme platter came with little stick-on eyeballs, making it look something like Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street. And the masterpiece was the durian, a polarising delicacy that arrives coated in jet-black pastry, with an edible white neck and head stuck into it so that it looks like swans a-swimming (this is one of those picture-paints-1000-words moments, so I\u2019m counting on Babiche to do a better job than I have). <\/p>\n
Durian swans from Mr Lobster. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
All of this is as beautiful to eat as it is to look at (my note for the durian reads: \u201cit tastes of dark dreams\u201d), and so long as you balance your selections between the deep-fryer and the steamer, with a little wok action on the side, you\u2019re unlikely to leave disappointed. Throw a Portuguese Custard Tart into the final round \u2013 it is a classic and, Connie tells me, prohibitively complicated to make at home. You can always take away what you can\u2019t eat, and even the prawn dumplings tasted very good cold out of the fridge for dinner that night. <\/p>\n
The lobster tank at West Auckland’s Mr Lobster. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
The giant lobster tanks won\u2019t be for everyone but add a certain intrigue to the backdrop. Prices are scrawled on the glass, and go as high as $780 for one big specimen, making a full lobster tank almost as expensive as a full petrol tank in the current economic environment. <\/p>\n
Mr Lobster Private Kitchen <\/p>\n
Address: 4\/301 Lincoln Rd, Henderson <\/p>\n
Contact: (09) 218 8180, mrlobsterprivatekitchen.co.nz<\/p>\n
Opening hours: Weekdays 10.30am-2.30pm, 5.30-9pm; weekends 10.30am-3pm, 5.30-9pm <\/p>\n
Reservations: Accepted (and strongly recommended) <\/p>\n
From the menu: Turnip cake $18, supreme dim sum platter $48, tripe and tendon $20, deep fried bread fritter $18, prawn spring roll $13, cumin lamb dumplings $24, Durian $16 <\/p>\n
Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good, give it a go. 16-18 Great, plan a visit. 19-20 Outstanding, don\u2019t delay.<\/p>\n
According to dining-out editor Jesse Mulligan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The food here is as beautiful to eat as it is to look at. I love taking my…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1228,28822,35435,45496,156,564,47836,191,78,2537,56275,13457,16564,2538,111,139,69,1118,763,540,4576,45495],"class_list":["post-402763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-art","tag-beautiful","tag-becomes","tag-cha","tag-entertainment","tag-food","tag-henderson","tag-here","tag-in","tag-jesse","tag-lobster","tag-look","tag-mr","tag-mulligan","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-reviews","tag-where","tag-work","tag-yum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}