I’ve been missing Provecho’s birria (rip) so l had to try the Birria AKL food truck for dinner.

$53 for 3 beef birria tacos with consommé, 3 beef birria tacos with jalapeños, avo and sour cream, and a side of corn chips and salsa.

My thoughts:

Not enough cheese
Only got 1 consommé for 6 tacos and it was about 1/3 oil but under the oil the flavour was amazing
The beef was super tender and had a great flavour
The tacos themselves were a little on the oily side

Overall not great but not bad either 3/5

I'm keen to hear others recommendations for food on Door Dash. Thinking good quality and taste, value for money, and somewhere you keep going back to.

Recently, I've tried Kudos Fusion and was so impressed that I've been back three times since. It got me thinking, what other little-known gems are there on Door Dash in the West Auckland catchment?

The katsu set will set you back about $28 which is pricey, but this place is so decadent and rich that you'll definitely leave this place stuffed and happy 🤤

Rice and miso refills are free, and my chicken katsu was mixed with eggs and onion- perfectly juicy, sweet and paired amazingly well with the rich teriyaki sauce. Every individual item is made with care, so my date and I had a lovely time. Great treat for special occasions

To be honest, I'm a person who gets annoyed easily at things, but this place heals me and keeps me focused on what's really important. This place has cleaned up my food when I was in the bathroom, forgotten to make parts of  my order,  and  mis-made my drinks a few times. The reason I keep coming back is the fact that their food is so delicious that all sins are forgiven immediately. Every mistake was promptly fixed too, so the service itself is great. 

First picture is lemongrass pork with broth- a massive $23 bowl of hearty gorgeous soup which you can mix the staple sirarcha and hoisin sauce with, and delicious chewy noodles waiting inside. their pork is sinfully good- lots of flavor and not too fatty

Their coffee game is fantastic too.

 Coconut, salted, vietnamese, and egg coffee can be found here for around $8. Pictured in the third slide is the egg coffee. Ive tried every flavor and they're all amazing in their own right. 

The standout of their menu for me is the Vietnamese spring rolls which set you back about $12 for a standard portion

(i got a few extra rolls for $3 each). This thing is unfathomably crispy on the outside, chewy under the upper layer of crust, and filled with this deliciously juicy mince/taro/carrot stuffing and comes with this perfect sweet/sour dipping sauce, along with a side of pickled Daikons and carrots. Absolute texture and flavor paradise- I go FERAL for these.

Highly reccomend hitting up this joint, its a great place to relax and study or eat with friends or read. 

The Instagram story post caption just said 'furious'... Fraser, you on here? What happened?

Looking for a really good sandwich, with nice bread, quality ingredients, made with love and care. Don’t care for price!

Part of their daily soba of the day for $17.50. Super rich and creamy sauce enriched by the egg yolk. Roast beef slices are stunning, and the noodles are the right amount of chewy to me, not too bouncy but not mushy.

TL;DR the food was seriously good, the service was seriously bad.

Baba ghanoush of grilled eggplant, lemon juice, tahini, olive oil, pomegranate molasses (NZ$16)

Muhammara made with roasted peppers, panko crumb, walnut, pomegranate molasses (NZ$15)

Dagga Gazawiya has fresh tomatoes, tahini, green chilli, garlic, lemon, herbs, lemon, olive oil (NZ$18)

Tabouli had bulgur wheat, parsley, lemon, tomato, mint, pomegranate, olive oil (NZ$18)

Musakhan was a traditional Palestinian sumac roasted chicken, caramelised onions on shrak (Palestinian flatbread) garnished with toasted pinenuts & almonds (NZ$30)

Mansaf was a slowcooked lamb shank with fragrant yellow rice & shrak(Palestinian flatbread), toasted almonds, jameed (sour yoghurt sauce) (NZ$38). I didn't get a good photo of this but the lamb was a decent size & fall-off-the-bone tender. The bowl of jameed yoghurt sauce can be seen in the Musakhan photo.

Zaiton Lemonana (mint lemonade) (NZ$12). Refreshing!

Traditional knaffeh was a shredded pastry, Akavi cheese, sugar syrup, pistachio (NZ$15)

Caught up with friends at recently opened Zaitoon for dinner. We arrived on time for our reservation but our table wasn't ready so we chatted outside for a bit. It was a while after seating before someone came to take our orders, & once given we carried on chatting & lost track of time. Our drinks order never arrived & we asked a couple of times for water but were told they had run out of clean glasses. Eventually, a different front-of-house person came over to apologise: our orders never made it to the kitchen & the one who took our order had finished for the night.

So we had to order again, but one of the dishes we'd ordered had run out, so we had to choose something else. After this, drink & food arrived promptly. The food was seriously good. Flavours are familiar if you've eaten Middle-Eastern food, but were different enough to stand out as special. All were great but the Muhammara, Dagga Gazawiya, Mansaf, & Knaffeh were my favourites.

Issues:

- failing to get our orders to the kitchen.

- once our original waitperson had left, nobody noticed that we'd been sitting at our table for nearly an hour & nothing had arrived. What happened to the handover?

I know they haven't been open long, but they need to fix their systems to avoid these sort of basic lapses. Apparently they've been flat(bread)-out since opening about a month ago. I would go back (the food is that good), but they need to sort out their front-of house soonest.