Incidental Run Ins.

Hello,

I wish I was the cat outside Real Time in Ponsonby. Real Time is a curated vintage store which has, in the past, “SPARKED COMPLAINT” from its impromptu drinking seshes out on the pavement. But, to me, the shop is most notable for the cat. I often walk past as it snoozes stretched out on the table, its tail grazing a tub of Gopala yoghurt that the owner is eating as he reads the morning newspaper. The cat, looking by all appearances, dead, is so comforting to me at this frenetic time.

When I strolled past last weekend, I was on my way to Woolworths. The supermarket is a fever dream in the summertime: you move from natural sunshine to artificial light, from humidity to air-conditioned stillness, and everyone’s trolleying around in short-shorts and jandals. That visit, I ran into someone I know who had popped in, catastrophically hungover, to buy carpet cleaner because their cat had thrown up. One singular item; a visit so quick you surely wouldn’t run into anyone you knew. But since it was Auckland, he did, of course. And then had to make small talk in the cleaning aisle with me while presumably thinking about getting home to the vomit on the carpet.

Because it’s December, because it is Auckland, the level of these incidental run-ins have multiplied all across the city. They’ve spread, like bacteria: realising you’re standing behind your high school teacher in the line at the mall, catching an old friend outside The Frog on K Rd, seeing an archnemesis in the water at Pt Chev. Though these accidental meetings can be exhausting it is, on balance, quite delightful: a reminder that our lives are never too far from each other.

Hope you’re surviving out there in this sun.

Love,
Jean

OPENINGS AND CLOSINGS

There’s a new deep-dish pizza place in Parnell called, appropriately, HELLO CHICAGO. There, you can say hello to pizzas named things like “Lincoln Park” and “Michigan Avenue Supreme”. Apparently they take around 35 min to cook, so perhaps call ahead.

Speaking of pizza – beloved central city pizza & pasta place That’s Amore is either closing down or on the move, as its SPACE IS FOR SALE right now.

RIP to Kapibara Ramen (not long for this world), Honoka Yakitori (which we heard nothing but bad things about, except for a curiously positive review in VIVA) and the Taste of China in Lorne St (something called “Grill Planet” is applying for a liquor license in that space). 

There’s a WHITTAKER’S CHRISTMAS POP-UP STORE in Ponsonby now open if you have any family visiting from overseas you need a generic gift for.

NEWS

You can get $2 oysters at TRIVET (in the JW Marriott in the central city) on the weekends, which is limited to six per person. A great loss-leader to get you in the door and spending $48 on a bavette with cacio e pepe caramel.

Celebrate Christmas with MY MOTHER’S KITCHEN on Sunday 14 December with Ethiopian food and live jazz. 

Speaking of live jazz – there’s a little CHRISTMAS PARTY at Juno in Ponsonby on Saturday 13 Dec, with “live jazz, cool cocktails, wines, champagne magnums and a curated food menu”. Auckland loves jazz!

I am a blueberry real fruit ice cream loyalist, and Duck Island has just come out with an ode to it, with pie crust crumbs and jammy blueberries interspersed. YUM.

No auctions write up this week, but the latest Kitchen Things liquidation sale is HERE.

by Mike

Fewer cars makes a city a more attractive place to be, by both reducing congestion – said to cost Auckland MORE THAN $2B PER YEAR – and by freeing the space that parked cars take up. Rarely is this exchange more explicit than Council’s handover next week of the 55-year-old Downtown Car Park (Simon’s favourite city carpark!) to Precinct Properties, in preparation for the construction of PŪMANAWA DOWNTOWN WEST. The development will include two towers of offices and apartments, one of which will easily become Auckland’s tallest at 56 floors. Three further buildings, including retail and hospitality, form an expansive glass-canopied public courtyard and laneways that will connect the Viaduct to Britomart via Commercial Bay (also by Precinct, naturally). Or at least, that’s the vision that’s been sold – the renders are elaborate but remain subject to change. 

Demolition begins next year, at which point nearly 2,000 carparks will be deleted from the central city, around 15% of those within ten minutes’ walk of the site. Also within ten minutes' walk is the CRL, the great hope for which underpins both Precinct’s investment and Council’s willingness to draw down the accommodation for cars in the city. The only downside, perhaps, is the planned seven years of construction, starting towards the end of 2026 – just after the CRL opens. 

This month in Fast Food.
By Simon

It’s now undeniable that the once dizzying pace of local fast food innovation has slowed to a crawl. To all those who have emailed in about this, I share your frustration but mercifully, with the roll into the summer months our fast food giants have finally awoken from hibernation and are showing signs of life — so here we go once again for a whip around the state of the nation’s lousiest food:

KFC have deleted their insane Hacks campaign (which somehow drew 65 COMPLAINTS TO THE ASA for glorifying cybercrime), and retreated to the relative safety of their traditional summer offering – a free bucket hat with a summer bucket, and their cricket sponsorship activation, 6 And Shout, is back on their app. 

McDonalds have A NEW RANGE built around hot honey sauce – initially available as a dipping sauce for their new McWings offering (which reader Justyn says are actually pretty good, awarding them an impressive 8/10) and now also on a McCrispy and a McSpicy chicken burger. This is the first time in recent memory McDonald’s have offered a food with inedible components (bones), which I had assumed was a result of being a little gun-shy of such things after the Liebeck v. McDonald's corporate negligence case in 1994, but perhaps they’d just never thought of it before. I tried the Hot Honey McCrispy and the sauce eats a lot like a sweet chilli with a little less spice and a little more sweetness and stickiness, which makes it a bit of a menace if you are trying to eat it while driving. They’ve put out a Honeycomb McFlurry to continue the theme and also now have an unrelated Green Apple Popping Pearls Frozen Lift which looks intense.

If you haven’t tried Burger King’s new, thicker fries yet, they are totally fine and you can get some for free if you are willing to completely change the way you bank and use the Payap to pay for your order. For Royal Perks members (one of whom I recently became, please don’t be jealous) they have an ADVENT CALENDAR running on their site with daily deals — none of which have been that good so far but I live in hope that, as we approach the big day, there will be a Partridge in a Pear Tree-style escalation of generosity.

Elsewhere, Subway has had enough of KFC’s fast food fashion dominance and is offering their own bucket hat, which you have a 1 in 10 chance to win if you scan your Subcard with an eligible purchase. Wendys have a new Cheeky Chipotle range in chicken and beef versions. They also have three new summer drinks: Passion Fizz, Watermelon Cooler and Bubble Zest, which is a bubblegum and yuzu flavour. Taco Bell has a new Lava Dip which they refuse to explain anywhere on their website and which I have tried – It’s a very lightly spiced cheese sauce close to the flavour profile of their fries and I cannot, in good conscience, recommend due to the lengthy wave of nausea that followed.

By Simon

FRIDAY 12TH

THE ODOUR OF SMOKE
Treadler, Free
Nice to see Treadler still working while the other galleries are already heading to their holiday homes. Curated by Christina Barton, it’s a little unclear what this show is. The promo blurb, an image of an old fax from Denise Kum, and the thank you list suggests it might be a collection of ephemera from the ghosts of Aucklands past. NOTE: Treadler has moved to Level 1, 40 Anzac Ave which I’m pretty sure is the abandoned space Emma McIntyre’s Objects or Vapours show was in last year.

BFM CHRISTMAS PARTY
Whammy/Double Whammy, $25
The annual fundraiser returns with Atomic, From Outside (FOS), Goldtooth, JessB, ngaru, Serebii, Soft Bait, TAKATAPUNANI (this week’s winner of the Cringe rap name of the week), Troy Kingi and bfm DJs.

NAPLOEON BABY, ECHOMATICA, JETHRO CLARK
Geihinkan, $15
Solid little local-indie survey show. WARNING: early start – Jethro Clark is on at 7:30.

SATURDAY 13TH

BASQUE PARK SUMMER SERIES
Basque Park, Free
Unusually good line up at the urban park mini-fest with Crystal Chen who seems to be everywhere at the moment, alongside Isabella Bedoya, Mr Big Stuff and Manuel Bundy. WARNING: there’s not a lot of shade in Basque Park, so slip, slop, slap.

ALPHABETHEAD, DISPLEASURE & BIRDPARTY
Audio Foundation, $20
Fun-looking touring gig that seems like it’ll land somewhere in the electrodance-punk spectrum and is sporting one of the better concert posters of the year.

BAR ITALIA
The Hollywood, $65
Face magazine called this shoegaze band a ‘new act to watch’ and The Times said they were the number one ‘rising star to look out for’ and you can do both as they return to Auckland for this show at the Hollywood.

SHOW US YA PITS
SonSk8 Indoor Skatepark, Free
Classic all ages hardcore show with Late To Chelsea, Finger Tight and Offside. They say the venue will be open for skaters during the gig in what seems an insanely dangerous idea but I think we have to assume they have thought it through and it’ll be fine.

SUNDAY 14TH

HANDEL’S MESSIAH
Town Hall, From $15
Auckland Choral has been doing this same Christmas performance for 168 years so they are getting pretty good at it by now. If you haven’t had the pleasure before, be warned that it is LONG – normally between 2:40 and 3hrs.

TE RADAR’S (CHRISTMAS) COOKBOOKERY 2025 SPECIAL
The Classic, From $34
LP Hartley wrote ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’ and that is never more true than when referring to old cookbooks — which Radar will be doing in this, presumably particularly appalling, version of his show rifling through antiquated Christmas recipes.

TUESDAY 16TH

QUIZ NIGHT
Schapiros, Free (but book ahead)
Obviously there’s a lot of these going on all the time and all over the place but after extensive research, Mike is willing to confirm that this is the best one. The host is punctual and efficient so it doesn’t drag on all night and it has, by far, the most generous prize pool: $150 bar tab for first, $100 for second.

THURSDAY 18TH

AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH
In Cinemas
Beloved New Zealander James Cameron returns with the third and final (if no one goes to see it) film in the Avatar series. WARNING: it’s three and a half hours long, nearly four if you take into account all the faff and trailers.

COURTNEY DAWSON AND JANAE HENRY
Aotea Square, Free
Can’t imagine anything much more thankless than trying to do a comedy set to whatever bewildered randos are walking through Aotea Square at 6pm on a Thursday so if you are in the area please go along and throw them some laughs. It’s the humane thing to do.

SWEET TREATS PUNK NIGHT #53
Whammy, Free
Final Sweet Treats of the year with Stamp Fair, Swallow The Rat and Woman.