Things to do when you can't do anything.

Hey,

I am feeling particularly moody recently about my “creative process”. I’ve been listening to podcasts with funny contemporary writers, like Elif Batuman (read Either/Or if you haven’t already) and Naoise Dolan (Happy Couple) in order to absorb a literary-way-of-thinking through osmosis. I love to hear how fiction writers find their way into the story, as I skew too far towards wanting to pack everything that is interesting to me at the moment. I’ll experience something completely benign but texturally exciting in the supermarket and then insist upon it being a key point of the narrative.

Those who have heard me talk about writing fiction for a long time will find it relieving to know I have finally actually started doing it instead of just thinking about it. Thinking about it is central to the process, though, and there are a lot of places in Tāmaki that I have thought about these little fictional characters of mine. 

Event Cinemas, Queen St
I love going to a midday movie at the largely-abandoned Event Cinemas in the old eerie Metro Centre with the shaky rocket elevator. It has the quietest and cleanest public toilets in the central city (the ones around the right corner from the front counter), with about 30 stalls so you can’t ever get toilet shy. I have had many mini crash-outs in solo movie adventures at this Event Cinemas. Crash-outs are good for thinking about fictional characters, though, and I often picture them riding the rocket elevator here.

Unity Books, High St
I like roaming here with my headphones on over my ears but not listening to anything, so I can read the blurbs of the books but not be disturbed by anyone. Unity Books gives me a little shot of dopamine as I ponder the truly vast amount of material produced by people who, at least once in their lifetime, believed they had something interesting to say. You can then get a sweet treat nearby and sit in Chancery Square to be harassed by the pigeons. Very literary.

Wintergardens, Auckland Domain
I find manicured gardens to be very creatively rewarding, because the sheer amount of effort it takes to ensure these live creatures thrive is so immense. When the flowers look precise and exact in their placement it can make me emotional. I wonder what the minds of garden architects look like: if they close their eyes and gently plot.

Love,
Jean

There is much pleasure to be found in a mid-week fancy lunch, perhaps even more so than a mid-week fancy dinner, simply because it feels like you shouldn’t be doing it. In any case, there was hardly anyone doing it when we dined at ADVIEH, which serves Middle Eastern(ish) food that I’ve been describing as “actually really good, despite being a hotel restaurant and nearly impossible to find”. The tarama dip scooped up by a little well in the fried Jerusalem artichoke skins, then mopped up with Turkish pide, is delicious, as was the bavette with pops of crunchy fried tabbouleh. If you’re into martinis, they do a minute (tiny) version here too, muddled with dukkah. A lovely tablescape!

Side note: I really enjoyed MARLOWE GRANADOS’S ESSAY on martinis, in which she talks about the cyclical nature of martinis coming in and out of trend, and how as of the last year they’re “actually, really, back”. She also brought the existence of PASTA WATER MARTINIS to my attention, to which everyone I’d told has declared as, “yuck”.

There’s a new Filipino restaurant called MANG JOE’S CHICKEN INASAL in the Ponsonby Food Court that’s primarily serving chicken inasal. Chicken and rice is my favourite genre of food, in all regional iterations, so I’ll be there.

Lebanese Grocer is serving up fresh manoushe in the pop-up window next door to the Lebanese Grocer trading under ZA’ATAR BAKEHOUSE. I also heard a restaurant in Morningside by the same owner is incoming…

Mibo Bakery is POPPING UP in an increasingly-empty Newmarket from Wednesday to Sunday next week at 240 Broadway.

GET PALESTINIAN SWEETS at the fundraiser run by Justice for Palestine, also in Newmarket, this Sunday 5 October.

They’re demolishing the old FLOR site and a bunch of its equipment and furniture is for SALE HERE if you want to recreate your regular dining spot. Although if there were regulars maybe none of this would be happening.

Beresford Square is FINALLY OPENING this weekend.

1
I often tell people that I’ve been to every single Malaysian restaurant in Auckland, but that’s a lie, as I have not been to SAMBAL STATION in Parnell. Why does the thought of going to Parnell fill me with exhaustion?

2
With Kowloon Cafe closed in the city centre, there is nowhere for me to get my claypot rice fix so I’m jealous my parents got to have a good one at SHENGJI on Lincoln Rd in Henderson. On Google it says they’re classified as a “cha chaan teng” as opposed to “restaurant”.

3
I wanna eat that damn almond bun at MOTHER without having to wake up at 7am.

Our least favourite Auckland dining trend is the inversion of the traditional drinks list hierarchy: the price of wines by the glass starting to edge past those of mixed drinks. We get that establishments need to make a margin where they can, and 2025's punters don't down them like they used to, but $27 glasses of Rioja can't be the answer (actual pricing data taken from a recent dining experience at Grey Lynn restaurant Ada). Are people demanding fancier wine or is it more a case of what can be got away with? And what does this suggest about the relative value of cocktails, long held to be a careful expression of craft but now increasingly positioned as less premium than a straight pour from an open bottle? Perhaps it's only a matter of time until they regain their pre-eminence with a bout of inflation of their own. A (relatively) good reason to get back into martinis at lunch, if you're in need of one.
– From new Cringer, Mike.

FRIDAY 3RD

THE OFFICIAL RELEASE PARTY OF A SHOWGIRL
In Cinemas 
This is essentially an extremely overblown music video release, but at some point from the 3rd to the 5th when it wraps up, every Swiftie you know will have paid full fare and been through a cinema to see the music video for The Fate of Ophelia and various behind-the-scenes bits for Taylor Swift’s 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl.

TESSA LAIRD: CINEMAL: THE BECOMING-ANIMAL OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM
Audio Foundation, Free
A book launch with Art-Films from Nova Paul, Corinna, Arthur and Ivor Cantrill, Sri Spong, Tina Stefanou, Peter Waples-Crowe and Glynn Urquhart alongside a live score from From Scratch’s Phil Dadson who seems very busy at the moment. Light refreshments provided. Doors open at 5:30 and films from 6:30 which I only mention as while light refreshments are universally popular, art films are not.

ABBY HOWELLS
Friday/Saturday, Basement, $36
Funny. Apparently this is being filmed for a special so try not to do anything too weird if you are sitting near the front.

BEC SANDRIDGE
Secret Location, $30
Sort of a tall, gay, Australian Robyn crossed with Kate Bush.

SATURDAY 4TH

COWBOY DAN
Flying Out, Free
A very jangly Flying Nunish band doing this free show as part of tour supporting their new album Dreams That Feel Like Falling.

TAMI NEILSON — NEON COWGIRL
Aotea Centre, from $99
Tami Neilson has been overseas playing shows with Willie Nelson and I know this because everytime someone points a camera at her, she says it like she’s a pull-string talking doll.

HOT WHEELS MONSTER TRUCKS LIVE
Saturday/Sunday, Eden Park, from $37.95
There’s something extremely un-NewZealandy about the loud, showy brashness of Monster Trucks but they are here tearing up the Eden Park turf on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. Should be a huge amount of dumb fun even if it is wrapped in Hot Wheels branding and lousy with kids going nuts before the end of school holidays on Monday.

WEDNESDAY 8TH

GAVIN HURLEY — STILL GROWING UP
Melanie Roger, Free
A show budded from his recent exhibition, Growing Up at the National Portrait Gallery in Wellington featuring portraits of seminal figures from Hurley’s childhood. From the documentation that’s already online it looks like there’s quite a few paintings-of-paintings of Rita Angus, upside down and leaning against doorframes or near someone’s tapping toes – this is the sort of work I enjoy the most from Hurley, very still but still very playful.

NERO THE ASSASSIN: SEASON 1
Netflix
Between this, The Count of Monte Cristo and the recent Musketeers films, Napoleon and Careme there is a hell of a lot of French period stuff around at the moment for some reason.

THURSDAY 9TH

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE
In Cinemas
The great Katherine Bigelow’s first film since 2017’s bummerflop Detroit, A House of Dynamite stars Idris Elba as the US President (strangely after recently playing the UK PM opposite John Cena’s president in Heads of State) and Rebecca Ferguson. It was VERY warmly received at the Venice Film Festival and although apparently a bit bleak has almost universal praise from critics. Out on Netflix on October 24 if you don’t want to spend a million dollars seeing it at your local empty multiplex.

TRON:ARES
In Cinemas
One of the most shocking consequences of AI is all the lousy movies about the shocking consequences of AI and this looks like it could be one of the worst of them all.