Electing to shoot the breeze one recent evening on a beach on the City of Sails' NorthShore, we partook of its pleasant charms and then decided to round out the shaam by sampling some snacks on Takapuna Beach Cafe - which is listed as one of the coolest snatches of real-estate which a cafe can occupy in the city. It was a neat spot on the deck, complimented by convivially solicitous service, and a nice cut of beach with sprays-'n'-clumps of Pacific vegetation for a view. The nibbles we opted for, included Tua Tua fritters and hand-cut agria chips. I had to clarify the identity of both the central players.
Tua Tua- Like the Whitebait fritters (which themselves are conceptual mistakes), these marine specimens too had been embedded in an omelette - an ill-advised vehicle of delivery no matter how skilled the operator. This mollusc ,like most or all of its kin, has delicate flavour and it is easily stifled by the inherent taste of an omelette. Moreover the egg pancake served to us was on the saltier side, the tua tua was cooked to too hard a turn and it tasted, if at all it managed to register a discernible glossal impression at all, of a bit of marine funk. The accompanying salad, with a little squeeze of grapefruit, gave a more decent account of itself.
The Agria (a type of yellow potato) chips were given an eminently tasty lift by a fine blend of garlic mayonnaise but of fried tubers per se, I've eaten much more compelling results in the form of freshly fried Kumara (Maori sweet-potato) wedges which can be especially tempting when the kumara is rendered meltingly soft. 2 days later, while going more thoroughly through my secret dossier which enlists ,amongst the city's menus, select items that can assassinate a creeping sense of "ho-hum", I came across a tip-off from agents in the NZ Herald that the same cafe we had been to, sported an exceptionally mean Fish and Chips.There's almost always hope in the blue and white yonder 
In Wellington's much-feted Logan Brown restaurant, which splendidly ensconces itself in that city's enticing Downtown cluster, (and this incidentally is the only NZ restauarant thus far wherein the chef came out of the kitchen to voluntarily have a bit of social intercourse with me) the kitchen's specialty dish had been presented to me on a complimentary basis during a luncheon. The gesture was much appreciated but the dish - Paua Ravioli - ("Paua" is a type of NZ abalone) was neither a textural triumph nor a revelation in flavour. But not all my shellfish experiences in Kiwi Land have been spineless in elevating the senses. By Ohope Beach, near the town of Whakatane, I once had a social dinner with colleagues in Quay restaurant. I didn't expect much to happen that night, but my mind and innards were briefly rocked that evening by what turned out to be the outstanding surprise of that session - an appetizer called Paua beignets.
They were spectacular specimens of the sea, cooked with simple knack by a fiend who must have exited the kitchen after briefing showing its occupants how to empty the beach and fill the restaurant. We often hear of surf and turf renditions but this dish was surf and cloud. The texture of the beignet was a crunchy scoop of sky, its taste was a pleasant phantom, carrying whispers of a marine field whence it had originated. Everybody at the table, including frigid femmes, were floored by this quiet zinger. The rest of the kitchen's products were lack-luster. Rifling through my archives, I sadly find that I failed to take a pic of that fetchingly chic plate of appetizer, while I do have a rather useless capture of same space-time's prawn risotto which would have better engaged memory had its quality been commensurate with its quantity. As for those beignets, they'd have been right at home in a restaurant by the same name that basks on the Sydney Harbour.
