AUCKLAND FOOD TOUR by LOCALS | What to eat in Auckland, New Zealand | New Zealand food tour

Today we're hunting down the best food in our hometown of Auckland, New Zealand. New Zealand is home to over 200 ethnic communities. Food from every corner of the globe makes our food culture vibrant and diverse. This is our fourth video from New Zealand and we're in Auckland. Watch out for delicious Indian chaat, killer spicy Szechuan noodles and authentic Maori food. In this four-part series we're traveling all over New Zealand to show you the best food from our homeland. From iconic Kiwi snacks to rare foods, plus a tonne of Aotearoa's breathtaking beauty. You don't want to miss this series. Get ready for some mouth-watering food. I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate. We hope you're hungry, let's eat. Auckland's an incredibly cultural diverse city so we were born and bred here and it's really nice to be home for a little bit to film some content and show you some of our favourite stuff. So growing up here we have all sorts of food on the menu so there's over 200, 200 ethnicities living in Auckland because there's been a lot of immigration and migration here over the years so we want to show you some of the best food today, some of the stuff that we love eating when we're back home in New Zealand. Let's go. Auckland is a beautiful city with volcanoes everywhere and a lot of water all around it, surrounded by harbours so we've come right down to the wharf on the harbour for our first thing we're going to eat and that is hangi which is a traditional food cooked by the indigenous people of New Zealand, the Māori and this is actually quite hard to find in a restaurant it's very uncommon to be able to go somewhere and purchase hangi so we were really, really stoked when we saw this place the Māori kitchen it opened up down here right on the wharf serving hangi, we'll tell you more about how they cook it which is a pretty neat technique but let's order some first. Check out this huge plate of hangi so we ordered the works, the full shebang so we've got some pork here, there's some mesclun, some salad leaves on the top, a couple of potatoes, this here is kumara which is sweet potato and then we've got some pumpkin, now look this is rapidly getting cold so I'm just gonna get in first and talk later, oh underneath the pork there's also some stuffing, I've got some pork, some stuffing and pumpkin on this mouthful really simple flavours but really vibrant flavours so the pumpkin is really sweet and creamy, that stuffing has got a ton of herbs inside so a lot of thyme I can taste and then that pork is so juicy and it really just falls apart it's not dry at all, now the team at the Māori kitchen are really intent on cooking hangi the traditional way so what they do is they take these stones, stones which have been in the family for generations, they heat those stones up with manuka timber and then the food is placed on top of the hot stones to cook with earth piled on top of the food and so it essentially steams and cooks in this underground oven for about seven hours, the results are amazing, the meat is really smoky and the flavours are really, really pure and vibrant, look at that there's a whole bunch of cabbage down there too so we've got cabbage and stuffing but the reason we're having this hangi, so there are some hangi shops around Auckland not many though at all and most of them now cook their hangi in a sort of a stainless steel above ground gas-powered hangi cooker but these guys do it properly it's underground so the process that Sheena talked about that is what they use to cook their hangi and outside of the home or the marae it's really hard to get traditional hangi like this at a restaurant so this is pretty special, mmm, really, really good so because we're eating that hangi right here on the wharf with the ships right behind us this is not where the hangi pits are so we couldn't show you the process of the hangi being cooked but that was an awesome start to this video so now we're gonna head off and we're gonna show you some more of the other cultures here so we said there's over 200 different cultures living in Auckland so there is a massive variety of food to have next up we're going for some Indian street food now this is one of my favorite types of street food in the world and I love that we can get some really good stuff here in New Zealand as well so this place we're going to we've eaten at before it's really good so let's go check it out New Zealand doesn't have a street food culture so you do have to go to restaurants to eat foods which are typically street food dishes in their countries of origin we are at Mumbai Chaat and these guys do really good chaat I am so ready for it, let's go we've got two dishes and these are two of our absolute favorites so this is dahi puri and this is a samosa chaat so under there is a samosa hiding under all those ingredients now both of these dishes we've had in videos when we've been in India we absolutely love them both so it's definitely high on a list to get when we're back here in New Zealand but I'm gonna start with this dahi puri so the puri is a little sort of puffed bread thing you can see where it's been cracked with a like a thumbs crack through and then inside it's filled absolutely filled with curd let's get this one there's a bit no wait this one huh here we go so you can see there's a bit of curd just spilling out then it's got some sev all over the top which are these little chickpea noodles that are broken up all over the top it's got some tamarind chutney that's the brown one and then the green one that's hiding in there is probably a coriander chutney and there's some fresh coriander on top too now it's all about one delicious explosion of flavor here so I'm gonna put the whole thing in in one go oh oh man oh that is so good, it is a burst of flavor I forgot to say as well under that curd so under the yogurt there's some potato some spiced curried potato so it's got a creaminess from that, a burst of flavor the the chutney the tamarind chutney is tangy a little bit spicy with chilli and then the curd is just super fresh and delicious and really tangy as well man they are a burst of flavor and I love the purry on the outside because it's very very crunchy all those flavors and textures go really well together how good does this samosa chat look so we have got a ton of that sev on top which is the chickpea noodles there's some drizzles of chutney so tamarind chutney and the same coconut oh coriander and mint chutney sorry that Thomas had in the dahi puri and then it's hiding underneath that samosa so a samosa is a deep-fried pastry that's stuffed with a potato and you can see that it's been broken up and I'm just gonna be able to get really delicious mouthfuls of this samosa and mixed in with it is also some chole which is a chickpea dish I can spot some peas too that must have come from the inside of the samosa all right I just gotta get in Wow it's got a beautiful heat to it it's a little bit spicy those chickpeas are so soft they just turn into a creamy mush in your mouth and then you've got that vibrant chutney the tamarind chutney is really sweet the coriander mint chutney is really zingy and then that samosa is really good the potato is super creamy I'm gonna go for another bite all right mmm that potato there's some really big chunks of onion in there and they're really sweet and soft and the spices are just really intense and flavoursome so the guys at Mumbai Chat make everything from scratch so all of the chutneys and you can really taste the quality in that, oh this is such a good snack holy moly that food was so delicious and we forgot to tell you before that chat is a general term for savoury snacks in India and those were so authentic for a second I felt like I was back in India and I think that's what's so brilliant about Auckland it's so diverse and you can get a taste of all these different cuisines it's one of the things I love about it there are heaps of Chinese restaurants in Auckland and there are loads of restaurants that are regionally specific so we are heading to one of our favourite spots in the city they specialise in Sichuan cuisine, now Sichuan food is known for being really pungent and intense and ferociously spicy this is one of our favourite places to come in Auckland for this particular dish this is the dan dan noodles so this is an incredibly spicy noodle dish and look at all the spice in there and all that chilli oil sitting in there but what we've got is some pork, some hand-pulled wheat noodles and that's all swimming in this beautiful chilli sort of oil and chilli soup and it's laced with a lot of Sichuan peppercorns, there's a lot of garlic it's gonna be an absolute punch of flavour and to go with that we got some classic pork and chive dumplings and they are also absolutely covered in that spice, look at all that chilli on there and there's a little bit of spring onion cut up and well that's all just swimming in sort of a simple soy sauce and chilli oil soup as well but for me it's all about these dan dan noodles so I'm just gonna dive right in and get a huge, oh look at it so all of that soupy, oily goodness is just coating those noodles oh yeah you can, the smell from this is unreal it's very deep in its spice it's really getting into my nose mmmm Sichuan peppercorns make your mouth go numb so straight away my tongue has a really numb feeling on it, really nice and spicy but not crazy so that you can't taste the flavours so there's a lot of sweetness, the pork is beautiful, okay that spice catches up that just went from my tongue down to my throat, oh these are so good and this is our favourite place to get this dish in Auckland this is a, it's not overly common but relatively common here in Auckland to find this, this style of cuisine and this place always, always does the best version of it one of my favourite things about this dish is the smell of it, you can really smell that, that chilli and that garlic and that Sichuan pepper so all those really bold flavours that Sichuan province is known for in its cuisine and why are they called dan dan noodles so back in the day the street vendors who used to sell these noodles used to balance them on a pole called a dan dan so dan dan pole and they'd wander up and down the streets and sell their noodles like that so that's why they're called dan dan noodles because of the pole that used to balance all the noodles but I've got to get into my second favourite dish or favourite, equal favourite, these delicious looking dumplings so we ordered the pork and chive dumplings and they're just wallowing in this really dark looking sauce so full of chilli oil and a little bit of black vinegar, soy and then a ton of dried chilli over the top, all right mmmm there's a really beautiful sweetness that comes out of that, it's really, really spicy, the chilli is hitting me at the back of the throat but the dumpling skins are really soft, still have a bit of texture though and that filling, the pork and chive filling is super flavoursome, oh I could eat about 50 of those absolutely incredible meal, it was so good actually that we tacked on a whole lot more dishes and had a feast, my mouth is on fire and it's tingling, I can't really feel my tongue at this point, super, super good and now we're going for something really interesting a bit of a take on some food from one of the Pacific islands we've decided to go outdoors for our next snack it's a really nice day here in Auckland so we've gone out into the sun and we're sitting in the Domain which is the big gardens right near the heart of the city, we've got a stunning view out over the Auckland Harbour and we're sitting right beside the Auckland War Memorial Museum which is one of the most gorgeous buildings in Auckland but what I've got is a pie, now we've had a lot of pies in this New Zealand series because these are really iconic here so savoury pies are just a real massive thing in New Zealand but this pie is really, really unique and unusual in that it's a polusami pie, now polusami is a Samoan dish which is made up of taro leaves, coconut milk and corned beef, now this is very unique I've never seen a pie anything like this, normally in New Zealand it's a beef mince or a steak pie or a chicken pie, not a polusami pie and this looks super buttery so I think this is gonna be really interesting, holy moly I'm so excited to try this polusami pie, so even though Auckland is a city with the largest Polynesian population in the world it's really not that common to find Polynesian restaurants, the best food is found in the home so when we heard about this polusami pie we knew we had to get in, it's quite weighty, really hefty all right and that flaky pastry, look at that, okay look at that filling, so you can see in there all of that corned beef that's that pink meat there the corned beef and on the top is the luau so the luau is the coconut milk and taro leaves mixture I've got pie all over my face the flaky pastry is so buttery and soft, oh man this pie is good so the texture of the filling is just really soft and mushy, the taro leaves and coconut milk mixture, the luau, it's almost custardy and it's really soft those leaves just melt in your mouth and then you've got the texture of the corned beef, it's just really soft and very savoury in flavour, that's a really good combo