As Auckland's lower downtown area is renovated, so is the eating style
KEY POINTS:
Fore St, it used to be called, because it ran along the foreshore. No debate about that. It ended at a Jacob's Ladder, "by means of which folk could, if strong and sober", climb to Fort Britomart on the cliffs above the harbour.
So, even before Fore St morphed into Fort St, someone would have been banging on about a liquor ban.
We could, if you like, toss the food into the skip this week and carry on with the history lesson. The town hall and jail were next to one another on the corner of Queen and Victoria Streets - you might think them appropriate neighbours - and the gallows were just up the road. See previous comment.
The stubby little thoroughfare has always been seedy. When I first came to this city, I worked in Fort St, on a Sunday newspaper, which meant working Saturday nights. Eating out then was a mid-shift burger and eye-opening sights for a wide-eyed lad newly arrived from the provinces.
Britomart has dominated Fort St's history: it does so even now. The railway station, returned to Queen St after a century away in Parnell, and the revival of the heritage quarter around it, has woken up Downtown.
The red lights are dimming. Soliciting moves out, solicitors move in. Vice versa, you could say. The backpackers' at the city end are tidier; new office towers have introduced hundreds of daytime suits; apartments breed a new community.
With them, convenience stores and an emerging restaurant row. Daytime cafes at first: marvellous Ben was an early arrival and continues to thrive and please. The House of Beans, which arrived later, rivals it.
The Angus Steak House's long-time home on the top side of Queen St was a victim of developers: it has rehoused itself in Fort Lane, running through to Commerce St, thanks to redevelopers.
Coffee'n'cake chains, teahouses straight out of Hong Kong, and papered-over windows promise more cuisines to be served.
Seba and the Coco Club, upper-market bars, were the first indications that Fort St had enough permanent residents to need nightlife for those wanting longer-term relationships than those who used to spend their evenings in the area.
Ima & Ibn is the next. Rather further up the market than anything else, it indicates that Fort St is on the way to becoming a desirable neighbourhood.
For inner-city readers or workers, the name may ring bells. Ima was Yael Shochat's fun'n' funky neighbourhood cafe at the top of Shortland St. That site is now a Japanese bar.
Shochat and her chef-partner Khaled Masroujeh have opened Ima & Ibn: a culinary ambulance at the bottom of the old harbour-side cliff.
Ima is "mother" in Hebrew, Ibn is "son" in Arabic. Shochat is Israeli, Masroujeh is a Palestinian from Jordan. Only in Auckland...
For now, the new place is a brunch and lunch box, where the staff chorus welcome and farewell in four or six languages.
When the licence emerges from the Byzantine corridors of the council, it will open for dinner, as the grand Ima did, becoming a local in the heart of the city.
Shochat calls her food "cuisine of the sun", a Med-spread menu of falafel, Lebanese grills, salads claiming Cypriot, Caesar and Nicoise heritage.
Most of her favourites have ambled down the hill - shakshuka, the delicious Israeli dish of eggs, slow-roasted tomatoes and merguez sausages, served in a hot frying pan with wodges of toasted ciabatta, to be mixed into a taste-explosion of mess.
Back too is the Angus burger queen of real meat, a decent bun, fresh lettuce and tomato sauce. You want fries with that? Wrong house. These come with roasted root vegetables like parsnip.
Eggs over Middle Eastern with spinach and tingly sumac; mozzarella in carozza is where croque monsieur takes a holiday in Sicily and hangs out with prosciutto.
Jude has begun an affair with the citrus cheese blintz, likely the only weekend breakfast that can lift the spirits when eaten to a backdrop of fado, Portuguese folksong that makes Leonard Cohen sound positively chipper.
We walked into Queen St past what was the Jean Batten Building. Bank headquarters and five-star hotels. Concrete over the clay. Fore or Fort, the old street is gone for ever.
