Dirty Dining Diary: Week 4 wrap

Herald online

27 Sep, 2013 10:00 PM2 mins to read

This week's Dirty Dining Diary wrap up.

We may have uncovered the best chicken schnitzel in Auckland. On the flip side, we're pretty sure we found the worst curry.

The Dirty Dining Diary experience is not for everyone. Some people (Shelley Bridgeman for example) run at sight of anything lower than an A certificate. However, for our brave bellies, it's been a great way to explore Auckland and eat at places that we may not have otherwise.

This week we've seen the best and worst:

High:

When we sussed out Restaurant Carinthia on the internet, the website was the best looking of the D-listers (by far). But when we showed up on this particular Friday night, the pretty place was deserted. We were intrigued by all the quirky Austrian paraphernalia around the walls. The cuckoo clock was chiming and they switched on some great European tunes to enhance our dining experience. The recommended schnitzel dish was generous and delicious. We hadn't really seen seen anything like this on the Auckland dining scene before. We packed up the schnitzel to take home for tomorrow and asked why they copped such a low rating (discreetly positioned by the till). We were told they felt it was a personal issue. To be fair, we couldn't see beyond the clean dining room and alluring pastry cabinet, but one of our Dirty Dining reviewers will definitely be back.

Lows:

It's got to be the bag-of-bones curry we purchased from a place presenting an E grade. The sweet, shy lady behind the counter at Ulutoa & Sons Taste of Samoa made us feel a bit bad about dissing this place in Otahuhu. But when we dug in to our takeaway curry with plastic spoons is was mostly bones. A couple of pieces of edible veg and not much else filled our small styrofoam container. We understand that bones can boost flavour, but they're no good as an actual food source.

The question most commonly asked to us: have you been sick yet? So far the answer is no. This could be thanks to the resilience of our guts, or maybe when it comes to D grades, they're not as dodgy as we think.