Kingsland restaurant owner Jaswinder Kaur from Heritage Cuisine of India has signed up to be part of the Auckland Diwali Festival 2023 this weekend. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Kingsland restaurant owner Jaswinder Kaur from Heritage Cuisine of India has signed up to be part of the Auckland Diwali Festival 2023 this weekend. Photo / Jason Oxenham
The BNZ Auckland Diwali Festival is returning to Aotea Square and Queen St this weekend, promising an incredible programme and mouth-watering festive food.
Top local Indian restaurants like Heritage Cuisine of India, Indian Lounge, Indian Flavours and Himalayan Fusion have also signed up as stallholders at the event which once featured mainly food trucks and home cooks.
Jaswinder Kaur, owner of Heritage Cuisine of India, said she saw the festival - which runs November 4 and November 5 from 12pm to 9pm - as “a big opportunity” to introduce some of the speciality dishes from her Kingsland restaurant.
Heritage Cuisine's Jaswinder Kaur is looking forward to sharing some of her festive specialties at the Auckland Diwali Festival. Photo / Jason Oxenham
“It’s our chance to show Kiwis that there are delicious Indian food beyond just butter chicken,” Kaur said.
“The good thing about Diwali is that it is fully vegetarian, so people can’t buy butter chicken by default because no one will be selling anything chicken.”
Kaur has signed up for two stalls, and her offerings with include cone dosa, masala dosa, pani puri, idly, chole bhature, chaat and vegetarian biryani.
“Auckland Diwali is always an explosion of flavours and colour, and a great way for us to share our culture and food with all our fellow Kiwis,” she said.
From Punjab, Kaur said chole bhature is a speciality dish from her home town comprising soft, fluffy puffed up leavened bread served with tangy chickpea curry - and believes it is something that will be very well received by locals once they try it.
Dancers at last year's Auckland Diwali Festival at Aotea Square. Photo / Hayden Woodward
The free family-friendly festival taking place on November 4 and 5 celebrates traditional and contemporary Indian culture with dance performances, live music acts, arts and crafts and of course food. It will culminate with a fireworks finale on Sunday.
The festival is one of the city’s most popular events and is expected to draw up to 100,000 attendees.
Auckland Live eateries Terrace Cafe and Container in the Square have also crafted special Diwali menus incorporating locally-sourced ingredients while keeping the essence of traditional Indian cuisine.
“At Auckland Live we describe the festival as one that strives to break cultural barriers, bring communities together, and promote inclusiveness and to achieve that, we tried to infuse traditional Indian food with local Māori ingredients,” a spokeswoman said.
Fireworks at a previous Auckland Diwali Festival. Photo / Doug Sherring
One of the special dishes is papadi chaat, an Indian street dish made with crispy wafers.
“Instead of using the usual wafers, we tried something different by using our Māori rēwena bread with traditional toppings,” she said.
“We also wanted to bring rumali roti, which is often called ‘handkerchief roti’ because it’s very thin and hard to find in New Zealand restaurants. We filled these thin rotis with Indian cheese, which is called paneer and made wraps.”
Rahul Minhas of the Original Chaiwalla in Wellington is also returning to the festival for the second time after being overwhelmed by the way the event was organised and run last year.
“We get a lot of visitors from Auckland and they have asked us to set up shop in Auckland,” Minhas said.
Minhas will be selling his special pakora, a deep fried spiced potato sandwich loaded with chips and butter sauce, soy masala chai and vegan bhaji.
Cone dosa, pani puri and garlic naan are some Heritage Cuisine of India's offerings at the 2023 Auckland Diwali Festival. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Diwali festival was traditionally a Hindu celebration but is now one that is also celebrated by Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Nepalese.
The Auckland event will feature 34 food stalls, 12 retail and five henna stalls and over 270 performances across the two days running from midday until 9pm.
Among the performances will be Bharatnatyam and Kathak, two of the most important forms of traditional Indian dance, and Bollywood-style Bhangra.
Indigenous yoga teacher Reha Kumar will be leading yoga classes and theory-based workshops across the festival period.
Dancers perform on the main stage during 2019 Diwali Festival in Auckland.
The festival is delivered by Tataki Auckland Unlimited with founding partner Asia New Zealand Foundation, and takes inspiration from Diwali or Deepavali, an ancient festival celebrated by Indians and Indian communities around the world.
Also collqualially known as ‘The Festival of Lights’, Diwali symbolises the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil and the renewal of life.
Over the festival weekend, Vector Lights will light up the Auckland Harbour Bridge every 15 minutes from 8pm to midnight.
Those attending are encouraged to use public transport, carpool, cycle or walk, but paid parking is available at the Civic carpark at Aotea Centre for those needing to drive.
