CANTING
Cuisine: Cantonese
Phone: 021 288 8302
Address: 7 Queen St Commercial Bay, central city
Drinks: Fully licensed
Reservations: Accepted
From the menu: “Lucky” set menu, $88 per person
Rating: 15/20
Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good, give it a go. 16-18 Great, plan
There is a “Mt Albert BBQ Noodle House” at number 930 Mt Albert Rd and a “Mt Albert BBQ Noodle House” next door at number 932. This confusing situation is due to a long-running family dispute which I just spent half an hour on the internet reading about but, instead of entertaining me, the stories only made me sad. Life is too short to hate your cousins. Tonight I went in and picked up takeaways from 932 and saw a child (estimated age: 6) looking after a baby (estimated age: baby) while a toddler played with egg cartons in the storeroom next door. It was a beautiful, communal, family scene and it only made the feud with the neighbours feel more distressing.
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Advertise with NZME.I’ll tell you why I was buying takeaways in a second but let’s begin downtown at Canting, a lovely new Cantonese restaurant with lovely staff in the Commercial Bay space formerly occupied by Poni. The maitre d’ not only picked up the phone when I called but was a delight to chat to and when we arrived she was there at the door welcoming and farewelling customers with charm and enthusiasm, generally making us all feel like we were in the right place. I was eating with my daughter and I can’t actually remember the last time I was this excited to sit down to dinner.
Owner Nic Watt was there with his daughter too – he was cheffing and she was waitressing. The dining room was pretty full with a substantial number of large, happy groups eating dim sum, which must be one of the most popular genres there is. What sort of monster could say no to yum cha on a hungover Sunday? And while Nic has said no to trolleys and offers the classic steamed treats a la carte seven days a week, he’s stayed true to the spirit of those Chinese mega restaurants that made this sort of eating famous in Auckland. Canting also offers other Cantonese treats like roast duck and a full range of sizzling meat dishes, so the menu is intimidatingly large. To make things easier we ordered the set menu and left the big decisions to the kitchen.
I had the strangest experience with my first cocktail, which I’d picked from a fairly decent list of house specialities. Mine promised gin, fino, cucumber, lime and mint but when it arrived none of those things were detectable. I’d been expecting a sort of refreshing zingy aperitif but was given a large bowl of sweetish red liquid garnished with cherries.
“This is not what I expected,” I said to my daughter Daisy.
“What is the cocktail called?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, “It is called ‘Cherry Pop’.”
So you couldn’t strictly say I hadn’t been warned but it did seem strange that somewhere between two and five of the key listed ingredients were definitely not there. I asked the waiter about it who muttered something about the recipe being changed and that my cocktail had been mixed especially for me by Nic but I’m afraid, readers, I had to send it back – embarrassing for me, the restaurant and definitely the 11-year-old girl who thought she was coming out for a chill night of dumplings with her dad.
Those dumplings eventually came and were good – a basket of four different varieties we had to negotiate between two of us. A fried duck wonton was surprisingly low on flavour and this sadly became a theme over the next few dishes. Fried rice tasted of not much. A “lemon chicken” dish – usually saucy and slightly sweet – was underseasoned and consisted of deep-fried pieces of chook and a wedge of lemon to squeeze over the top – the most mild of flavours and a bit of a clash between the lemon juice and the batter which became immediately soft on contact with the liquid. I loved the high-quality meat in the black bean beef but again very little flavour was evident.
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Advertise with NZME.More successful was the Prosperity Salad, a salmon/pickled ginger/raw vege platter that Nic encourages you to toss as high as you can when mixing to encourage good fortune. It’s good fun and a nice way to eat salmon, plus the cold vegetables really hit the spot among the hot and fried food. From a traditionalist’s point of view, you might find it a shame that a popular New Year’s dish is being offered year-round – like a bakery doing hot cross buns in September – or you might think it’s a great opportunity to learn more about Cantonese cultural traditions no matter what season you visit. Come to your own conclusion. I believe in you!
I visited Mount Albert a couple of days later wondering how different Canting’s dishes were to the real thing. I ordered lemon chicken, black bean beef and fried rice and, while the dishes still weren’t mind-blowing, it definitely showed that there is room to pack these dishes with more flavour. Canting’s lemon chicken really does need a sauce I think, unless they’re attempting to deliver food that’s mild by design.
I feel a bit bad for not ordering either of Nic Watt’s signatures: the black cod and the duck pancakes. But I also feel like a tasting menu (even the cheaper one we chose) should show off the best of the kitchen.
The point of this review isn’t that you should go eat in Mt Albert instead. Canting is fun, the staff are awesome and every table was having a good time. This is a perfectly good restaurant for all sorts of occasions, but in my opinion not quite a foodie destination yet.
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