First Look: Nic Watt’s New Auckland Restaurant Cāntīng Is About Rebuilding & Lifting Spirits

With a new modern Asian restaurant in Central Auckland, restaurateur Nic Watt revisits his culinary past and invites a new future.

It’s hard not to be happy when the sun has just reappeared. That’s the case when Nic Watt gives Viva a tour of his impressive new Commercial Bay restaurant on an upbeat spring day. Light streams through the large glass windows and there’s an optimistic buzz inside as the final touches come together around us.

A good time is what the chef and restaurateur hopes diners take away from his new restaurant – think of this as dopamine dining. Cāntīng, in the space that used to be Poni, wants to be a jubilant destination for diners of all sorts.

Watt says the ethos here is “old world Chinese cuisine meets modern Asian innovation”. Cāntīng will offer a “broadly Chinese” menu, one that tours through the many culinary landscapes of Asia, inspired by Nic’s own travels across the region.

“I had a restaurant in Hong Kong. I had a restaurant in Macau. I’ve spent a lot of time in that part of the world and I absolutely fell in love with those massive banquet halls in Hong Kong, where people are queuing at 11 in the morning and they’re seating 600 people.”

Cāntīng seats about 120 but will share a focus on conviviality and casual fun.

“We’re not traditional, we’re not authentic, we’re certainly not fine dining. We want it to be a place where people can come and enjoy. We do yum cha seven days a week, we’ve got Cāntīng pencils and tick menus [in a nod to] the Hong Kong banquet hall.”

They’ll serve Nic’s favourite dishes from across Asia reinterpreted with New Zealand ingredients. Cāntīng’s team has been working “really hard” on perfecting their spicy crayfish and scallop dumplings, to sit on the menu alongside things like tiger prawn toast with sesame, Laos spring rolls, crispy duck wontons and 5 spiced fried sole.

“What we’re trying to do at Cāntīng is select from the culinary regions of China, which is enormous with Cantonese and Sichuan flavours and that styles coming through, and then cherry picking some of the best dishes around.”

Helming the kitchen is head chef Tony Chor Fai Lia – Nic calls Tony’s appointment a “fortuitous” one in which the Kiwi Chinese chef isn’t just bringing Nic’s culinary vision to life, but infusing his own history into the menu too.

“We’re doing an XO sauce 1980 Hong Kong style because that’s where the sauce originated from. Tony’s gone back to his 70-year-old uncles who cook in China, cook in Hong Kong, for recipes from that region. Tony’s reaching back into his family to bring some of that authenticity and flavour to the menu.”

The wide-ranging menu has a peppy undercurrent. “The front kitchen is all about activity and theatre and movement,” Nic says. “I want people to come in and, and just have the energy of the kitchen and have the energy of the room”

Bridging the gap between kitchen and diners is an interactive noodle dish intended to be the restaurant’s signature. The Yushung “prosperity toss” is Nic’s take on Singaporean-tossed longevity noodles traditionally enjoyed during Chinese New Year. It sees eight types of vegetables, king salmon and caviar combined in a salad that is dressed and tossed together on delivery. “The idea is that every person on the table adds a bit of the ingredients and it brings that prosperity together.”

Other dishes are longer labours of love. At the entrance a wall of roast ducks with glistening amber skin offer a first glimpse of the rich amber tones that carry throughout the room. Behind them, a statuesque terracotta oven stands tall and proud, brought in especially from Australia to play a crucial role to the duck’s five-day curing and cooking process.

Nic says he’s studied duck preparations “up through Shanghai and Beijing” but has developed his own method for preparing the birds he sources from Quack ‘a’ Duck in Cambridge “We’re not trying to go ultra-high end where we’re just carving the skin off and serving it with sugar and vinegar. We’re going to be carving the duck meat and skin.”

An extensive interior transformation sets the tone of the room. The brief was for “it not to look like the previous restaurant with a lick of paint,” this was to be a completely new restaurant. The revolution took shape under instruction from Izzard Design. Swathes of plush touches mean the room is more enveloping than its predecessor. A wall of glass still showcases that expansive view across Queen’s Wharf, but the rest of the fit out turns the gaze in, intimately. Oak partition screens cleave the room into closer quarters. There are rows of velveteen banquettes, large round social tables set with lazy susans and seats that perch over the kitchen counter - for diners who want to be in amongst the action. A semi-private ‘Shuijing Room’ accommodates those who favour a discreet atmosphere.

The beverages continue the spirit of gaiety, a winelist by venue manager Hira Mokomoko leads strongly with New Zealand wines, rounded out with Asahi beers and cocktails like a Lychee Margarita and a play on a Singapore Sling. The most alluring alcohol aspect though are the whiskey lockers – 15 cases housed in prime position behind the bar offer patrons the opportunity to store an exclusive bottle of whiskey in a bottle keep for return visits.

Nic says early conversations about a prospective venture with Precinct Properties, the developer behind Commercial Bay, began almost two years ago, but things only started happening in the middle of this year. “It will be the quickest I’ve turned a restaurant around in my career.”

“We’re pretty much open right on that Christmas rush, which has its complexities for myself and for the team.”

Ultimately the chef, who describes himself as “by character optimistic and glass half full” feels buoyant about this harbourside opening. “The last two years have been brutally hard for hospitality. However, I do feel that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Seasonality wise we’re moving into spring and summer, and that gets people out, that gets people’s spirits up.”

The turnaround comes at a tricky time for other reasons too. In November 2023, the Newmarket branch of Inca was placed in liquidation. In a May report liquidators said they’d received 22 claims from employees owed close to $67,000. A completed settlement deed with final execution is expected on December 1.

Nic says he “can’t really comment on those integral aspects within the liquidation” until the deed is settled but says “whilst I might talk very optimistically about the future, the past 12 to 18 months has been the hardest professionally and personally in my life, without question.”

“I’m a restaurateur. Part of Inca closing was part of me losing a job. Part of Cāntīng opening is part of me getting a new job, and rebuilding,” Nic says.

“I often say in hospitality we’re the canaries in the mine, but we’re also the first ones to come back... I do think 2025 is the start [of] that trajectory of recovery. I think if anything, it really is a perfect time to be putting the foundations in for the future.”

Cāntīng will be open seven days, offering a contemporary yum cha and lunch service from midday, Monday through Friday, with weekend yum cha from 11am to 3pm. Dinner is served 5pm till late at 7 Queen Street, Level 1, Commercial Bay, Auckland Central.

More from Aotearoa’s culinary scene

This Auckland kava bar is a laidback haven for the socially (& culturally) awkward. At this central Auckland shop, a growing community is connecting through kava.

The best NZ restaurants (not in Auckland), according to the Viva team. From Whangārei to Queenstown, these standout eateries struck a chord with us this year.

Jesse Mulligan Auckland Restaurant Recommendations: Where To Go For Peace & Quiet. Plus, a solution for diners with serious allergies.

Viva’s Top 60 Auckland Restaurants For 2024. Dining out editor Jesse Mulligan and deputy editor Johanna Thornton select this year’s 60 best places to have dinner.