Restaurant Review: The Crab & The Cooks Come Alive At SuMei

SUMEI

Cuisine: Asian fusion

Address: 3b West St, Pukekohe

Phone: (09) 283 8644

From the menu: Duck dumplings $13; Korean beef tartare $20; kingfish crudo $23; Singapore black pepper crab $23; beef rendang $18.

Reservations: Accepted

Drinks: Fully licensed

Rating: 16/20

Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good, give it a go. 16-18 Great, plan a visit. 19-20 Outstanding, don’t delay.

Talk about a staffing crisis: Victoria and I do everything. When the children are, from time to time, encouraged to load the dishwasher, they react in approximately the same way a group of restaurant diners would if asked, upon completion of their meal, to help clean up: surprised, offended, a little bit angry.

We’re good at getting them to not do certain things (screens, swearing, heroin), but the part where you get them to do things (dishes, flossing, foot massage) is still a parenting work in progress.

When I arrived at SuMei — a busy Asian-fusion eatery on a Pukekohe street corner — they had the same number of staff as we do here at Chez Mulligan. I was doubtful whether the two of them were going to be able to keep a whole roomful of people fed and watered, and the early moments weren’t reassuring: there was no arrival space, as far as I could see, so I had to walk to the bar at the back of the narrow room and get the attention of a young woman with a shaker, mid-shake.

But she pointed me to a table and didn’t seem fazed about the arrival of an extra customer — indeed, that was the last time I worried about service all night, as the two of them worked the room like Torvill and Dean worked an ice rink.

(By the way I just paused my writing to serve morning tea and, no lie, found my four children sitting in the car requesting that it be served “drive-thru style”.)

SuMei is the business of Eugene Hamilton, an executive-level chef once ubiquitous in the central city but now having apparently realised a better work-life balance in Pukekohe — a community affectionately described on the Auckland Council website as a “rural node”.

Eugene and wife Hannah have launched bar-restaurants on two corners of a major town roundabout and, with a good-looking tapas joint just down the street, the locals must be stoked with what the local dining scene now offers (SuMei and its sister Franklins recently launched their own taxi service, happy news for a region more known for tubers than Ubers).

I’ve been eating Eugene’s food at various restaurants for more than a decade and his oversight of the menu is a guarantee of exceptionality, just the sort of assurance you need when you’re (as I was) tripping home via the Bombays and in the mood for a random culinary diversion.

Everything here goes better with a little starch, and there’s a lovely luxury in taking a spoonful of something deeply spicy and dripping it over a perfect bowl of steamed white rice. The rendang in particular is wonderful — cooked down until the oil creates a tiny rim around the curry, beef cheek cooked until it’s falling apart, your teeth making a little squeak as they connect with the toasted coconut that flavours the gravy.

The drinks aren’t quite as good as you might expect — I was fine with a tropically sweet signature gin cocktail but that stuff doesn’t go well with this sort of food, the numbing effects of the ice alone really the last thing you need before entrees arrive. I’ve learnt over the years that beer is your best bet with Asian fusion but there isn’t much to choose from here, so double down on ordering food instead.

Like the duck dumplings — arriving in the sort of geometric shape you’d usually find in a university mathematics exam, with plenty of gamey bird and bright spikes of cherry (not a traditional Chinese crop, I think, but when it works, it works).

Though I didn’t see them, there must be a very solid kitchen to be turning this stuff out so consistently. I wondered if Eugene himself might be cooking, so I asked the girls behind the bar if he was around.

“No, try across the road,” was the answer. So I paid my bill and headed over to Franklins.

“I’m sorry, he’s not here either,” said the same girl I’d just spoken to. Who needs taxis when the locals can teleport?

Well-styled, with a dozen glowing lamps hanging low from the ceiling, SuMei is a great and pretty place to stop for dinner, as evidenced by the many happy diners on the Tuesday I visited. No doubt many of them stopped in Pukekohe on the way somewhere several years ago, and haven’t yet found a reason to leave.