Ghost Street — EAT IT AUCKLAND

*Mātangi brisket, tangerine peel, fresh ginger, Sichuan pepper and dried chillies*

In case you haven’t heard, August is Heart of the City Auckland Restaurant Month, where many of the CBD’s best restaurants put on special set menus and host unique foodie events like Restaurant Roulette and walking food tours. At the start of this month I had the pleasure of being invited to dine at Ghost Street to launch this month of culinary heaven.

Ghost Street serves both familiar and newer iterations of dishes from the central and spice-centric regions of China. Hidden down some stairs in the basement beneath Café Hanoi, you’ll be lured in by the strangely calming scent of incense burning in the entranceway. Ghost Street has a cool and dark subterranean vibe, the interiors made of rough concrete, exposed brick and thick wood beams. It doesn’t have a strong Chinese presence but I appreciated the lack of token Asian paraphernalia you often see in restaurants riffing on the cuisine. The kitchen is an open one where you can see flames hitting the industrial vents above, an exciting spectacle for those sitting nearby or directly looking in on the kitchen.

The menu covers snacks and starters, both veering towards the more traditional (such as Xi’an style lamb ribs with cumin and chilli) and less so (like the Mātangi tri-trip tartare). There are also rice and noodle dishes, meat and seafood, and tofu and vegetables. There’s even a few sweet treats to round things off. Tick the things that tickle your fancy from the a la carte menu (or leave it up to the chef this Restaurant Month) and then hang your menu from the peg dangling from the ceiling overhead. The waitstaff will swiftly dispatch your order to the kitchen.

Dry July may be over for some but every day is a dry one for May-Lee, so I was glad Ghost Street slings a few non-alc cocktails. I happily sipped on the Beijing Brake, a cloudy lemonade with hints of lemongrass and cucumber.

We left dinner to the chef and ordered the Restaurant Month set menu which, at $55 per head, is great value. We started off this Chengdu inspired meal with an array of cold dishes. First to arrive was the pickled vegetables, rustically large pieces of pickled ginger, carrot and radish and a wee branch of pickled green peppercorns. They were served alongside fried wonton skins dusted with chilli salt. I realised later that this starter held so much appeal as it had all the aspects of my favourite snack, salt and vinegar chips. Salt, fat, crunch and tang.

The sliced beef shin was a cold dish of tender, thinly sliced beef shin aromatic with spices from the hard-won master stock sauce. The beef was lashed with chilli crisp, crushed peanuts and sesame seeds; the black vinegar dressing was positively moreish and had us slurping the last dregs off a spoon. Our final starter was the sesame noodles with ‘strange flavour’ sauce. The first time I ran into a Sichuan peppercorn was while sampling snacks at the Auckland Food Show. At the time I felt certain I was having a severe allergic reaction. Not because it tastes strange or bad, but because of the bizarre buzzing numbness it imparts in one’s mouth. It kind of feels like someone has pumped your mouth full of local anaesthetic, and then got you to lick a battery. People may be more familiar with the name dan dan noodles or cold sesame noodles, which these were, or some version of them. The noodles were dressed in a creamy and nutty tahini laden sauce studded with chilli, sesame seeds and cooling julienne cucumber.

I always find myself surprised when waitstaff suggest that I order less. Afterall, is it not better for a restaurant if I order more than less? My husband and I ordered the steamed skin-on snapper from the a la carte menu as well, much to the dismay of our waitress and as we were to find out, our stomach capacities as well. Because the set menu for Restaurant Month is big. You will be well fed, and you do not need to order more. In true Chinese banquet style, next to arrive in close succession were the Mātangi brisket with tangerine peel and fresh ginger, mapo tofu with ‘impossible’ beef, cabbage and glass noodle salad, stir-fried greens and steamed jasmine rice. Phew I got tired just typing that all out.

The Mātangi beef brisket was the highlight of dinner for me. Cubes of stupidly tender brisket had been simmered in a moreish, caramelly soy sauce speckled with Sichuan pepper and smoky dried chillies. The thin slivers of tangerine peel in it were sensational, adding a spark of fragrant citrus to the dish. You will want to add rice to the leftover juices at end so you can soak up all those delicious flavour and continue to relive eating them over and over again.

I’m a big fan of mapo tofu, a dish that really shuts up those anti-tofu naysayers. But this and many other Chinese dishes that feature tofu have continued to alienate the vege crowd, until now. Ghost Street’s version features ‘impossible’ beef instead, more juicy and tender than the real thing, packing an umami bomb from doubanjiang (spicy and ferment soy and broad bean paste), minced mushrooms and chilli oil. After all this meat and faux meat, you’ll be relieved to get some vegetables into you. The seasonal assortment of Asian greens stir-fried with chilli and garlic are a tasty, wok-hei hit and the salad of shredded cabbage with glass noodles and sesame soy dressing a light and refreshing finish.

Well our meal didn’t quite finish here, along came the steamed snapper we didn’t really need. It was nice: delicate snapper fillets in a light, slightly sweet, soy and ginger forward sauce with a flourish of spring onion and micro-coriander. I appreciated the treatment of the fish, the flavour of which was allowed to sing. But I really needed just a bit more salt. And a second savoury stomach transplant.

My husband and I genuinely had to be rolled out of Ghost Street afterwards, deliciously happy and a little too full. The underground bunker was packed full of punters on the evening we went, so if I were you, I’d get on to booking yourself a table for Restaurant Month quick smart.

Ghost Street
Basement level Tuawhiti Lane
27 Galway Street
Britomart, Auckland 1010
Ph (09) 306 2233
@ghoststreetakl
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Advertorial: thank you Ghost Street for inviting me to dine for Heart of the City Auckland Restaurant Month.