Burnt Butter Diner

So many places to eat, what feels like so little meals to eat them in. I’ve been spending these summer holidays catching up on my list of places I’ve been meaning to eat at forever but often their slightly out of the way location has hampered well meaning attempts to visit them. 

The dreaded hospo shutdown period that is the summer holidays is finally drawing to a close and I made my way to the central-west suburb of Avondale to brunch at Burnt Butter Diner. 

I’m actually embarrassed to say I hadn’t been up until now, the menu is everything I could ever want from a cafe. No run of the mill rubbish eggs benedict this and big breakfast that. The hardest thing you’ll do when you visit is decide what to get, so may I suggest you go with a nice person who is willing to share a bit of their brekkie with you so no FOMO ensues? I was tossing up between the chilli fried eggs with garden herbed flat bread, sesame, labneh, crispy shallots and coriander (wow!) and the cornbread with king prawns, sumac charred corn, broccolini and salsa verde. Okay it was also a tight competition still with the chicken schnitzel with cos lettuce, chervil, anchovy dressing, soft boiled egg and parmesan crumb, or the sambar mushroom omelette  with onion fondue (woah!), whipped goats cheese, furikake  and pickled enoki. You see where I’m going with this. The sweet tooths out there will still be well catered for, they have a dish called ‘cake for breakfast’ whose current rendition has taken on a summery note as a semifreddo with airy whip and obligatory sweet but salty crunch. 

I love any opportunity to have me some cornbread (imagine me saying that with a Southern drawl) so the cornbread with prawns it was. The cornbread arrived in thick crispy fingers and had a beautiful corny flavour (I mean, there’s not other way to describe it really) and I liked that they held back on the sweetness. The American versions I’d had recently were more akin to cake than bread. The three fat king prawns on top were perfectly grilled in the shell which helped them maintain their flavour and juices. Their backs had been slit open so it was a simple manoeuvre to get them out of their shells and into one’s mouth. There wasn’t salsa verde here on reflection, but more of a creamy corn custard the cornbread was luxuriating in and I loved the combo. The lemony sumac charred corn and charred broccolini added textural heft and freshness to a dish whose shrimp and grits inspiration is often devoid of anything remotely considered healthy. 

I’m not a fan a peppermint, nor am I a fan of peppermint slice. But there was something very appealing about the peppermint slice in Burnt Butter Diner’s cabinet so my friend Becky and I ordered one to share and it was amazing! I liked the addition of a thick, fluffy layer of ‘marshmallow floof’ with the relatively less thick peppermint icing delivering just the right amount of sweetness and peppermint that wasn’t overpowering or resembling toothpaste. The dark chocolate biscuit crumb sandwiching the two delivered a nice, salty hit and the nubblets of floral dark chocolate on top adding a delicious complexity what I considered the most basic of New Zealand bakery slices. It was so good, I bought an extra slice to takeaway for my husband.  There is nothing that I could possibly fault about Burnt Butter Diner except that they need to take over the shop space on either side of them and expand as soon as possible.

Burnt Butter Diner
62 Rosebank Road, Avondale, Auckland 1026
@burntbutter_nz