The Nightcar -
Ended up going to The Nightcar for dinner last night (44 Queen Street, Auckland CBD, Auckland 1010) and really enjoyed it! My partner and I had previously gone there for drinks and enjoyed it, and the food menu looked good, so we decided to go for a late night dinner.
I apologise for the poor photo quality, the way we were seated made it a little difficult to get better photos.
Dish 1: Cucumber salad $12
This was pretty good. It's not my favourite cucumber salad I've had in the city centre (TBH I'm pretty partial to Eden Noodles), but this is something that's hard to mess up. Good pairing with the rest of our food.
Dish 2: Wok-fried snapper $32
This was 100% the highlight for me. The snapper was really well cooked, as it was nice and crisp on the outside but still moist/juicy on the inside (there is nothing worse than sad, dry fish). The nuoc cham was really nice, and in general, the flavours were nice and fresh and the watercress pesto in particular was a nice touch. Portion wise it was good, I think we had 3 pieces of snapper each that were a reasonable size. If I had to nitpick it would just be that it was a little difficult to try and eat the snapper with all the garnishes at once, but honestly this was just really good and I would order it again (also, maybe could have used a bit more direct incorporation of the curry leaves, but I'm biased and really love curry leaves).
Dish 3: Prawn breadsticks $15
I was really pleasantly surprised! I don't normally like prawns but we decided to order this to have another smaller plate to go with the snapper and the cucumber salad. I'm not entirely sure how everything on the ingredients list directly translated to what was put on our plate, but it was really yum. Only complaint here is that I found it slightly difficult to eat without getting everything everywhere lol, but again this was absolutely delicious.
Drinks: Nightcar Express - $25 (pictured) & Cape Horn (Motel Mezcal - Los Sundays Jalapeno Tequila - Clarified Clamato Juice & Malt Beer Syrup) - also $25.
Honestly, the drinks were probably the biggest let-down of the night - but I think this was largely because both my partner and I ordered drinks that were a bit more outside our comfort zone, as in the past I've enjoyed their drinks a lot. Mine, the Nightcar Express, was still pretty good I've previously had their baijiu based cocktail and much preferred it. The Cape Horn was nice from what I sipped, but the biggest problem was the timing of the drinks - we got them after our food had come out, which was a little surprising, and because the Cape Horn was more savoury, it would have been best as a pre-dinner drink.
Total spend: $109 for 2 people ($54.50 pp)
Overall thoughts/impressions
Honestly the food was a lot better than I thought it would be! I'm usually reluctant to order food from places that seem to mostly focus on cocktails (most of the patrons in at the time we were seemed to be drinking, I'm not sure how busy it was for food earlier), but I was really pleasantly surprised. I think because most people were there for drinks, the timing was a bit off. The bar was very busy, whereas our food came out shockingly fast lol. The atmosphere of the place is still very cool, which is definitely a bonus. I'd like to sit at an actual table instead of the bar next time, but can't really complain as we were walk-ins and probably somewhat lucky to get a table.
I thought this was reasonable value for money, considering we both had 1 drink each and the food felt quite high quality (the price for food alone worked out to $29.5 pp I think). That being said, we had a late lunch so weren't massively hungry, so the value for money may go down if you need to order more dishes.
Overall, I'm keen to go again and would recommend!