Fishmonger, Kohimarama

Happy New Year to all! Fast forward a few weeks, Weird Dude and I have become firm friends with our shared love of food. Last week, we went to the Fishmonger at St Helier's Bay, where Weird Dude insists, the Best Fish and Chips can be found. We ordered and took a very short walk down to the beach to eat our meal.

Here is my Shrimp and Corn Fritter with Rangitoto Island in the background: this was a sign of things to come - tasting a little on the floury side, not as crisply pan-fried as it could have been; it just didnt feel properly warmed up.

Battered Fish & Chips. Whilst we were ordering in the shop, another couple had asked if the fish was "fresh" - seeing we were in the middle of the Christmas/New Year break, "freshness" was a rather tall order - and were told honestly that the fish were pre-frozen for this period. That wasn't what let this meal down, it just tasted as though our order had sat uncollected for 15 minutes, it looked right but it just wasn't crisp or warm enough - the chips had soggy-ied by the time we sat down on the beach. This is too soon, a matter of minutes, for a takeaway meal to decline so seriously in quality.

Weird Dude with Fish Burger. I tried this and thought it was the best thing that we ordered - it tasted fresh, good balance of ingredients. Weird Dude was less convinced.

We hypothesized that the disappointing meal might have had to do with the fact that they were understaffed (common issue for this period), possibly stressed out with longer cooking times required for frozen stock, or quite likely, that they had missed our order and it had been ready to go for a while before we were called to collect it. I am definitely not dismissing Weird Dude's claim that this is where the best Fish & Chips is to be had, the time period sandwiched in between two stretches of statutory holidays is not the best to judge a place by. It was not their best - we were pretty disappointed and proceeded to have a sulk at the beach.