In Lower Hutt, The Best Food Can Be Found In The Most Unexpected Places
For reasons unrelated to the thrust of this piece, I was recently forced to relocate my family to Lower Hutt for a month. I know ‘forced’ feels like a pretty aggressive verb choice, but having not spent much time there I wasn’t sure about what I was about to find and there is remarkably little said about its food scene.. When I asked colleagues who had once lived there about what they recommended, they looked at each other fairly blankly and said something about flood lit football pitches. What I found when I arrived though was not just another, lesser bit of Wellington up the motorway out of town, but a city in its own right filled with a truly diverse set of places to eat.
What makes that diversity quite so interesting is that it is not a recent phenomena;it has been slowly developing for the past 150 years. Chinese migration to the Hutt Valley dates back to at least the 1880s, with families establishing market gardens in the area. There was also a number of Indian families who migrated to Petone in the early 20th century. Post-war, the valley had become a huge working-class centre, with factories and state housing providing work and homes for tens of thousands of people. As the city grew, so did the communities that called it home. Later waves of migration, particularly after periods of civil unrest, brought Sri Lankan families to the area, which led to Lower Hutt becoming the largest diaspora of Sri Lankan people in the country outside of Auckland. The result of all of this goes some way to explaining why a city most often thought of as being just outside of Wellington is home to such an extraordinary amount of food and culture worth travelling for.
And now, importantly, getting there from Wellington no longer requires a car. The arrival of Te Ara Tupua has changed the relationship between Wellington and the Hutt in a fairly fundamental way. The new shared path, the result of a $348m investment, runs along the harbour between Ngauranga and the Hutt Valley, providing a truly spectacular walking and cycle journey. Walking time depends on speed, but most could complete it in around an hour, and cycling it will take no longer than twenty minutes.
With the arrival of Michelin coinciding with the opening of Te Ara Tupua, I thought I would invoke the guide’s original formula of identifying places worthy of a special trip. The spots on this list I would absolutely plan a journey and my entire Saturday around—walking or cycling from Wellington city, out along the fringes of Te Whanganui a Tara, and into the heart of Lower Hutt. Perhaps we may even need a new award category for a place worthy of a pilgrimage conducted under your own steam without the aid of a motor vehicle. Four stars?
B Leaf
Image credit: Nick Iles
Tucked off the busy Hutt Road, just before the huge overpass, an unassuming shopfront hides something really quite special. B Leaf cafe and takeaway has four windows at the front, each painted with words in a range of font sizes: DRINK HOT, break FAST, LUNCH WELL, and three beautiful words, so easy to miss as you drive past on a gloomy winter evening and a rarity anywhere in this country: SRI LANKAN FOOD.
Opened three years ago, B Leaf has a mix of Kiwi cafe staples and an impressive selection of traditional Sri Lankan cuisine cooked with heart. Egg roti with dhal comes as chopped up homemade roti that has been layered with raw egg so as it cooks, the egg sets inside the puffed layers. This alongside a dhal quite unlike anything else in the city, bright yellow and so coconut forward it makes even a cold Wednesday night in the Lower Hutt somehow tropical and radiant.
They have specials too if you ask. The last time it was a mixed curry, with shrimp and lamb, topped with creamy, soaked cashew nuts, deep fried boiled egg, and fish cake peppered with strips of chilli and garlic. The whole thing had been cooked hard so it became such a deep shade of brown it was absorbing the light in the room. Everything here is so utterly compelling.
Yan's Supermarket
Image credit: Nick Iles
The trouble with visiting an Asian supermarket is the absolute knowledge that whatever I am about to try cooking will be nothing like the delicious versions I have eaten out and am trying to replicate. Pretty sweet then that Yan's Supermarket in Lower Hutt is also an exceptional restaurant, meaning you can sack off the shop the moment your confidence wanes and just eat the real thing.
Feast on blistered crispy pork weighed out by the gram, and sticky mapo tofu with a fistful of numbing Sichuan peppercorns thrown in; I have eaten every single mapo tofu in Wellington city, and this is more numbing than all of those combined. The homemade chicken and sweetcorn dumplings are pan-fried until one side is blistered and the other sticky and translucent.
The star of the show, though, is the Hainanese chicken on rice, which is perfectly poached and served with a whole bowl of the cooking liquor on the side for good measure. All of this in a fun canteen setting with truly wonderful and human service, and full of families all sitting side by side enjoying the day. Put the basket down and settle in.
El Turko
Of all the cuisines gifted to the wider world as diaspora travelled and found new homes throughout the 20th century, the one that just gets me every time is Turkish. In particular the ocakbasi. Literally translating to ‘at the hearth’, it is a traditional open coal fire on which breads, meats and vegetables are cooked close to the source of heat. It fills the room with warmth and energy whilst imbuing everything it encounters with a subtle smoke quality that is unparalleled.
New Zealand does not have any dedicated ocakbasi, that I know of, and I had long given up my dream of eating piles of fatty lamb blistered over high heat with stacks of chewy flatbreads, pots full of dips made of aubergine and chickpeas, and salads of coarsely chopped red onion, tomato and parsley. Then I walked past El Turko, a family run Turkish restaurant that cooks all their meats over charcoal, and boy is it close enough.
The ocakbasi is in the kitchen rather than the dining room, but the food still knows the smoke. The family mixed grill is a tray lined with orzo and rice that has been fried in butter before it is cooked in a light broth. On top of this sits a pile of those blistered lamb chops, chunks of tender chicken shish, lamb shish, falafel and handmade lamb adana. All this with a pile of crunchy salad made from red onion and cabbage.
The only catch is they say this feeds four. I respectfully disagree and on a good day would definitely eat it all alone.
Bellbird
Image credit: Nick Iles
I was ready to absolutely hate Bellbird. Or at the very least be indifferent to it. Cafes and restaurants attached to cultural centres are so very rarely excellent, because they simply do not need to be. Even when they are run by talented chefs, the requirement to be all things to all comers softens the edges into something quite vanilla. I thought the new restaurant attached to the Dowse Gallery, and helmed by the immensely talented Chef Patnam, would be no different. I was wrong.
Yes they have a range of eggs which I have heard are very good and all manner of fun-looking Kiwi brunch items, but I would not actually know about them. I was too distracted by the seam of exceptional Indian dishes running through the list. Keema pao, poori, lamb kulcha. Three dishes spanning very different styles of Indian cooking, all made in the here and now of Lower Hutt.
Poori here is filled with avocado and Ora King salmon and is crunchy, rich and decadent. Kulcha is fluffy and topped with fatty lamb and decorated with all manner of crispy little bits. This really could be one of the best brunch spots anywhere in the Wellington region.
Crispy Catch
Image credit: Nick Iles
Growing up near London, I thought we were good at fish and chips. Then I moved here and realised the world had something else to say. There are some truly excellent spots in Wellington, but I think Crispy Catch may have just stolen the crown.
This tiny caravan operating on the shoreline is really punching above its weight. Beer batter is often just two words on a menu that I am not sure if I have ever actually tasted. Sure, I have had it, but the liquid could really have been anything. Here, there is a genuine depth of hoppy beer that sits right at the heart of the batter. Quite exceptional, crispy and light, while the fish is perfectly steamed in its casing.
I like to order some fun bits with a fish and chips dinner, but this normally comes in the form of more heavily battered and deep fried things. Here, they have fish or calamari tacos. They arrive loaded with seafood, lettuce and tomato on a soft shell with some mayo and smoked paprika to finish. Nothing groundbreaking, but perfect in their execution.
Novelty Sweets
Imade credit: Nick Iles
When non-Indian people think about ‘authentic’ Indian food, a word I shudder at with its implied knowledge and simplification of culture and cuisine, they often think of street food and dishes served on paper plates on the side of the road. Whilst this version certainly exists, what they miss is the glamour and opulence of so many restaurants across India. Huge rooms lined with flashing fairy lights and marble walls with water features. Aunties, cousins and friends all sat around huge tables cluttered with dishes.
Novelty, tucked deep in a trading estate in Lower Hutt, is exactly that. A wholly vegetarian menu sits in a space all of its own, unlike any of the other curry houses in the area. Instead of sickly sweet, bright curries, here they are dark and heavy. The best way to get across as much of the menu as possible is to order one of the various thali they have on offer—a large metal plate filled with various treats and goodies.
The Amritsari thali comes with a kulcha stuffed with spiced potatoes and butter, chana masala, daal makhni, paneer tikka, rice, raita, onion salad and finally a little sweet treat. To sit on the plush furniture amongst all this opulence, eating like royalty, is to really feel the sense of Indian hospitality.
Image credit: WellingtonNZ | Supplied