Ladies Lunch at Soul Bar

Soul Bar deserves more than a few snaps on my phone, but I couldn't resist telling everyone about the Ladies @ Lunch deal on there at the moment. So, until I head back when the sun is shining with my camera in hand, here is a quick snapshot of yesterday's lunch at Soul.

In celebration of beautiful Allanah's birthday, a group of us from work braved the storm and headed down to the Viaduct to Soul Bar. An institution on Auckland's waterfront, Soul Bar has a reputation for great seafood, flowing Moet champagne, and being the place to be during the America's Cup (hmph...).

The ladies lunch deal is awesome, we ended up sharing the entrees, so each had a three course meal, a glass of wine, tea and coffee to finish for $29.50 each. Not bad! To make life easier I did some sweet menu copying and pasting below.

MENU
To start
Crushed avocado, jalapeno, warm jou jou bread

Main_Choice of
Skillet seared chicken, broccoli orzo salad, goats' feta, pistachio
OR
Ora King salmon fillet, citrus risotto + new season asparagus

Dessert
Salted caramel ice-cream, dark chocolate ganache and toffee popcorn

Espresso coffee or tea selection

WHEN:  Thursday September 5th to Sunday 6th October
TIME: 11am onwards
PRICE: $29.50 per person
STATUS: Bookings available

The meals were all surprisingly delicious for under $30, but the dessert - oh my the dessert was absolutely amazing (I may have eaten two servings of it).

The deal is on until the 6th of October, so before time runs out, round up your girls and make a booking. Chop chop!

Kermadec

The other day Allie, Alice and I were looking for some way to spend our afternoon. We wanted to do something cultural so we looked up what was happening at the museum and started driving that way (bear with me here). On the way I was reading the description of the 'Moana- My Ocean' exhibition:

Moana – My Ocean takes you on a journey that starts with the flight of the godwits on the east coast, then dives into the waters of the Leigh Marine Reserve and into the middle of a Hauraki Gulf boil-up. You then go deeper, into the midwater, a world dominated by the language of light, before finally going down 10km to the largely unknown waters of the Kermadec Trench before emerging at the Kermadec Islands.

You can probably guess what happened next. All culture was thrown out the window as we made a swift turn in the opposite direction towards Kermadec...Kermadec the restaurant that is.

Kermadec has been an institution on the viaduct since the America's Cup heyday of the 90s, and it's still every bit as fresh and fabulous as it was back in the day. Actually I have no idea what it was like back in the day (I was 4), but Mum reckons it was pretty good.

The restaurant was quite empty, but that was probably because we went at 3pm at that awkward in between lunch and dinner stage. We had already had lunch so weren't super hungry but Alice and I were craving oysters so we ordered some along with bread and whipped goats cheese and a bottle of wine. It's about time The Oyster Weekend lived up to it's name!

Allie's not a huge fan of oysters but Alice and I are obsessed. They are full of vitamins so we think they're the best hangover cure too, although slimy seafood might not be your thing when you're feeling a bit peaky. But hangover or no hangover we order them at every opportunity (to the detriment of our bank accounts).

After finishing up we walked back to Alice's house and started getting ready for the night ahead, and with all those vitamin filled oysters in our belly what could go wrong?

We'll save that story for another day...

Euro Restaurant and Bar

Over the weekend a group of us caught up for a ladies lunch at Euro Restaurant and Bar. This has been one of my favourite restaurants for a long time, and now thanks to their affordable lunch specials I can go without having to eat two minute noodles for the rest of the month! (slight exaggeration).

This month they have a $15 deal for half a cray at lunch- that shit cray (sorry couldn't resist). And last month they had a dozen bluff oysters for $15 which as a bit of an oyster fanatic I made the most of as well. These deals are amazing- get there!

My one piece of advise is to ask for the truffle fries, they aren't on the menu but my god they are good.

Just as we were about to tuck into our crays (and it got pretty messy) Simon Gault popped over to say hello. Talk about good service!

I seriously recommend heading to Euro this month for lunch- grab some friends, a few crays, a bottle of white wine and don't forget the truffle fries!