Auckland Night Market

Today I experienced the Auckland Night market, an eclectic groupings of food vendors from all many parts of the world. This intriguing gathering occurs every Sunday night, in the basement level of a mall car park of all places. The whole area is cornered off and people arrive, setting up their tents and hotplates, barbecues and tables, offering a little slice of someone's home for all to try.

It was a stupendous experience, and a bit overwhelming, with so many choices that I personnaly didn't know where to begin. The whole place was filled with the smell of foods, an olfactory extravaganza with a heavy influence of fried food. My first choice was an Argentinian dish, an empanada, which was positively delicious. Once we met up with Leo and Natali, who orchestrated this venture, we got down to the hard core eating. They enjoyed some Japanese seafood balls while I had a German bratwurst, tried some churro, and finished up with a delicious spinach and ricotta panzarotti. It was a lot of deep fried and fatty foods, so this is clearly going to be no more than a monthly tradition, but it is definitely on the list of must do things in New Zealand. Aside from the Argentinian, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese booths, there were multiple Tai, Chinese, Korean, Malaysian, Greek, Indian, Hungarian, and more North American food booths. I will leave you with a picture of my favorite booth; a truck with a wood burning stove on the back for cooking pizza!