Now online! The Cringe Index - a helpful spreadsheet with recommendations, new openings, our top 10s and @chris__schulz has even added his favourite live bands!
Get it at cringe.nz or via the link in bio. Best viewed on your laptop. 💻
👋
People always ask us, what are your favourite places in Auckland? Well, we decided to pony up and create a lo-fi, practical database that answers just that — and serve as a helpful guide to the best city in Aotearoa.
Recommendations: Filter by price point, cuisine and location, with suggestions for what to order included. Will be added to in the coming weeks.
New openings: A collation of all the new openings featured in Cringe week by week so you can catch up on the latest — and quickly.
Top 10s: The Cringe team’s personal Top 10 places to eat, drink + be merry in, if you prefer an even more curated list.
Favourite bands: The best bands in Tāmaki.
We’re aiming to add other types of Bests soon, so let us know what kind of recommendations you want to see!
Love,
Cringe
Thanks for coming to feast on our succulent Chinese meal last night — we had an amazing time feeding all 150 of you!
I loved sharing my modern spin on Chinese classics, inspired by some of my favourite flavours from the rich world of Chinese gastronomy. - Sam
Menu included:
Boiled peanuts in Chinese herbs and spices, confit garlic and aged citrus peel
Fried wonton with chicken liver pate, salted sour plum dusting
Century egg and tofu w/ aged black vinegar caramel and shiso
Congee w/ XO sauce, wok made pork floss, century egg purée & textures
Bbq Charsiu Pork roll w/ preserved mustard green, Sichuan spiced fermented persimmon
Chrysanthemum ice cream w/ candied date
It was a serious team effort, so the biggest of kudos to the kitchen Karol @karrrol_troncoso , Jo @delivision_foodstyling , Dan @danoldlee , Mumma Low; the best FOH team Nat @islandandflowers , Eugene @eugenie_513 and Anita @asha311 ; drinks Pat @patwatson and Steph @steph_nobes , plus the glue of the operation, dishies Mel @mel.liao and Cody @doomtrain332 . Plus Kimberley @kimberleyylee of @side.scoop ofc!
Thank you to the wonderful team at @ozonecoffeenz for hosting us!
Lotsa love!
Jean & Sam
There’s only a few days left to buy tickets to the pop-up on Saturday 3 May!
Go to ate-ate-ate.co.nz (only 8pm tickets are left) to grab yours now. We’ve also got a new addition to the store: a pop-up exclusive tee that you can buy on the day, or pre-order and pick up during your seating. If that’s your thing, add that to the cart!
—
A note from Jean:
the thing that people ask me the most when they find out i’m friends with sam is: do you get to eat his food? the answer is, yes, all the time. that’s the thing about sam: he will tell me to come over on a monday night and nonchalantly whip up a bowl of brothy, herbal noodles, topped with uniform lines of pork belly you know was cut with a sharp knife and a precise whack. it will be served to me with a crisp white napkin on the side, acme cutlery, and an iced chrysanthemum tea.
a couple weeks ago when we did a run through of the menu, he said to me, “this might be the best pop-up i’ve done so far.” i love it the most when sam cooks chinese food, unabashedly asian, an expression of all the flavours and textures and smells we’d recognise anywhere. it’s also because the way he does it is is so recognisably sam: the century-egg purée and fermented persimmon with green Sichuan pepper and cute little char siu pork roll all reflective of the way he ingests ideas, culture, taste, cuisine, mixes it all up in that bleached head of his, and lets it out onto the plate.
Come to the pop-up!
We were so happy to look after and feed you last night — thank you so much for everyone who had our food and came to see us!
It was the first time we brought ate ate ate out into the real world, and it was nice to see it all exist outside the confines of our little screens and echo chamber (the echo chamber being Sam’s living room, where we record the podcasts).
We’d love to do more of these, if the stars align (and if you guys want us to! So let us know!). Doing cool shit is so satisfying and makes us wanna do better every time!
Very grateful to @weareopenlate_ for hosting us (especially @misstennent MVP); all our crew on the night who were amazing (especially mumma low, who was wrapping all the wontons in the kitchen!); @side.scoop / @kimberleyylee for plating up v good ice cream (“the apple pie was 100 times better than maccas”); and a catch-all THANK YOU to whoever we are missing.
We’ll put up details soon on how you can buy our chilli oil, btw!
❤️
Love,
Jean and Sam
char siu and chilli oil pop-up menu by ate ate ate — Saturday 13 July
553 Karangahape Rd — 6pm till late
We are very much looking forward to seeing everyone at Open Late @weareopenlate_ in a couple of days!
Here is what you’ll be coming in for: a char siu plate by @_sam_low_ , some wontons made by mumma low (sam’s mum — she’ll be there!), eggplant, milk tea and apple pie ice cream by @side.scoop and plenty of drinks by @weareopenlate_ .
Note that some details are subject to change before the actual day.
Walk-ins only 🏃🏽♀️
Ahhh! Please come!
— Jean and Sam x
Kia ora koutou! Jean and Sam here.
We have a new podcast slash food platform (ish), out now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts! But first, we wanted to introduce ourselves and why we decided to start Ate Ate Ate (Said as, 888! She ate, ate, ate!).
OK, Jean (me): a writer, critic, and all-round Food Person. I was the Food Editor of Metro magazine for the last three years, where I wrote a lot about restaurants. And Sam: he cooks, he writes recipes, he’s a barista champion and he videos himself quite a lot on his Instagram @_sam_low_ . He also won MasterChef New Zealand 2022 and wrote a cookbook, Modern Chinese, in stores now!
And as to the podcast… Basically, Sam and I met at Daily Daily on Karangahape Rd in 2020 and haven’t shut up since. We love to talk about food and dining culture, who ate and who didn’t eat, and both serious and silly topics about food, like: why is everyone a foodie now? Is that social media’s fault? How does queerness intersect with cooking? Are we in a post-cultural appropriation era? Which restaurants did our families, as fresh baby immigrants, gravitate to?
We thought that if we were thinking about it, surely other people were thinking about it too. So, Ate Ate Ate! Something we’re doing for fun, for laughs, for an outlet, for a place to talk on the record about eating in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and beyond.
New episodes out every two weeks-ish, plus bonus content on this Instagram, like where we’ve eaten this week; what we recommend; and who we thought ate.
📸 @abigaildellavo
