Places we like to eat at – Arashi Kushiyaki Bar

You know what’s great? Food on sticks. It’s a simple concept, but a good­ie. If Wel­ling­ton­ist was in Auck­land, we’d hap­pily spend all our time (well, not ALL, but a great deal) at Tanuki’s Cave, and it’s not just because of our love for huge badger testicles. How­ever, as you may know, we don’t live in Auck­land any­more, so it’s time to find a new food-on-stick ven­ue.

Arashi Kushiyaki Bar used to be a Malay­si­an res­taur­ant, but now they’ve put in some tatami mats and low tables at the front of the bar. We recom­mend avoid­ing this bit. Ser­i­ously, if you want to sit on the floor, do it at home – or find places that have sneaky holes cut under the table so your legs don’t go to sleep. So if you’re not sit­ting on the tatami, you’ll have to go to the back of the res­taur­ant, which isn’t the most char­ac­ter-driv­en space in the world, but just remem­ber you’re there for the food. And what glor­i­ous food it is too!

The thing about kushiyaki (which we believe means “stick-barbe­que” but Jo’s prob­ably wrong, because she only lived in Japan for four years after all) is that what you want to do is order a whole bunch of dishes and share them, and with most cost­ing $3.50 or $4, this is very easy to do. Here’s what Wel­ling­ton­ist ate, in list form:

• Mixed Veget­able Tem­pura ($10): this was crispy and deli­cious as it should be, but they for­got to bring out the dip­ping sauce with it, and when we finally man­aged to catch someone’s atten­tion to ask for it, they did­n’t bring out the spicy daikon that goes in it. Ahh well, it was still a deli­cious plate of pump­kin, and onion and car­roty things and cap­sic­um, although it would have been nice to have more than one piece of bro­coli.
• Spe­cial five stick plate ($9): we had one of these each, because each plate has one skew­er of squid (which is appar­ently deli­cious, if you like that sort of thing), one skew­er of beef sir­loin, one skew­er of pork belly, one skew­er of chick­en ten­der­loin with spring onion and one skew­er of mush­rooms. All are covered in a sticky sweet soy sauce and barbe­qued at the bar. This plate is a nice way to get a good mix of many of the things on the menu.
• One plate of kumara ($3): but­tery really thin slices of kumara with a little yummy char­ring on.
• Asparagus wrapped in bacon ($4): this is sea­son­al, so right now they will have okra instead of asparagus and we’re not sure how good that will be. The bacon is crispy and salty and com­ple­ments the asparagus per­fectly. You only get two skew­ers, but it is delight­ful.
• Gingko nuts ($4): We’re not sure if these really count as nuts, as there is no bio­lo­gist amogst us, but nev­er­mind. The import­ant part is that they’re hot and salty and soft. Mmm hot salty nuts our mouths.
• Steamed short­grain rice. $2 a bowl.
• One bottle Corb­an’s Pinot Gris $26: Yum! Really really fruity, and up to the chal­lenge of match­ing all the dif­fer­ent types of things we ate. The aroma of this wine is abso­lutely divine. And yes, sure, you might shy away from it because it’s Corb­an’s and you’d think it would be inof­fens­ive and gen­er­ic, but don’t. It’s prob­ably worth point­ing out right now that while Arashi is BYO, there’s a $5 cork­age charge, so it makes sense to just buy the wine out­right at the res­taur­ant. The wine list is fairly lim­ited, and fairly Corb­an’s dom­in­ated, how­ever.

We can­’t remem­ber what the bill came to – $65 or $70 per­haps? We wer­en’t stuffed to over­flow­ing, but we were sati­ated well enough. Ser­vice isn’t amaz­ing, but it’s not offens­ive either, and the food arrives fairly fast. Arashi isn’t a place where we’d want to spend hours and hours, but it is a place for tasty food on sticks, which was the whole point of the exer­cise.