One of my favourite areas of Auckland is Dominion Road. It’s long been full of little antique and junk shops, cafes and various ethnic oddities you won’t find anywhere else in town. It’s a long road and one of the three main sections has become almost completely dominated by small Asian, mostly Chinese restaurants, offering so many regional cuisines, one is not only spoiled for choice – but a Westerner can do so much better here than if one was travelling in China (where they try to please what they think are Western tastes and try to give you sweet and sour pork because someone gave them the idea that that is our idea of Chinese food…)
But I digress… everyone has their favourites, and Love a Duck is mine. It’s not the best – Spicy Joint and Ding Ding Jiang can knock my socks off with their spicy tofu dishes. And it’s not the atmosphere – the utter lack of decor in these places is almost (but not quite) charming – well-worn tables and chairs – get your own water.
But I love Love a Duck because it was there first, it’s old wave, a couple of decades of rice and grease and minced pork and shredded duck and fat noodles and clanging cutlery and chatter and it’s where my husband and I go for lunch because that’s where we go.
So… after all these years, they’ve got this paper lantern and hung it over the light and it is just so darned pretty I had to take a picture. But I do hope the improvements stop here…
Titirangi Storyteller 