Jesse Mulligan Reviews Auckland Thai Restaurant Esarn Rocket, A Westmere Local Favourite
This Westmere local is fiery but in the best possible way.
I enjoyed my meal at Hocho a few months ago but there was more going on than I told you at the time. I was eating dinner with my wife, who that afternoon had gotten her hair done – a biannual event requiring her husband to take her “somewhere nice” afterwards to make the most of the blow-wave.
I had my eye on Mother, blow-wave capital of the inner-west – but I should have done my research. They are closed on a Tuesday and so I was forced to scramble an alternative. This led me to Hocho, where we sat in an empty room after ordering sushi from the counter. The Met Gala this was not.
Perhaps we should have gone across the road to Esarn Rocket, where it seems to be perpetually busy. Why should two quality restaurants in the same set of shops have such varying success attracting a crowd? I went back to Westmere last week to find out.
The chemistry is good as soon as you walk into the Thai place – before you walk in, actually, because the crowds spill out on to picnic tables on the sidewalk. This is Auckland, so it’s only truly comfortable to eat out there six weeks of the year, but the Esarn crew do their best to evoke tropical nights by lighting a small gas heater, possibly planet Earth’s least efficient heating system.
Inside, the walls are rich with colour and the tables look like they’ve been arranged by a clever set designer. Formica tabletops, budget water jugs, those Alcatraz-style metal napkin dispensers that only let you take one at a time – these things are designed to keep prices down but double as props that put you in mind of Southeast Asian countries where every cent counts.
Then, of course, there are the aromas. No other cuisine is as transportative, and the wafts of ginger, lemongrass and kaffir hit you as soon as you walk in. This is no doubt because of the smashing of pestle against mortar, a violently wonderful form of kitchen prep that releases all sorts of fragrant oils into the air. As you open the menu, you’d have to be on GLP-1s not to already feel excited.
The menu is long but the house specialties are fairly easy to spot, and our waiter was happy to point out a couple of popular dishes. That’s how we ended up with a pork jowl salad – not the sort of thing I’d leap to order but our trust in the masses was rewarded by a dish that was as much about texture as flavour. Imagine a larb without the minced meat – instead the bite-size pieces of pork are grilled, but the fat content means they stay juicy under heat. They’re then glazed in a sour-salty onion sauce and served with cooling pieces of cabbage and cucumber.
You can choose your level of heat, and the friend I was eating with had warned me – medium is hot, hot is terrifying. The medium-spiced green papaya salad was so fiery it was almost difficult to finish, but in the best sort of way. Hopefully the success of places such as Esarn Rocket encourages local Thai chefs not to try to second-guess their New Zealand clientele: make it as you normally would, and we will work it out.
The best thing about that papaya salad was the lime juice. All good Thai uses lime, but here it is properly abundant – you get big hits of citrus in every mouthful. It’s a basic thing, but it’s one of the big differences between this place and lesser takeaway joints – they don’t hold back on any of these key ingredients, so you actually feel like you’re getting the authentic version of these dishes. My first mouthful took me straight back to Bangkok in 2008, where I’d stopped on the way home from London and wandered around the edges of a stadium fighting event, eating from the vendors who’d sprung up to serve the crowds.
Hotpot is another delight, a sweet broth scented with woody spices, in which various cuts of beef (brisket, shank, tendon) bobbed around next to green “kai larn”.
Almost too late I spotted a sign on the wall advertising a special of duck spring rolls so I added them to the order – you’re meant to have something deep fried in a classic Thai feast and these were lovely, served with a plum sauce and pleasantly reminiscent of the spring rolls they used to do at Chinese takeaways here before the Asian eating scene became more diverse and sophisticated.
Only two staff were visible in the dining room so it was a lovely surprise when I walked through the kitchen to the bathroom (as per the Southeast Asian tradition – no cats wandering around in the Westmere version though) and saw another four urgently preparing food. It made me wonder why the guys out front were not a bit more urgent themselves – it took forever to get a drink and we weren’t offered a second. As recently discussed in my dining etiquette column, this is a huge letdown as a diner, and a financial opportunity lost for the restaurant. Once Esarn Rocket has sorted that, it’ll be hard to find anything to complain about.
Esarn Rocket
Cuisine: Thai
Address: 170 Garnet Rd, Westmere
Contact: 021 242 4739, esarnrocket.co.nz, @esarnrocket
Reservations: Accepted
Drinks: Fully licensed
From the menu: duck spring rolls $14, drunken noodles $28, green papaya salad $22, spicy pork jowl salad $22, slow-cooked beef hot pot $26
Opening hours: Tuesday-Sunday, noon-3pm & 5pm-late.
Rating: 16/20
Score: 0-7 Steer clear. 8-12 Disappointing, give it a miss. 13-15 Good, give it a go. 16-18 Great, plan a visit. 19-20 Outstanding, don’t delay.
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