Where I Ate Last with Tony Astle: Kingland Social

This week Tony Astle ate at Kingsland Social. Owned and run by Chef Phil Clarke and his wife, the restaurant is more family oriented than his previous ventures and according to Tony, the food is "casual in style but pretty good".

He had the Caesar Salad, the Crispy Calamari Salad, the Greenstone Creek eye fillet with garden salad and fries, and the Angus beef burger, topped with a fried egg, beetroot, pickles, mesclun, tomato, melted cheese, all on a brioche bun. And for desert, they had fresh fruit and vanilla ice cream. 

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Recipe of the Week: Fresh Tuna Nicoise 

Ingredients:  

 

For The Salad 

1 egg 

6 round French beans 

3 anchovy fillets 

3 green olives 

1 small boiled potato, sliced 

1 small vine ripened tomato, quartered 

  

For the Tuna 

150 g fresh tuna fillet 

½ tsp cajun spice 

½ tsp virgin olive oil 

2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar, reduced by half 

  

Method and Finishing:  

1. Bring a saucepan of water to the boil. 

2. Add the egg. Boil for 5 minutes. 

3. Place the boiled egg in iced water to cool. 

4. Peel, halve, and arrange with the remaining salad ingredients on a plate. Set aside. 

5. Reduce the balsamic vinegar, by half, over heat, then cool. 

6. Rub the fresh tuna with the cajun spice. 

7. In a very hot non-stick pan seal the tuna on all sides for approximately 30 seconds per side. 

8. Place the seared tuna on the prepared plated salad. 

9. Drizzle with olive oil and the reduced balsamic vinegar 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Finding the hidden gems and the hospitality scene. Where I
ate last with Tony Estell on Kerry Woodham Mornings News Talk. Said,
be and a very good morning Tony.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Estal, good morning to you.

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Now. I saw this story and I thought, who would
know the answer to that? And I thought, Tony Estell,
he's coming in today Divers discover nineteenth century shipwreck laden
with one hundred champagne bottles.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh you know what, you could probably still drink them.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
There we got That's what I thought. I thought you could.
It was I think it went down. It was German
crates of champagne went down on the Baltic see. They
think it was, Yeah, about one hundred and twenty odd
years ago, one hundred and thirty odd years ago, one

(00:48):
hundred liar, one hundred and seventy years has been there.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Actually, that'd be great, be a great fine officials. They
were fantastic champagnes. Yeah, But if it was German sparkling,
I wouldn't know about it. But you know, I got
a whole pile of champagne that had actually fallen overboard
and I about twenty years ago, yeah, and they were
all floating around the water, and I bought them all. Yeah,
unbelievably fantastic. What sort of champagne I was at the time.

(01:12):
It was very click and croak. Yeah, I mean yeah,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
I'll take my chances, right.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
I thought it was pretty good. Got it for next
to nothing?

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Yeah, so it was mineral water in one hundred and seventy. Yeah,
they don't have any information.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
And they don't know if anyone drank it.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
Not yet. No, it should be all right, shouldn't.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
The mind you a hundred years would you say one
hundred and seventy Yeah, it may not be, but of
course just depends. I mean fun, I mean, I've got
I've got wine that's nearly one hundred years old, and
it's probably good.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Does weird wine age better? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Yeah, so champagne sort of metarises and gets a different taste.
You either like that or you don't. But I mean,
if you someone gave it to you to have a go,
wouldn't you.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well, yes, well yes you would. Now where have you
eaten last?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Okay? Well I went to Kingsland Social.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Oh okay, well that's all very hip.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Well it is. It was out of my comfort zone,
as you can imagine. I can on the pony one,
but never mind. I just thought we'd go over there
because Phil Clark is a very very very good chef.
He used to have Phil's Kitchen.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Oh that's what I was, and he actually.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Had over at COVID time when he closed it because
of all sorts of dreadful things happened over Covid. He
had two cuisine hats. So he's a very very good chef.
So of course I was.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
I went into Phil's, into Phil's Kitchen and advertently not
knowing how good it was, and they found us the table,
and then I had to go to the loo and
top up my play account to make sure I had
enough money to play the bell.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
That was an excellent restaurant. One of the better chefs
around New Zealand. He and his wife are running are
running the restaurant, which they've had for a long time,
and they work every hour that God seends, you know,
from morning, and the children are there. It's a family,
it's a family restaurant. It was. I wasn't. I was
expecting it to be a little bit more upmarket, I

(03:06):
must say, if I hadn't been there, however, and the
food was it was obviously done by a chef that
knew what he was what he was doing, because the presentation,
the flavors, it was all. My steak was blue and beautiful. Unfortunately,
the service let them down quite badly.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
That's happening everywhere, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Like I've been to so many restaurants and you just
can't get the stuff. But and there are there are
a couple that are fantastic, but just to get people,
they don't really want to work. And these stuff were
very young, like Phil's wife actually runs the front, but
she she the other people let her down, and they
were very young. Like we ordered two entrees as we

(03:46):
thought were entrees, and two main courses. Well, the main
courses arrived first and two minutes later the entrees arrived
as sides. Now, so I sent the main courses back
and they were very gracious and did take them back
and recook them when we needed them. And the food,
I mean, we had a Caesar that was unbelievably fantastic.
The prices are good. It's a great family restaurant, and

(04:07):
I think people and for a local, yeah, it's amazing,
But there's a lot of place at the moment struggling,
and I think.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
How do you teach people to care like that used
to drive me insane when I was front of house too,
Like you'd have beautiful young people who were just who
really did not give us stuff. Whether they made people
tonight or not. They just got the food out and
stuck it in front of them.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
And how people You've worked in restaurants and I loved it.
Like Beth was great out the front. She would just
go and give them a good flicker, had very long
fingernails and they would get their ears flipped, you know.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
But she could also sum everything up. You know, she
could just take one look some everything up perfectly and
just make stuff happen.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
And it's just I mean, but we wanted to do it.
And look and Fill and his wife really want to
do it. Like they're working.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Every art, but they can't be everywhere.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
They can't be everything, Like he's running that kitchen by
himself because it's very hard to get stuff. But also
so you know, people aren't as busy as they were,
so you've got to pay all these bills. Look how
many restaurants are folding it. I mean, it's to keep
your head above water. It's very very hard. They're doing
a fantastic job of the food. But I really do
think they have to look at the wine. Missed a
little bit more also, But also these young people, like

(05:18):
they two of them came to the table. They had
no idea what they were doing. And of course we
are quite forceful, so of course the eyes went up
into the head, you know, when we sort of said
something and I thought, oh, dear, dear, lucky, you're not
allowed to hit people anymore. I mean, it was sad,
but in the end it was saved by Phil's wife.
She was amazing, and we had a good We had

(05:40):
a good time. But it's very family orientated and they're
open for breakfast as well, but they don't they miss Nightlime,
but seven days a week. They seven days a week,
and the kids are that it's look, you could take
your children there. But the pricing was fantastic and like
the burger that my friend had was so high, I mean,

(06:00):
melt vesuvius. It was unbelievably and the meat was nice
and red and was pink. My steak, of course, you
know I always had blue, was absolutely perfect.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
I remember a guy coming into me and saying, how
would you like your steak? And he said wipe it's
ass and cut off the hooves.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
I always say I wanted to bite me before I
bite it. It's quite really, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
Okay, So I must look full credit and big loves
to anybody in hospital at the moment, because you know,
I thought it was tough during COVID. This is no,
this is a thousand times.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Actually the chickens are coming home to rest, aren't they
at the moment. I mean, things are really good. I
mean the economy is really bad and things. People just
don't have that discretionary dollary. No. And look, I've been
to a couple of restaurants that are unbelievably fantastic just
in last week, but next to no people in them. Yeah,
but we're talking upmarket restaurants but struggling.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Okay, So this is Kingsland's social and a brilliant family restaurant.
You'd recommend the burger.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Burger, and of course I feel like a blue steak
and the kalamari was absolutely melt in the mouth, and
the caesar is not It wasn't traditional, but had so
much stuff on it. You could have that as the
main course. But the prices were ranging from in the
twenties up to my steak was a Dais which was
thirty eight, but most of them are around stake. Most
of them were around the twenty five to twenty eight mark.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Okay, brilliant your recipe of the week. Oh yeah, my
love this.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
That's the tun inful tuna. Of course that that was
one of our favorite ones. That's a very classic dish.
But you know, tuna is still quite a good price
because you get the whole thing. Yeah, you know, like snappy,
you get crappy bits, but that is still good pricing.
But you can get a really good piece of state
and you must cook it rare. Yeah. Yeah, that recipe

(07:46):
is so classic. But I'll tell you what you do
your prep and it's perfect.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Thank you so much, Tony Estall. The Recipe of the
Week will be new on our website newsk setb dot
co dot inset