Some of the most delicious things happen by pure chance.

On Saturday morning, while eating a whitebait fritter on slice of bread, AND a bag of crunchy deep fried chicken skins (both uncommon in my life), I realised I could combine the two. The result was better than either food on its own. Soft, fish, lemon, crunch, salt, chicken-y. It was so good. I should start my own stall. Ha.

My friend and I set upon Street Eats at Shed 10 on Auckland’s Queens Wharf ready to eat and ready to be wowed. This year, Street Eats spanned two levels of Shed 10 giving more room for visitors to move about and there was plenty of seating available. A family friendly affair, there was plenty of activities to keep kids occupied which is great even if you don’t have kids…If you know what I mean.

We ate, we drank, we enjoyed atmosphere as guests of AirAsia. We arrived early at 10.30am and didn’t come across any queues, though we did hustle through to avoid crowds. I only regret we didn’t eat more dishes, but nine shared between two people is number I can be proud of. There were so many great menus that I kind of wish this event was spread over two days so that I could try another nine dishes on day two.

Of the nine dishes we had, my favourites would be:

• Hei Moo from Judge Bao with beef cheeks and black bean sauce and a black sesame bun
• Deep fried chicken skins from PappaRich, which I’d had before and was once again sinfully good.
• Peking duck from White & Wong

Dishes I wish I’d had an extra stomach for:

• Raclette from Melt
• Fresh chilli and lime Clevedon oysters from Thai Street
• Crack fries from Orleans
• Arepas from Besos Latinos
• Bourbon barbecue pork ribs from The Cut on Federal

Hunting down dishes that strike your fancy and then picking out the next delicious item is an entertaining sport. A big part of the charm of Street Eats is coming up with food pairings and then collecting them from different stalls and gobbling them up. For example, our Peking duck with Babich Pinot Noir and profiteroles pairing went down very nicely.

Street Eats was a great event with many delicious dishes. We chose to get smaller dishes so that we could sample more items, but some of the offerings are quite large meaning you’ll only get to (have to) eat 1 or 2 items. For me (and probably most of you), I prefer to sample many smaller dishes rather than 1 or 2 large items. Call me a glutton. I don’t mind.

This was the 4th edition of Street Eats and I have been to every Street Eats so far. This year was by far my favourite. Already looking forward to Street Eats number 5.

A big thank you to Lemongrass Productions and Air Asia for hosting us. Coincidentally, my friend and I have travelled together extensively through Malaysia (KL, KK, Sepilok, Sandakan) and surrounding countries flying on Air Asia and they really are the best deals around.

Funny story, our first meal in Malaysia was in Kota Kinabalu or KK and we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. Because the prices were so cheap and we were so hungry, we figured the mains must be tiny. We ordered 2 mains each and they were not tiny. We ate ourselves into a stupor. After that we just ordered one dish each.