Peasant
191 Dominion Road, Mt Eden
09-638 6403

Vietnamese is one my favourite cuisines: a culture of street food, it features fresh, zingy herbs, snappy sweet-sour fish sauce, lime and palm sugar dressings, soft piles of handmade rice noodles and crispy, fluffy baguettes stuffed with banh mi fillings. News of the opening of Peasant, a Vietnamese eatery in Mt Eden, followed by a few stellar reviews recently in the NZ Herald  and last October in Viva, then quickly caught our attention.

In terms of fit out, Peasant is just what it suggests. Floor to ceiling windows and white-washed walls are simply adorned with a couple of old family photos, while plain light bulbs with knotted cords hang from the ceiling, a subtle reminder of the tangled power lines of Vietnam. It isn’t warm, with relatively harsh lighting and and minimalist wooden and stone furnishings, but it works – you wouldn’t find much more in Vietnam either.

The menu is deceptively long: a small sheet of brown paper hides a range of share plates, priced from $12-19. The more traditional Vietnamese dishes of banh mi and bowls of pho are available for lunch only, though a range of share plates are around all day, from smaller dishes of rice paper rolls and chicken wings to larger offerings of sirloin steak and roast duck.

Salmon rice paper rolls started out strongly: fresh and healthy, the rich hot-smoked king salmon coupled nicely with rice noodles and herbs, though more of the latter were needed for an authentic Vietnamese pop of flavour. The pork rolls with dried shrimp and woodear mushrooms were expected to be similar, so we were surprised when they came out deep-fried. However, these were another highlight, with a hands-on method of wrapping the hot, crispy spiced pork mince roll in a lettuce leaf bundle before devouring. 

A bowl of sticky chicken wings and drumsticks arrived next, thickly coated in a sweet and salty soy sauce marinade. These, along with the cornflake chicken, where schnitzel-like pieces of chicken were covered in a crispy cornflake coating and set in a smear of rich lemongrass aioli, went down a treat with the boys but lacked a freshness and depth of flavour that would be expected from Vietnamese.

The crispy pork belly was disappointing: crispy, yes, but dry, chewy pieces swam in a slightly sickly-sweet hoisin sauce – it wasn’t the thick, slowly caramelised pork cuts with fresh herbs and sharp apple flavours of other Asian-fusion eateries. The lamb skewers were decent, but soy was again a dominant flavour. Crispy squid was Dad’s pick: a generous serve of squid was served on a layer of sriracha mayo, but crispiness was missing from the squid and the expected fiery blast of chili never came.

We fared slightly better with the larger plates: angus sirloin, thickly sliced and covered in a garlic rice wine sauce, was cooked medium rare and went well with the side of broccolini and almonds we had ordered – though here again, innovation was absent in the slightly overdone broccolini presented with a pile of raw sliced almonds.

The most authentic dish of the night – and my favourite – was the market fish, similar to the Vietnamese bun cha ca. Perfectly cooked tarakihi marinated in turmeric and pepper is served with rice noodles, roasted peanuts, a herby green salad and a sharp nuac cham dressing. I could have eaten the whole plate myself.

Service was unhelpful – clearly on perhaps her first night on the job, our waitress was unable to tell us whether what we had ordered would likely be enough, or even identify what dish she was delivering from the kitchen.

With many dishes weighed down by heavy creamed dressings and cooked in copious amounts of soy and hoisin sauce, Peasant is more of a westernized-Vietnamese/non-descript South-East-Asian eatery, lacking the essential herbs and flavours of an authentic Vietnamese meal (though, granted, we did not eat at lunch time so were unable to try the banh mi and pho). It may be a fun place to eat with friends, for a cheap bowl of pho as a lunch stop, or for a quick dinner before the rugby at nearby Eden Park – but as it stands, Peasant is not worth crossing town for.

Rating: 5/10
Don’t miss: the market fish or salmon rice paper rolls
Pro tip: dress warmly – it does get a bit chilly indoors.
Features: share-plates, bookings

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