There is a fantastic online food delivery and ordering service in New Zealand that lets you search and review many   restaurant and takeaway menus that are ready for you to order your lunch or dinner online.

You can choose to have your meal home delivered, to your work or why not order your meal online in advance and then go and pick it up on your way home or during your lunch break?

So where do you go to order food online? and check out the menus from your local takeaways? Go to Dinein.co.nz.

“Dine In is a 100% kiwi owned website” that is growing by the day and already has a great loyal following. They are keen for fellow kiwi’s to get involved and provide their feedback and are seen to be implementing updates continuously thanks to the support it is receiving.

Dinein.co.nz was set up with the purpose of making it easy for you to find what online takeaways and restaurants are within your area and to be able to order food online quickly and easily. You are able to check out the many online menus and to plan your meal choices without feeling rushed like  we normally find ourselves when standing in a queue.

I remember having to search for menus & flyers to no avail when I moved into a new area, having an online food ordering website where I can also receive coupons and discount vouchers for first time orders and also set up my online loyalty scheme with my favourite restaurants is fantastic. I no longer have to carry a pile of loyalty cards with me!

There are quite a number of online takeaway options ranging from:

• Indian
• Pizza,
• Malaysian,
• Fish and Chips,
• Thai and many more online.

If your favourite restaurant or takeaway is not online, do not fret, simply get in touch with Dine In by emailing feedback@dinein.co.nz to recommend its inclusion.

Dine In is easy to use, so go ahead and order, order, order. Payment is secure as is managed by Payment Express which is highly recognised on many e-commerce websites in New Zealand, including Trademe. You do not need an account to order food online either. The purpose of an account however is to simply make your life easier as you can track your previous orders, save your favourites for easy access, collect loyalty stamps and discounts and even download GST receipts for restaurants that have uploaded their own GST no.

Still Feeling hungry? Fancy a Chicken Tikka Masala with a Butter Nan and perhaps a samosa to start? If you are living in Wellington you might want to check out Masala or Tulsi or  do you live in Auckland? Check out this link that has a list of available online curry takeaways and menus. Perhaps you fancy to order pizza and have it delivered to your home? No problem simply search for pizza and your suburb on the search box or click on this link to go to Dine In.

Order food online today :)

I have ordered food before from various restaurants in Auckland. Some restaurants allow only ordering by phone and some others have online ordering facility. I personally like to order food online since I get more time to read through the menu and decide. In the past, I have had tough experiences communicating my order to the person who takes the order on the phone. On a couple of occasions, wrong food got delivered to me due to communication problems. Hence I prefer online ordering.

East restaurant in Ponsonby, Auckland is a restaurant that supports online ordering of food. I had never tried food from that restaurant and I was curious to find out how it tasted. I was warned by one of my friends that the food in that restaurant was not good. There were a few others who said it was definitely not bad and one of my close friends said he really enjoyed eating there.

Anyway, I decided to check it out myself. It was 9:15 PM and I read in one of the websites that the restaurant closed at 10 PM. I quickly opened up the menu page. I started to order some items. I was in a mood to try exotic non-veg food. I always like to start my meal with a soup. I wasn’t really sure how home-delivered soup would be. But, I decided to take a risk and chose spicy seafood soup. Below the name of the soup, it was written that it was a Thai-styled soup. From the name of the soup, I figured out it was going to be spicy. Since I am a big fan of both Thai food and spicy food, this choice was a no-brainer for me.

I also wanted to try some salads. I hadn’t eaten calamari salad before and decided to go with that. For the main course, I chose Teriyaki steak. I had never heard the name ‘teriyaki’ before and my curiosity got the better of me. It is supposedly a Japanese-styled dish.

I didn’t have much cash at home and I wished the website supported payment by credit cards. Thankfully, it had the credit card payment option.

The website had an optional comment field if I wanted to say anything additional to them. I just asked them to deliver all the food items hot in the comment field. I completed my order by making the payment and was waiting for the delivery. It was written on the website that it would take 40 minutes for the food to reach my home. Even though it was a reasonable waiting time, I couldn’t wait because I was both curious and hungry.

My order reached my home in about 30 minutes. The food was smoking hot and looked delicious. I also noticed that the quantity of food was large. It was more than enough for a single person.

I quickly opened the packing and started my dinner. The soup was hot and spicy. I could see Thai style written all over it. Teriyaki steak was different and pleasantly surprised me. However, I was a bit disappointed with the Calamari salad.

Contrary to what some of my friends told me, I actually enjoyed my meal. Soup and the teriyaki steak tasted real good and I am confident that other dishes from them would also be good.

At the end of my meal, I realized that some amount of each dish got left over. Next time, I can invite some of my friends over and order online from East restaurant. I don’t have to order much since a single serving of each dish can feed more than one person.

To keep up with my passion for food, I often try different kinds of food in different restaurants. Some people usually have favourite restaurants and they like to restrict themselves to those few restaurants whenever they go out for lunch or dinner. They don’t try different options.

But I am completely opposite to that. In fact, I often search online for new restaurants that have come up in my city, not necessarily because I am bored of the usual restaurants. But, I like to explore what new restaurants have to offer.

Keeping up with that spirit, I decided to try the ‘Nite Spice Indian restaurant’ in Manukau, Auckland for dinner one night. When I first read the name of the restaurant, the word ‘spice’ caught my attention since I am a fan of spicy food. Apart from that, it is an Indian restaurant and Indian foods are usually spicy. All these got my hopes high.

The Venue

As soon as I entered the restaurant, I noticed that it wasn’t too big. But, the ambience was pretty good. The lighting was neither too dim nor too bright, it was ideal. Even though the restaurant was almost fully occupied, it wasn’t noisy. More importantly, the place and the tables looked clean.

The Service

Once I took my place, I was immediately attended to by a well-dressed waiter.  Usually, when waiters take too long to attend or simply ignore my presence, I get irritated. But, I wasn’t given a chance to feel irritated since the employees of this restaurant seem to know the value of good customer service. I have to say that their service was good throughout my dinner that night. I have encountered rude staffs in a few restaurants before. But, the ones here were nowhere near being rude. Actually, the person who served my table always had a smile on his face.

The Menu

When I browsed through the menu card, I found it to be quite long with a good number of varieties in both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. The prices I would say were moderate. They were neither too high nor too low. I have eaten in both less expensive and very expensive Indian restaurants. I wasn’t really bothered by the price and was more looking forward to the quality of the food.

I couldn’t immediately decide on what to order. I could actually smell the aroma of Chicken Biriyani served on another table and wanted to order it. But, since I have had Chicken Biriyani a lot of times before in other restaurants, I wanted to try something different. After a while, I asked the waiter himself for suggestions. He was quick to reply by saying that Chicken Jalfrezi was a regularly ordered dish by other customers and suggested me to try it. I went with his suggestion and ordered a North Indian bread called ‘Naan’ along with Chicken Jalfrezi. He wasn’t particularly quick in bringing my food, but he wasn’t too late either and since the food was served hot and had a good smell, I didn’t mind the small waiting time.

The Food

Coming to the food, I would say Chicken Jalfrezi had the perfect amount of spice, just as I expected. Naan could have been a little better though. But, since Chicken Jalfrezi was very good, I didn’t really mind it. For dessert, I asked the waiter himself again. He asked me to try Mango Kulfi. The name itself sounded something new to me. Apparently, it is  quite popular in India. I would say the waiter wasn’t wrong again. Mango kulfi was indeed good.

The Conclusion

While leaving, I thought to myself that I would definitely come back to the restaurant some other time to try the other dishes.  Next time, I might try Chicken Jaipuri with some rice variety.

I would definitely recommend this restaurant to my friends in Auckland who are interested in trying out authentic Indian food.

ingredients

10 – 12 pieces of chicken ( ideally a mixture of thigh and legs )

1 large white onion

3 tablespoons of butter and 4 tablespoons of good olive oil

glass of white wine

250ml good chicken stock

2 egg yolks

juice of one lemon

salt, pepper and flour

For the first part you will need a lemon, glass of white wine and a litre of chicken stock.

In a large pot, bring to a boil some chicken stock, a cut lemon and a glass of white wine. Once it comes to a boil, turn it down slightly and place the chicken in this mixture, cook for 20 minutes. Let the chicken cool down and ideally let it sit for 2 – 3 hours in the juices

Take the chicken out of the juices and pat them dry, at the same time take the skin off. Toss the chicken in seasoned flour and put to one side. Slice the onion into thin slices.

Heat the butter and olive oil ideally in a heavy pan, add the flour coated chicken and fry them until they are lightly brown on all sides. Once brown transfer to a plate and put in a preheated oven (140C ). Place the onion rings in the pan and fry them gently until they are soft and transparent. Then stir in the white wine and continue cooking until the sauce thickens. Add half the chicken stock and cook for a further 2 minutes.

Return the chicken to the pan, cover and cook slowly for 20 mins, adding a little stock at a bit of  the time. Then remove the chicken from the pan and put back in the oven. Whisk the egg yolks with the lemon juice and add to the pan, stirring all the time, season, warm through BUT DO NOT ALLOW IT TO BOIL. Serve the chicken on hot plates  covered in the sauce.

6 sausages
potatoes,
1tbsp olive oil
garlic
mustard
4 spring onions, sliced
150g cherry tomatoes, halved
lettuce
mushrooms

For the dressing:

1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp dry white wine vinegar
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp clear honey
dash of Tabasco sauce
chilli flakes

Preparation

skin the sausages, put them in a bowl, add garlic, mustard, salt, pepper, cheese and mix

make them into small balls

peel and cube the potatoes,boil them for 6 mins

in a frying put olive oil and butter and slowly cook the balls and in another pan slowly cook the potato cubes until brown

then add the spring onions, toms to the balls and cook for another 3 mins

Finally add the cubes and all the dressing ingredients and toss well. Remove from the heat.

Empty the salad leaves into a large bowl, add the potato mixture and toss to mix.

Serve immediately.

For my main I choose the Lamb Banzara, which following on in the ginger theme, was cooked in cashew nuts, onions and Nawani’s secret gravy ;) The lamb was tender and having opted for medium strength (you can go for hot or even challenge) I was able to enjoy the wholesome flavour of the spice and ginger theme.

Mr India has a wide choice of mains extending to goat and fish dishes and is certainly an excellent choice of venue and for ordering your meal online. Yes he delivers to your home or work place too.

Nawani has also opened a restaurant in Taupo named Indian Delights. which follows with a rich choice of North Indian cuisine. He welcomes you to your first order at Indian Delights in Taupo with a 10% discount on your first online order and even delivers to all suburbs in Taupo!

Below are his own words and description about Nawani.

“We are the largest Indian restaurant in Taupo with a million dollar view of the lakefront along with offering you the finest North Indian  cuisine.

Indian Delights is a brainchild of J.P.Nawani who is a chef himself and is trained by master chef’s in the finest hotels in India. With his culinary expertise  and plethora of experience, he felt that Taupo still lacks an Indian restaurant, which offers authentic Indian cuisine as indians enjoy in India and there is no reason why residents of Taupo should be deprived of the best of Indian cuisine. We have a very expansive menu list and for both food and beverages and we are sure there will be something or the other for everyone’s taste and choice.”

There is a wealth of online opportunity to promote cuisine, restaurants and takeaways which will bring to attention the variety of meals on offer which we are in the lucky position of being able to write about and promote.

In turn we help encourage people to either frequent a restaurant or order online. Support your locals and also support the variety of cuisine on offer.

Simply use the contact us form and outline whether you would like to be a moderator or a contributor or both. (Moderators will need to provide examples of blogs/ articles)

Whether you are a seasoned pro accustomed to writing about cuisine  or you are just starting out, you are most welcome to join Foodies. it is the intention to foster a community of people that are simply interested in learning and writing about what fascinates and entertains in our world filled with tantalising cuisine.

In fact it has become incredibly hard not to stop in some of my favourite cafe’s for my daily coffee fix or to check out a restaurant. Admittedly what with having my third child on the way, frequenting restaurants is not as great as I would like but that is where I discovered just how good our Restaurant takeaway take away services are.

I put this down to intense competition which brings out the best in our restaurant takeaways and also due to the diverse origins of many New Zealand citizens and residents alike. Quite an amazing feat considering the population of NZ.

I myself work within the IT industry and became enamoured with the food industry and I wanted to help in raising the profile of our industry by providing an online ordering service that would help the many owners of our restaurants and takeaways to be able to promote themselves on line [www.dinein.co.nz]

Foodies however is not intended to be centred around the outlets  per se but is a place to discuss the cuisine choice that is available in NZ and the World at large.

Adding of recipes is most welcome and I hope this becomes a great adventure for us all as we set on learning from each other in what must be one of the greatest topics that enlivens the spirit in all of us; that is the topic of food.

I expect that Foodies will evolve over time based upon the feedback from contributors and other interested parties. Please do get involved and I hope to be able to converse with you as a fellow contributor.

I have a passion for cuisine and this has inspired the setup of foodies.