Meet Fresh (North Shore City, New Zealand)

There are many dessert places here in Auckland, some of them specializes in Asian dessert but I guess there is only one of them that closes at midnight and it’s this place, Meet Fresh. We had visited this place many times already and it is a great hangout for teenagers and you will see why when you visit one of their branches, it is always filled with teens either playing board games or just hanging out socializing with each other.

When we visit this place, the only thing is that you will feel youthful, on all our visits we never saw someone who dines in here with a similar age to us or even older but that does not bother us, in fact there was one time we dined in this place with several of our friends where we also did hang out and played a game called Avalon. No one seemed to bother even we were noisy, there were even other groups who were playing other board games on other tables.

Meet Fresh is an Asian dessert place where it serves Asian hot and cold desserts and drinks like Milk Tea, Herbal Jelly, Shaved Ice, Snowflake Ice and Purple Rice to name some. There are many options to choose from but do not look for something savoury as they serve mostly sweet stuff.

The place is not that large but its spacious enough to accommodate big groups, if I can estimate correctly I guess their place could seat around 30-40 people. There is a small counter where people order but ordering is quick and you will not have to wait for your dessert, patrons are given a vibrating device to let you know that your order is ready, this prevent people from cramming into the small counter.

With our many visits we tried a lot of different things from almost all of their category

Let’s start with this Red Bean Snowflake Ice (NZ$13.80), perfect on a hot day, this dessert is served with very fine ice that melts one it hits your mouth, such a nice sensation. It is topped with sweet cream and red bean plus it is served with mochi on the side.

Mango Slushy Ice with Small Taro Ball and Whipped Cream (NZ$8.00) on the other hand is a very refreshing slushy drink made with mango and topped with cream. It is served with taro balls which has a similar texture to sago pearls, chewy and bouncy.

For those who likes it hot then you can try any of their traditional milk teas like this Taro Fresh Milk Traditional Tea (NZ$7.00) which is a hot tea made with taro, like other milk teas you can have the option of adding sago pearls or what they call boba, sweet potato balls or taro balls.

There is also a slushy counterpart for this milk tea like this Red Bean Slushy with Fresh Milk (NZ$6.50) where it tastes nearly the same but prepared cold with shaved ice.

They also have sticky rice desserts like this Purple Rice Signature Dish (NZ$9.50) where sticky purple rice is topped with sweet coconut cream and served with mangoes, crystal jelly and small taro balls. It’s such an odd combination of flavours where sweet, sour and creamy tastes merges into one spoon. While I like the flavour the texture of the purple rice that was served to us during the time we had it was quite wrong, it was not cooked to our expectation, it was al-dente so you can taste the starchy middle from each grain of rice.

Then they have this, Meet Fresh Signature Herbal Jelly (NZ$8.80) one of our favourites, basically a big bowl of herbal jelly served with taro ball topped with coffee cream. Its delicious, not too sweet and the texture of this dessert is something to look for. It is definitely worthy of the Signature name.

Finally, my favourite and its huge, really huge, I was shocked when I grabbed this order. Red Bean Shaved Ice with Matcha (NZ$14.80), is a full big bowl of shaved ice with matcha syrup served with black sago pearls, red bean, taro balls and matcha jelly. It’s one filling dessert even if three people shared it.

We love most of their offerings (apart from that purple rice), hopefully we can try many of the ones we still haven’t ordered. The desserts are so refreshing and it’s nice to know that you can go somewhere before midnight if you crave for something sweet and that is regardless whether it is winter or summer, they have both bases covered.

Update April 18, 2018

Since this post we had visited this place a lot of times, too many to mention but just to update on the things we tried here are the latest ones we did gave a shot. Two of them became our new favourite and one of them was our least. Let’s start with the least favourite, the Tofu Pudding with Taro (NZ$ 8.50), we ordered this since we were thinking it would be similar to the Philippine taho, they were but only on the tofu pudding, it was bland perhaps the taho syrup would work better on this. Though it was not really bad, it was just not for us.

Luckily on that visit we ordered this Mango Snowflake Ice (NZ$13.80) and honestly this was the best iced dessert I ever had, it softer than a fluffy snow and that condensed milk on top give it another dimension, it worked well with the mangoes which was tangy sweet. This is my top one on this shop.

Then for my daughter it was different, this was her top one the Q Mochi Snowflake Ice (NZ$13.80), same texture as the mango snowflake ice but the flavour is a bit milder, definitely not fruity as the mango but equally good. Delicate flavours on a delicate ice was its recipe.

Another great visit, happy with this one. Definitely will come back again and again and I will keep on updating this post for the new things we try.

Meet Fresh
Address: 2a/372 Rosedale Rd, Albany, Auckland 0632
Phone: +649 448 5162