The Don (North Shore City, New Zealand)
Its one of those random days again where most of us at home was quite lazy to prepare dinner, usually we have the energy to cook but for some reason (most probably the weather) we just want to bum out. Our usual schedule is that I leave office at 4:30PM and I will be at home at 5:00PM, from there I usually prepare our dinner and depending on the dish I will be done somewhere between 5:30 PM to 6:00 PM, I then take a picture of the dish and 15 minutes later we are ready for dinner. This time it’s already 7:00 PM and no one cooked and there were no left overs so we decided to dine out, usually at this time we are already on our way out to jog but instead of a jog we looking for something to eat.
I felt like having Japanese noodles and we are on our way to Milford, there are some options there but not that much, we already tried Musashi so we are left with The Don and Arigato. I chose The Don because it was convenient parking from that street compared to parking at Kitchener Road and plus I saw on their menu before that they serve udon noodles which is what I exactly I am after.
We did not have a reservation and the place is quite small, luckily, we have our free seats angel with us and they had spare tables. There was no fuss on order and I went straight to what we are after some udon. We tried three of their offerings in a form of Nabe Hot Pot, Tempura and Niku.
Let’s start with the Tempura Udon (NZ$18.00), basically udon soup served with tempura prawn, salmon and vegetables. Next was this Niku Udon (NZ$16.50) where you have choice of two meats, grilled pork or chicken which is served with bean sprouts, salty ginger in rich broth.
Then the Nabe Hot Pot, we grabbed the Beef Sukiyaki Name (NZ$15.00) with Udon Noodle (NZ$3.50), served on a hot pot with tofu, vegetables, mushroom and konyaku.
Broth on all dishes was good more specifically the Niku Udon, the tempura was quite lacking flavour maybe because we asked the tempura to be served separately rather than together with the noodles, which means the oil coming from the tempura was lacking which in turn carries the flavour for the broth. Noodles used was the packaged ones but I was good, bouncy and chewy, I wanted to know the brand but I cannot read the packaging from afar.
Overall it was a nice experience, straightforward. Food was good, the staff was amazing and the place was nice.
The Don Milford
Address: 1 Milford Rd, Milford, Auckland 0620, New Zealand
Phone: +649 486 2834
